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The Deliverer


By Nemanja Moravic Balkanski & various (the Publishing Eye)
ISBN: 978-0-986844-01-0

As I’ve often stated, some comics creators seduce and beguile whilst others choose to inform and affect with confrontational shock tactics. One of the most evocative and uncompromising efforts that I’ve ever seen came from Belgrade émigré Nemanja Moravic “NeMo” Balkanski. Don’t just take my word for it, track down his stunning FIB Chronicles, compiling much of his early material. …And now he’s done it again…

Balkanski was born in Belgrade in 1975 and, after indulging in and mastering a multitude of artistic disciplines from comics to graphic design, theatre arts to film-making, and poetry to performance, emigrated to Vancouver in 2007. When not working as an Art Director or storyboard artist for big and little screen productions he continues to produce thought-provoking comics.

It has all clearly been an inspirational experience and NeMo – a skilful plunderer of social tropes and cultural memes – has absorbed the meat and ephemera of his new environs to produce a stunningly confrontational allegory and state-of-the-union fairy tale with plenty of bite.

Canada, not long from now: society is on the edge of collapse and has been for as long as anyone can recall. And that’s not long: crass, shallow media has all but lobotomised the people, making them sensation-seeking celebrity-hungry drones told how to think and act and especially what to buy from the rich bastards to own everything.

King of those rats is the aged billionaire whose Watchmaker Labs and Watchmaker Studios strives tirelessly to mechanise and monetise every last iota of humanity and spirituality. They have already successfully commoditised sport and sex and are close to replacing their fragile flesh-&-blood customer base with mechanical hybrids…

A land like that expects its citizens to do nothing more than work and be consumers, so it employs a certain kind of lawkeeper: semi-cyborg sadists like Canuck, macho psychotics such as talking police dog Le Chien, lickspittles like Token Indian Winnetou and even sometimes starry-eyed do-gooders like hapless Mountie Sergeant Prickstone, but they’re just not enough to keep order in a city which – although tacitly owned by Watchmaker – still moves to its own decadent rhythms…

When uncompromising natural force Cayenne the Shark eats half of Vancouver – despite the army of gigantic robotic buildings and trucks slowly superseding humanity – a new kind of champion emerges.

The Deliverer used to bring pizza to the slavishly mass media-addicted self-medicating hoi-polloi, making money to buy time with certified sex-worker Lula, but as the end rushes closer he finds that selfishly helping himself is actually working to repair the world…

Clearly the world is made up of far more than what Watchmaker can grasp in his withered, grasping hands and as Prickstone and the Deliverer join the Vancouverite Underground to help the declining First Nation regain their stolen mystic Mojo a concatenation of unlikely circumstances look like turning them into Canadian humanity’s last hope of survival…

Abstruse, blackly humorous, shockingly explicit, complacently violent and bleakly hilarious, this disquieting parable uses the modern go-to story form of the summer Action Blockbuster to tenaciously attack media mass-produced self-image and the casual hypocrisy which runs the world and picks enough scabs off that you simply have to stop and think.

This substantial full-colour landscape-format  hardback is another strident, sardonically whimsical cartoon diagnosis of the state of our society: a uniquely entertaining read the brave and bold and reasonably old must not miss…
© 2015 The Publishing Eye.

Why not scope out the official website and trailer at http://www.thepublishingeye.com/books/the-deliverer/

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Clifton volume 2: The Laughing Thief


By De Groot & Turk, translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-07-4

For some inexplicable reason most of Europe’s comics cognoscenti – most especially the French and Belgians – seem fascinated with us Brits. Maybe it’s our shared heritage of Empires lost and cultures in transition? An earlier age would have claimed it’s simply a case of “Know your Enemy”…

Whether we look at Anglo air ace Biggles, indomitable adventurers Blake and Mortimer, the Machiavellian machinations of Green Manor or even the further travails of Long John Silver, the serried stalwarts of our Scepter’d Isles cut a dashing swathe through the pages of the Continent’s assorted magazines and albums.

And then there’s Clifton…

Originally devised by child-friendly strip genius Raymond Macherot (Chaminou, Les croquillards, Chlorophylle, Sibylline) for iconic Tintin Magazine, the doughty True Brit troubleshooter first appeared in December 1959. After three albums worth of material Рcompiled and released between 1959 and 1960 РMacherot left Tintin for arch-rival Spirou and his eccentric comedy crime-fighter sadly floundered until Tintin brought him back at the height of the Swinging London scene, courtesy of Jo-El Azaza & Greg (Michel R̩gnier).

These strips were subsequently collected as Les lutins diaboliques in French and De duivelse dwergen for Dutch-speakers in 1969.

Then it was back into retirement until the early 1970s when writer Bob De Groot and illustrator Philippe “Turk” Liegeois revived Clifton for the long haul, producing ten tales of which this – Le voleur qui rit – Clifton from 1973 – was their second collaboration.

Thereafter, from 1984 on, artist Bernard Dumont – AKA Bédu – limned De Groot’s scripts before eventually assuming the writing chores as well, until the series ended in 1995. In keeping with its rather haphazard nature and typically undying nature, the Clifton experience resumed once again in 2003, crafted by De Groot and Michel Rodrigue in four further adventures; a grand total of 25 to date.

The setup is deliciously simple: pompous and irascible Colonel Sir Harold Wilberforce Clifton, ex-RAF, former Metropolitan police Constabulary and recently retired from MI5, has a great deal of difficulty dealing with being put out to pasture in rural Puddington. He thus takes every opportunity to get back in the saddle, occasionally assisting the Government or needy individuals as an amateur sleuth.

Sadly for Clifton – as with that other much-underappreciated national treasure Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army – he is too keenly aware that he is usually the only truly competent man in a world full of blithering idiots…

In this second translated album – first seen in 2005 – the Gentleman Detective is embroiled in not one but two uncanny incidences, beginning with eponymous epic ‘The Laughing Thief’ wherein the still much-missed lawman rather forcefully inserts himself into a current case baffling Scotland Yard.

London is being wracked by devilishly clever crimes executed with infallible precision by a crack crew of blaggers, but the profits of each caper seem far below what such expert criminals should be bothering with. Moreover, each perfectly executed heist is preceded by a telephone warning from a braying braggart with the most annoying and distinctive laugh imaginable…

The crooks are incredibly bold and arrogant. Even after Clifton intervenes in the second robbery, the scoundrels easily outwit him, leave the dapper sleuth unconscious with dozens of other peculiarly proud and strangely supportive victims…

Moreover, although police “higher-ups” welcome Clifton’s help, officer-in-charge Lieutenant Hardfeeling doesn’t want the show-stealer around and is doing all he can to impede the Colonel’s investigations, despite the protests of his senior colleagues and the bobbies on the beat…

Nevertheless, persistence is its own reward, and when Clifton finally deduces the true reasons for the publicity-seeking crime-spree the resultant confrontation is both spectacularly satisfying and hilariously rewarding…

Being British and an ex-spy, Clifton has hung on to the odd gadget or two, such as an amazingly tricked out umbrella which plays a major part in this volume’s second tale ‘The Mystery of the Running Voice’. A suspenseful spooky yarn, it begins when the unhappy retiree meets old comrade Donald McDonald Muckyduck, who appears to have worn out every vestige of verve and is on the verge of a nervous breakdown…

Close consultation reveals that the former police Inspector is being haunted by a robber ghost; one that has already claimed six victims. However upon viewing the crime scene photos Clifton gains an inkling into how the trick is done and temporarily moves to bucolic village Flatfish-on-Apron, setting himself up as bait for a diabolical genius with a penchant for clever gimmicks…

Visually spoofing Swinging Sixties London and staidly stuffy English Manners with wicked effect, these gentle thrillers are big on laughs but also pack a lot of consequence-free action into their eclectic mix. Delightfully surreal, instantly accessible and doused with daft slapstick à la Jacques Tati and intrigue like Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, this brace of romps rattle along in the grand old tradition of Will Hay, Terry-Thomas and Alistair Sim – or Wallace and Gromit if you’re a callow yoof – offering readers a splendid treat and loads of timeless laughs.
Original edition © 1973 Le Lombard (Dargaud-Lombard S. A.) 1988 by De Groot & Turk. English translation © 2005 Cinebook Ltd.

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New Crusaders Legacy


By Rich Buckler, Ian Flynn, Robert Kanigher, Stan Timmons, Alex Toth, Carmine Infantino, Steve Ditko, Dick Ayers, Gray Morrow, Alec Niño, Tony DeZuñiga, Jerry Gaylord, Ben Bates, Alitha Martinez & many more (Red Circle/Archie Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-936975-22-8

In the dawning days of the comic book business, just after Superman and Batman began creating a new genre of storytelling, many publishers jumped onto the bandwagon and made their own bids for cash and glory. Many thrived and many more didn’t; now relished only as trivia by sad old blokes like me. Some few made it to an amorphous middle-ground: not forgotten, but certainly not household names either…

MLJ were one of the quickest publishers to jump on the Mystery-Man bandwagon, following the spectacular successes of the Man of Tomorrow with their own small yet inspirational pantheon of gaudily clad costumed crusaders, beginning in November 1939 with Blue Ribbon Comics. Soon followed by Top-Notch and Pep Comics, their content was the standard blend of two-fisted adventure strips, prose pieces and gag panels and, from #2 on, superheroes…

However, after only a few years Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John Goldwater spotted a gap in the blossoming market and in December 1941 nudged aside their masked heroes and action strips to make room for a far less imposing hero; an “average teen” who would have ordinary adventures like the readers, but with triumphs, romance and slapstick emphasised.

Pep Comics #22 featured a gap-toothed, freckle-faced, red-headed goof who clearly took his lead from Mickey Rooney’s popular Andy Hardy matinee movies. Goldwater developed the concept of a youthful everyman protagonist, tasking writer Vic Bloom and artist Bob Montana with the job of making it work. A 6-page tale introduced Archie Andrews and pretty girl-next-door Betty Cooper as well as his unconventional best friend and confidante Jughead Jones in their small-town utopia of Riverdale.

The feature was an instant hit and by the winter of 1942 had won its own title. Archie Comics #1 was the company’s first solo-starring magazine and with it began the gradual transformation of the entire company. With the introduction of wealthy, raven-haired Veronica Lodge, all the pieces were in play for the comicbook industry’s second Genuine Phenomenon (Superman being the first)…

By 1946 the kids had taken over, so MLJ renamed itself Archie Comics; retiring its heroic characters years before the end of the Golden Age and becoming, to all intents and purposes, a publisher of family comedies. Its success, like Superman’s, changed the content of every other publisher’s titles, and led to a multi-media industry including TV shows, movies, a chain of restaurants and even a global pop hit “Sugar, Sugar” (a tune from their animated show).

Nonetheless, the company had by this stage blazed through a rather impressive pantheon of mystery-men who would form the backbone of numerous future superhero revivals, most notably in the High-Camp/Marvel Explosion/Batman TV show-frenzied mid-60’s era…

The heroes impressively resurfaced under the company’s Red Circle imprint during the early days of the Direct Sales revolution of the 1980s, but after a strong initial showing, again failed to sustain the public’s attention. Archie let them lie fallow (except for occasional revivals and intermittent guest-shots in Archie titles) until 1991, when the company licensed its heroes to superhero specialists DC for a magically fun, all-ages iteration (and where’s that star-studded trade paperback collection, huh?!). Impact Comics was a vibrant, engaging and fun all-ages rethink that really should have been a huge hit but was again cruelly unsuccessful…

When the line folded in 1993 the characters returned to limbo until DC had one more crack at them in 2008, attempting to incorporate the Mighty Crusaders & Co into their own maturely angst-ridden and stridently dark continuity – with the usual overwhelming lack of success.

Recently the wanderers returned home to Archie for a superbly simplistic and winningly straightforward revival aimed squarely at old nostalgics and young kids reared on highly charged action/adventure cartoon shows: brimming with all the exuberant verve and wide-eyed honest ingenuity you’d expect from an outfit which has been pleasing kids for nearly seventy years.

Released initially online in May 2012 – followed by a traditional monthly print version that September – the first story-arc made it to full legitimacy with a thrill-packed trade paperback collection, equally welcoming to inveterate fanboys and eager newcomers alike.

The series introduced a new generation of legacy heroes rising from the ashes of their parents’ and guardians’ murders to become a team of teenaged gladiators carrying on the fight as the New Crusaders.

This collection supplements and follows on from that magical makeover: having new team mentor The Shield train the potential-filled juniors through the records of their predecessors. The stories included here come from those aforementioned 1980s Red Circle episodes; culled from the pages of Mighty Crusaders #1, 8, 9, The Fly #2, 4, 6, Blue Ribbon #3, 8, 14, The Comet #1 and Black Hood #2, spanning 1983-1985…

Following an engaging reintroduction and recap, current creative team Ian Flynn, Jerry Gaylord, Ben Bates & Alitha Martinez reveal how the grizzled, flag-draped veteran has trouble reaching his teenaged students until he begins treating them as individuals, and sharing past Crusaders’ cases.

Starting with personal recollections of his own early days as America’s first Patriotic superhero in ‘The Shield’ (from Mighty Crusaders #8, Marty Greim, Dick Ayers & Rich Buckler), Joe Higgins explains his active presence in the 21st century, leading into a recapitulation of the first Red Circle yarn.

‘Atlantis Rising’ comes from Mighty Crusaders #1, by Buckler & Frank Giacoia, which found psionic plunderer Brain Emperor and immortal antediluvian Eterno the Conqueror launching a multi-pronged attack on the world. They were countered by an army of costumed champions including the Golden Age Shield, Lancelot Strong the (other) Shield (for a while there were three different ones active at once), Fly and Fly-Girl, Jaguar, The Web, Black Hood and The Comet, who communally countered a global crime-wave and clobbered the villains’ giant killer robots…

This is followed by a modern interlude plus pin-up and data pages on Ralph Hardy AKA ‘The Jaguar’ before a potent vignette by Chas Ward & Carlos Vicatan from The Fly #4 reviews the animal-master’s Aztec origins and rebirth in ‘Renewal’…

‘The Web’ offers the same data-page update for masked detective and criminologist John Raymond before ‘The Killing Hour’ (Blue Ribbon #14, by Stan Timmons, Lou Manna, Rex Lindsey & Chic Stone) sees the merely mortal manhunter join his brother-in-law the Jaguar in foiling a nuclear terrorism plot…

More modern pin-ups and data-pages reintroduce ‘The Comet’ before Bill DuBay, Jr., Carmine Infantino & Alec Niño reworked the original 1940’s origin tale by Jack Cole from Pep Comics #1 in 1940.

Reproduced from 1984’s The Comet #1, this chilling yarn detailed how an idealistic scientist became the most bloodthirsty hero of the Golden Age, with a body-count which made the Punisher look like a pantywaist…

The infomercial for ‘Steel Sterling’ precedes a wild and whimsical origin-retelling of the star-struck, super-strong “Man of Steel” by his 1940s scripter Robert Kanigher, illustrated with superb style by Louis Barreto & Tony DeZuñiga from Blue Ribbon #3, after which ‘Fly Girl’ gets star treatment in a brace of tales, augmented as always by the ubiquitous fact-folio.

‘A Woman’s Place’ by Buckler, Timmons, Adrian Gonzales & Ricardo Villagran (from The Fly #2) clears up an exceedingly sexist old-school extortion ring whilst ‘Faithfully Yours’ (Fly #6) saw her movie-star alter ego Kim Brand subjected to a chilling campaign of terror from a fan. Timmons, Buckler, Steve Ditko & Alan Kupperberg took just the right tone in what might be the first incidence of stalking in US comics…

‘Black Hood’ has no modern iteration in the New Crusaders. Still active in contemporary times, he did encounter the kids during their debut exploit and is phenomenally cool, so he gets a place here. Following the customary introductory lesson he appears in a gritty, Dirty Harry themed adventure (from Blue Ribbon #8 by Gray Morrow) as undercover cop – and latest convert – Kip Burland who sidesteps Due Process to save a kidnapped girl and ensure the conviction of crooks hiding behind the law. The gripping yarn also discloses the centuries-long justice-seeking tradition of “The Man of Mystery” …

That’s followed by a snippet from Rich Margopoulos, Kupperberg & Giacoia entitled ‘A Hero’s Rage’ wherein Kip discovers his uncle Matt (the Golden Age Black Hood) has been murdered and ditches his leather jacket and ski-mask in favour of the traditional costume before joining the Mighty Crusaders…

Without doubt the most engaging reprint in this collection and by itself well worth the price of admission is ‘The Fox’ from Black Hood #2. Written and drawn by the inimitable Alex Toth, this scintillating light-hearted period comedy-drama finds the devilish do-gooder in Morocco in 1948, embroiled with wealthy expatriate ex-boxer Cosmo Gilly who has no idea he’s become the target for assassination…

The recondite recollections surge to a climax with ‘Old Legends Never Die’ (Mighty Crusaders #9, by David M. Singer, Buckler & Ayers) as the first Shield is accused of excessive force and manslaughter when his 1940’s crime-fighting style seemingly results in the death of a thief he most forcefully apprehended. With Joe Higgins’ costumed friends in support but out of their depth in a courtroom, the convoluted history of the three heroes bearing his codename are unpicked during ‘The Trial of the Shield’ before the uncannily sinister truth is finally exposed…

Supplemented by a plentiful cover gallery and packed with the kind of ephemera that sends old Fights ‘n’ Tights fans into paroxysms of delight, I fear this is probably a book only the wide-eyed young and dedicated aged nostalgists could handle, but it is such a perfect artefact of the superhero genre I strongly urge anyone with a hankering for masked adventure and craving Costumed Dramas to give it a long look.
NEW CRUSADERS and RED CIRCLE COMICS ® ACP, Inc. © 2013 Archie Comics Publications. All rights reserved.

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Annihilation Classic


By Todd Dezago, Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Marv Wolfman, Mark Gruenwald, Bill Mantlo, Doug Moench, Scott Edelman, Roy Thomas, Derec Aucoin, Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Paul Ryan, Mike Mignola, Tom Sutton, Mike Zeck, Gil Kane & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3410-7

Annihilation was another of those company-wide publishing events that “Changed the Marvel Universe Forever” (and don’t they all?) which ran for most of 2006, involving most of the House of Ideas’ outer space outposts and cosmic characters. Among the stalwarts in play were Silver Surfer, Galactus, Firelord, Moondragon, Quasar, Star-Lord, Thanos, Super-Skrull, Gamora, Ronan the Accuser, Nova, Drax the Destroyer, Watchers and a host of alien civilisations such as the Kree, Skrulls, Xandarians, Shi’ar et al., all falling before a invasion of rapacious Negative Zone bugs and beasties unleashed by the insectoid horror Annihilus.

If you’re new to the Marvel universe and that bewildering list of daunting data didn’t leave you screaming in frustration, then please read on…

As is usual in these public thinnings of the herd, a number of good guys and bad died and had their trademark assumed by newer, glitzier models whilst some moribund careers got a successful and overdue shot in the arm…

The event spawned a number of specials, miniseries and new titles, (subsequently collected as three volumes plus this Annihilation Classic compilation which reprinted key and origin appearances of some major players) and led to follow-up event Annihilation: Conquest. Of particular interest to fun-loving screen-watchers should be early appearances of Galaxy Guardians Rocket Raccoon and Groot…

This smart selection comprises of and contains pertinent material from Bug #1, (March 1997), Tales to Astonish #13, (December 1960), Nova #1, (September 1976), Quasar #1 (October 1989), Rocket Raccoon #1-4 (May-August 1995) Marvel Spotlight #6 (May 1980), Logan’s Run #6 (June 1977) and Marvel Premiere #1 (April 1972) and opens with the frenetic and light-hearted solo outing for Galactic Warrior Bug (originally a cheeky stalwart from the 1970’s toy-license phenomenon Micronauts)…

Here in ‘Apples and Oranges’ by Tod Dezago, Derec Aucoin, Rich Farber & Ralph Cabrera, the insectivorid from the Microverse accidentally clashes with all-consuming cosmic menace Annihilus and gets stuck in a time/space warp.

Bounced around the history of the Marvel Universe, the warring weirdoes reveal their unheralded contributions to the origin stories of a number of the company’s greatest stars before Bug finally triumphs…

With accompanying pinup by Pat Broderick and hilarious game pages by Fred Hembeck including ‘Bug’s Brain -Tik- lers’, ‘The Help Bug Right the Time/Space Continuum Board Game’, ‘What’s Wrong with This Picture?’ and ‘Bug’s Catch-All Activity Page’, this is a splendidly engaging and irreverent treat, followed by an absolute classic of the gloriously whacky “Kirby Kritter” genre as a humble biologist saved earth from a rapacious walking tree in ‘I Challenged Groot! The Monster from Planet X’ (from Tales to Astonish #13 by Stan Lee/Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers).

Next to grab the spotlight is The Man Called Nova who was in fact a boy named Richard Rider. A working class nebbish in the tradition of Peter Parker – except he was good at sports and bad at learning – Rich attended Harry S. Truman High School, where his strict dad was the principal. His mom worked as a police dispatcher and he had a younger brother, Robert, who was a bit of a genius. Other superficial differences to the Spider-Man canon included girlfriend Ginger and best friends Bernie and Caps, but Rich did have his own school bully, Mike Burley…

An earlier version, “Black Nova” had apparently appeared in the author Marv Wolfman’s fan-mag Super Adventures in 1966 (produced with fellow writer Len Wein), but with a few revisions and an artistic make-over by the legendary John Romita (Senior) the Human Rocket was launched into the Marvel Universe in his own title, beginning in September 1976, ably supported by the illustration A-Team of John Buscema & Joe Sinnott.

‘Nova’– which borrowed heavily from Green Lantern as well as Spider-Man’s origin, was structured like a classic four-chapter Lee/Kirby early Fantastic Four tale, and rapidly introduced its large cast before quickly zipping to the life-changing moment in Rider’s life when a star-ship with a dying alien aboard transferred to the lad all the mighty powers of an extraterrestrial peacekeeper and warrior.

Rhomann Dey had tracked a deadly marauder to Earth. Zorr had already destroyed the idyllic world of Xandar, but the severely wounded vengeance-seeking Nova Prime was too near death and could not avenge the genocide. Trusting to fate, Dey beamed his powers and abilities towards the planet below where Richard Rider was struck by the energy bolt and plunged into a coma. On awakening Rich realised he had gained awesome powers and the responsibilities of the last Nova Centurion…

Wendell Vaughn had debuted at the end of 1977 as SHIELD super-agent Marvel Boy in Captain America #217, graduating to Quasar during a stint as security chief of Project Pegasus during the early 1980. He finally got an origin with his own title Quasar #1 in October 1989. He learned ‘The Price of Power!’ courtesy of Mark Gruenwald, Paul Ryan & Danny Bulanadi in a stirring tale wherein he washed out of agent training for lack of a killer instinct. Whilst acting in a security detail Wendell donned alien quantum wrist-bands to stop them falling into the hands of AIM, even though they had vaporised every SHIELD operative who had test-piloted them. As well as not dying he gained incredible powers and began his brief but glorious career as Avenger and Protector of the Universe…

Rocket Raccoon was a minor character who appeared in brief backup sci fi serial ‘The Sword in the Star’ (specifically Marvel Preview #7 in 1976). He won a larger role in Incredible Hulk #271 (May 1982), and like Wolverine years before refused to go away quietly.

Reprinted here in its entirety is the 4-issue Rocket Raccoon miniseries (cover-dated May to August 1985 as crafted by Bill Mantlo, Mike Mignola, Al Gordon & Al Milgrom): a bizarre and baroque sci-fi fantasy which blended the charm of Pogo with the biting social satire of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, all whilst ostensibly describing a battle between Good and Evil in a sector of space completely crazy even by comicbook standards.

Rocket was one of many talking animals in the impenetrable, inescapable Keystone Quadrant; a Ranger in charge of keeping the peace as robots and anamorphic beasties went about their holy, ordained task of caring for the distinctly odd and carefree humans known as The Loonies on their idyllic, sybaritic planet Halfworld.

However when a brutal shooting war between voracious apex toymakers Judson Jakes and Lord Dyvyne led to Rocket’s girlfriend Lylla Otter being kidnapped, the planet went wild, or more accurately… ‘Animal Crackers’.

In rescuing her, Rocket and his faithful deputy Wal Rus had to contend with a murderous army of mechanised Killer Clowns, face an horrific, all-consuming bio-weapon at ‘The Masque of the Red Breath’, and even team up with arch-foe and disreputable mercenary bunny Blackjack O’Hare before uncovering the horrendous truth behind the mad society he so tirelessly defended in ‘The Book of Revelations!’

The final chapter then shook everything up as ‘The Age of Enlightenment’ saw the end of The Loonies, allowing Rocket and his surviving companions to escape the confines of the eternally segregated Keystone Quadrant into the greater universe beyond…

 

Starlord (without the hyphen) premiered in monochrome mature-reader magazine Marvel Preview # 4 in 1976, appearing thrice more – in #11, 14 and 15 – during the height of a Star Wars inspired Science Fiction explosion.

Years previously, a warrior prince of an interstellar empire was shot down over Colorado and had a fling with solitary Earther Meredith Quill. Despite his desire to remain in idyllic isolation, duty called the starman back to the battle and he left, leaving behind an unborn son and a unique weapon. A decade later, the troubled boy saw his mother assassinated by alien lizard men. Peter Jason Quill vengefully slew the creatures with Meredith’s shotgun, before his home was explosively destroyed by a flying saucer.

The newly-minted orphan awoke in hospital, his only possession a “toy” ray-gun his mother had hidden from him his entire life. Years later his destiny found him, as the half-breed scion was elevated by the divinity dubbed the “Master of the Sun”, becoming StarLord. Rejecting both Earth and his missing father, Peter chose freedom, the pursuit of justice and the expanse of the cosmos…

Here, from Marvel Spotlight volume 2 #6 Doug Moench & Tom Sutton revisit and clarify that origin saga as the pacifistic Quill and his sentient starship return to Sol and discover the truth about his nativity and ascension as well as the true nature of The Master of the Sun…

Logan’s Run was a short-lived licensed property tie-in and #6 incongruously featured a 5-page short starring mad Titan Thanos in battle against his precision-crafted nemesis Drax the Destroyer: a typically inconclusive out-world clash over ‘The Final Flower’ by Scott Edelman & Mike Zeck before this star-studded compilation concludes with an allegorical masterpiece by Roy Thomas, Gil Kane & Dan Adkins from Marvel Premiere #1.

During a time of tremendous social upheaval Thomas transubstantiated an old Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four throwaway foe into a potent political and religious metaphor. Debuting as a dreaded mystery menace, the character dubbed Him was re-imagined as a contemporary interpretation of the Christ myth and placed on a world far more like our own than the Earth of Marvel’s unique universe.

‘And Men Shall Call Him… Warlock’ adroitly recapitulated the artificial man’s origins as a lab experiment concocted by rogue geneticists eager to create a superman they could control for conquest. After facing the FF, Him subsequently escaped to the stars and later initiated a naive clash with Thor over the rights to a mate before returning to his all-encompassing cocoon to evolve a little more.

Now that stellar shell was picked by the moon-sized ship of self-created god the High Evolutionary who was wrapped up in a bold new experiment. The hand-made hero observed as the evolutionary created a duplicate Earth on the far side of the sun, running through billions of years of evolution in mere hours. The man-god’s intent was to create a civilisation without aggression or rancour, but the Evolutionary collapsed from exhaustion just as proto-hominid became Homo Sapien and his greatest mistake took instant advantage of the fact…

Years previously Man-Beast had been hyper-evolved from a wolf and instantly became his creator’s nemesis. Now he and his equally debased minions invaded the ship and interfered with the experiment: reintroducing evil to the perfect creatures below and, in fact, making them just like us. At incredible speed Earth’s history re-ran with the creature in the cocoon afforded a ring-side seat to humanity’s fall from grace…

When the High Evolutionary awoke and fought Man-Beast’s army, Him broke out his shell and helped rout the demons, who fled to the despoiled Counter-Earth. With calm restored, the science-god prepared to sterilise his ruined experiment: a world now indistinguishable from our own. No superheroes; disease and poverty rampant; injustice in ascendance and moments away from nuclear Armageddon… but the cosmic newborn begged him not to.

He claimed the evil tide could be turned and begged the Evolutionary to stay his hand. The grieving, despondent creator agreed… but only until the rechristened Adam Warlock should admit that humanity was beyond redemption…

And this ends a magnificent compendium of genuine magical Marvel moments: an eclectic but hugely entertaining procession of thrills, spectacle and laughs no comic fan or interested neophyte could possibly resist.
© 1960, 1972, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1985, 1989, 1997, 1997, 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Monster on the Hill


By Rob Harrell (Top Shelf Productions)
ISBN: 978-1-60309-075-9

Once upon a time in England – but not our England – decent, hardworking folk went about their lives in every county-town, their hearts swollen with well-earned civic pride. Content and progressive Victorians one and all, they congratulated themselves upon their achievements and most especially upon the terrifying merits of their local monsters.

By the year of Our Lord 1867 each minor metropolis had for simply ages been twinned with a ferocious giant creature who would occasionally rampage through the municipality, wrecking shops, houses and public works; thereby doing wonders for the local building professions and tourist trade.

Thriving communities would vie with each other for the distinction of being most periodically and ritually terrorised by their assigned Brobdingnagian beast, with the most fearsome of the creatures even being celebrated with local souvenirs and their images engraved on collectible cigarette cards and albums…

Not so the poor, benighted citizens of Stoker-on-Avon. Their monster was something of a disappointment. In fact he was a bit rubbish…

One morning, soon after a properly petrified family returned from a truly frightful encounter with Tentaculor in neighbouring conurbation Billingwood, plucky ragamuffin, town-crier and newsboy Timothy is peddling his papers. The headline is very similar to many previous ones, declaring that it has been 536 days since their monster last appeared…

Thus he’s on hand to overhear firsthand that disgraced mad scientist Dr. Charles Nathaniel Wilkie has been summoned to meet the town fathers. They have bravely offered to reinstate his license and even let him back into his laboratory – despite past embarrassments and misdemeanours – if he can cure, pep up or somehow put some vim back into their monster…

After struggling up the so-very-steep hill from which the formerly ferocious force of nature surveys his neglected domain, the baffled physician discovers his gimcracks and implements have been jettisoned by the stowed-away Timothy, but that’s not really important. Nothing he has bought or built could possibly have helped the colossal winged-but-flightless non-terror known as Rayburn.

The scourge of Stoker-on-Avon is depressed and doesn’t want to perform. He’s lost all confidence and believes he is a failure…

And thus begins a deliciously funny romp – with a generous plenitude of surreal diversions and divertissements – following the classic lines of a coming-of-age road-trip buddy-movie redemption scenario, as the unlikely human team find a perilously peripatetic way to restore Rayburn’s Mojo, which involves getting too close to another town’s terror, humiliating lessons in stomping, smashing and smooshing and the horrifying, shocking and not at all funny revelation of why every town actually has its own monster…

Crafted with verve and supreme slapstick deftness by strip cartoonist Rob Harrell (Big Top, Life of Zarf) this wondrous cartoon fable is joy for fun and fantasy lovers of every stripe and vintage.
Monster on the Hill ™ & © 2013 Rob Harrell. All Rights Reserved.

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Thorgal volume 3: Beyond the Shadows


By Rosiński & Van Hamme, translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-45-8

One of the best and most celebrated adventure series of all time, Thorgal achieves the seemingly impossible, pleasing critics and selling in vast quantities. The prototypical Game of Thrones debuted in iconic weekly Tintin in 1977 with album compilations beginning three years later.

A far-reaching and expansive generational saga, it has won a monolithic international following in fourteen languages and dozens of countries, generating numerous spin-off series, and thus naturally offers a strong presence in the field of global gaming.

In story-terms, the series offers the best of all weird worlds with an ostensibly historical milieu of bold Viking adventure seamlessly incorporating science fiction elements, horrendous beasts, social satire, political intrigue, soap opera, Atlantean mystique and mythically mystical literary standbys such as gods, monsters and devils.

Created by Belgian writer Jean Van Hamme (Domino, XIII, Largo Winch, Blake and Mortimer) and Polish illustrator Grzegorz Rosiński (Kapitan Żbik, Pilot Śmigłowca, Hans, The Revenge of Count Skarbek), the feature grew unstoppably over decades with the creative duo completing 29 albums between 1980 and 2006 when Van Hamme moved on. Thereafter the scripting duties fell to Yves Sente who has collaborated on a further five collections to date.

By the time Van Hamme departed, the canon had grown to cover not only the life of the titular hero and his son Jolan but also other indomitable family members through a number of spin-off series (Kriss de Valnor, Louve, La Jeunesse de Thorgal) under the umbrella title Les Mondes de Thorgal – with all eventually winning their own series of solo albums.

In 1985 American publisher Donning released a superb series of oversized hardcover book translations but Thorgal never really found an English-speaking audience until Cinebook began its own iteration in 2007.

The original French series wanders back and forth through the hero’s life but here, for the present, continuity reigns as Cinebook’s this third double-album edition (comprising 5th & 6th collections Au-delà des ombres and La Chute de Brek Zarith from 1983 and 1984 respectively) leads directly on from the last book wherein Thorgal Aegirsson lost everything that made him human…

The hero was recovered as a baby from a ferocious storm and raised by Northern Viking chief Leif Haraldson. Nobody could possibly know the fortunate foundling had survived a stellar incident which destroyed a starship full of super-scientific aliens. Growing to manhood, the strange boy was eventually forced out of his adopted land by ambitious Gandalf the Mad who feared the young warrior threatened his own claim to the throne.

For all his childhood Thorgal had been inseparable from Gandalf’s daughter Aaricia and, as soon as they were able, they fled together from the poisonous atmosphere to live free from her father’s lethal jealousy and obsessive terror of losing his throne…

Some time later, they were enjoying the hard but gratifying life of simple peasants in a village of serfs. Thorgal was a happy, industrious farm-worker, with solid dependable friends and a wife mere weeks away from birthing her first child. The only problem in their idyllic life was the obsessive love headman’s teenage daughter Shaniah had developed for the glamorous Viking…

Her lies at a harvest feast resulted in Thorgal being implicated in a plot against the land’s overlord Shardar the Powerful, King of Brek Zarith. A suspect inquisition saw Thorgal humiliate arrogant, decadent Prince Veronar. Shardar’s forces were actually in the region seeking information on the whereabouts of fugitive rebel Galathorn, and Thorgal was sentenced to join other captives at the oars. Even here, his indomitable spirit made enemies amongst the slave-masters and new friends of his fellow captives…

Sometime later turncoat Jarl Ewing tried to recruit the Viking to his cause – seizing Shardar’s throne. Veronar overheard and sentenced both warriors to a painful death but as sentence was being carried out their Black Galley was attacked by a small fleet of Viking drakkars (raiding ships). In the chaos Thorgal escaped, freed the oar slaves and dealt permanently with Veronar…

The raiders were old friends. Thorgal reunited with hulking Jorund the Bull and learned that Gandalf had died. His banishment ended, the exile was invited to return home with the Northern Vikings, but refused. All he needed was Aaricia and his coming child.

However, when he reached the village all he found was ash, corpses and Jarl Ewing. The traitor had hired mercenaries to await Thorgal’s return, intending to use Aaricia as a hostage to ensure her husband’s cooperation. She chose death and drowned herself, refusing to be a weapon aimed at her man’s heart…

The debacle sparked a disaster. The mercenaries went wild and pillaged the hamlet, but after taking his revenge Thorgal was left bereft and broken…

The saga resumes a year later in ‘Beyond the Shadows’ as gaunt shaman Wargan wanders into a vile tavern in a sordid settlement in search of noble warrior Thorgal Aegirsson. He quickly stirs up a hornet’s nest of trouble amongst the brutal warriors polluting the hamlet.

After a macabre magical death and violent chase, the wizard drags a stinking, shambling shell-shocked derelict and a sad, over-protective girl named Shaniah to a strange plain of bizarre stone structures where they meet the rebel Galathorn. The Prince still wants to reclaim Brek Zarith from Shardar, but for that he needs Thorgal restored to vital, vibrant humanity…

The task is simpler than the plotters expected. When the Viking hears that Aaricia still lives, his wits return instantly, and when he further learns that she is dying he instantly agrees to travel into the Second World and beyond to save her. The epic path leads to duels with supernatural creatures, a reunion with a notionally friendly goddess and confrontation with the one who weaves life’s threads and cuts them. Although Thorgal convinces the uncanny reaper to restore his beloved wife to health and vigour, there is a frightful cost…

The chilling and spectacular odyssey through the underworld is followed by a far darker and more visceral adventure in ‘The Fall of Brek Zarith’ as deranged potentate Shardar hunkers down in his lavish but unassailable coastal citadel.

When he’s not playfully slaughtering his obsequious, treacherous barons, Shardar spends all his time with Aaricia and her son Jolan. His mages have divined incredible power within the boy and the aging usurper wants it.

He doesn’t seem to care that Galathorn and Thorgal have raised a rebel army which has taken back almost the entire country, nor that their ally Jorund the Bull is leading a fleet of forty berserker-packed drakkars against the sea coast, fuelled with the promise of first pick of Brek Zarith’s treasure vaults…

With the Vikings in clear sight and Galathorn’s forces a day away, Shardar seems remarkably unperturbed. A partial answer to his sanguine mood comes after his soldiers and wizards unleash a devastating secret weapon which routs Jorund’s ships…

Smugly content, the madman resumes his attempts to turn Aaricia to his cause. His courtiers descend into a mad bacchanal that night and are blissfully unaware that a lone scout has penetrated the impregnable keep. Nothing could keep Thorgal away with his wife and son so close and in such peril…

What the warrior finds stuns him: proof positive that Shardar is completely insane or, worse yet, utterly evil beyond human comprehension…

What follows is an astounding battle of wills as the warrior relentlessly pursues the diabolical dictators, escaping an unceasing barrage of deadly traps and devilish devices. However, what neither hunter nor prey is prepared for is the uncanny power of seeming-innocent Jolan or the ferocious devotion of his traumatised, single-minded mother…

Fierce, fantastic and phenomenally gripping, this magnificently illustrated, astonishingly addictive tale offers a multitude of enchanting wonders. Thorgal is every fantasy fan’s ideal dream of unending adventure. How can you possibly resist?
Original editions © Rosiński & Van Hamme 1983-1984 Les Editions du Lombard (Dargaud- Lombard). English translation © 2007 Cinebook Ltd.

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Small Press Sunday

I started out in this game when marks on paper were considered Cutting Edge, making minicomics, collaborating on fanzines and concocting stripzines with fellow weirdoes, outcasts and comics addicts. Even today, seeing the raw stuff of creativity in hand-crafted paper pamphlets still gets me going in ways that threatens my tired old heart…

With that in mind here’s a selection of tantalising treats that have landed in my review tray recently…

I’ve been collecting comics for more than fifty years now and my biggest regret is that for all the magnificent things I’ve read and enjoyed, only a pitifully fraction of the superb Alternative/Small Press/Self Published stuff I’ve seen has ever been collected in the online or graphic novel boom of this century.

I don’t know how to fix that problem – maybe a communal site where old stuff can be posted for readers to enjoy – but that means finding shy, lost or embarrassed creators and securing permissions and, most distressingly, so many of the creative folk I loved most are dead, vanished or cured now…

I’m not going to let such great material pass un-eulogized though, so whenever I feel like it I’m going to review something ancient, handmade and wonderful, and if the paper gods permit, perhaps you’ll find copies lurking in back-issue bins (do they still exist?) or at conventions or maybe the forgotten ones will re-emerge to take their long-deserved bows.

I’m going to start with a glorious prototype graphic novel compilation far ahead of its time, solely because creator Bob Lynch has already preserved it – and all of his other work – online. Skip my babblings and go right to his site if you wish.

Behold the Hamster

By Bob Lynch (Bob Comics)
No ISBN:

Most British comics devotees first noticed the self-effacing Bob Lynch through his contributions to the wonderfully eclectic self-publishing phenomenon Fast Fiction. From 1981 through 1990 Paul Gravett, Phil Elliott and Ed Pinsent’s Little Creative Co-operative That Could made conventions, comic-marts and monthly meetings of the Society of Strip Illustrators and Comics Creators Guild distractingly fun and bemusingly intoxicating with hand-crafted magazines of tiny print-runs yet immeasurably vast and broad comics entertainment.

Bob’s work first featured in the middle teens of the run (my memory is even more worn out than I am) and Behold the Hamster ran in #19, 20 and 22 – amongst other Bob bits such as Sav Sadness and rhymic slug Samantha – before being collected by your man himself in the book under discussion here and The Whirlpool of Disaster and Sadness in Space.

Lynch’s artwork is deceptively simple and astoundingly stylish, with puckish characterisations rendered in strong, bold black lines (sheer self-defence in an era where paper printing plates and public photocopiers were the acme of affordable reproduction technology for most of us). He was – hopefully still is – also one of the most surreal and simultaneously inviting story-men in the business; incorporating shared cultural icons from all vistas of the TV-watching, pub-going, comics-reading UK public into whacky whimsies and gently barbed observations on the human condition. You know: all the usual stuff…

This little A-5 64-page pamphlet has brightened my day on many occasions since I bought it in 1991, with its mad mash-up of time-travel, Frankensteinian science, detective mystery, true love and daft humour starring a star-crossed hamster named Behold who was brought back from beyond the grave to achieve an incredible destiny and save something or other…

Don’t take my word for it: check out –
https://www.flickr.com/photos/8424687@N08/sets/72157618049179283/

If I’ve piqued your interest you can catch a different flavour of Bob’s fantastic life at http://savsadness.blogspot.co.uk/

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Hellboy volume 3: The Chained Coffin and Others


By Mike Mignola with James Sinclair, Matt Hollingsworth & Dave Stewart (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59307-091-5

Hellboy is a creature of vast depth and innate mystery; a demonic baby summoned to Earth by Nazi occultists at the end of World War II before being intercepted and subsequently reared by parapsychologist Professor Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm. After years of devoted intervention and education, in 1952 Hellboy began destroying unnatural threats and supernatural monsters as the lead agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.

This third epic collection gathers a number of shorter sagas: The Wolves of August originally serialised in Dark Horse Presents #88-91, Advance Comics/Hellboy: The Corpse and the Iron Shoes, Hellboy: Almost Colossus plus material from Dark Horse Presents 100 #2 and Hellboy: Christmas Special, communally spanning 1994-1997 and leads off with an enthusiastic appreciation from devoted fan P. Craig Russell in his Introduction. Mignola also offers directors’ notes on all the spooky stories contained herein…

The supernatural superstar was never conventional, especially in his publication schedule. Hellboy’s shorter adventures materialised in many different venues whilst his own title had the appearance of a succession of one-shots and limited series. Mignola, however, had a solid marketing plan from the start. The stories had an internal numbering system (if you’re that interested check it out on Wikipedia and leave them a donation while you’re at it) which allowed him to make stops back and forth along his proposed timeline and build years of continuity in mere months…

Thus this collection of brief, bold blockbusters opens with ‘The Corpse’ which first saw print in monochrome in Advance Comics catalog. Here an old Irish fairytale is expanded and remastered in full colour as Hellboy’s attempts to rescue a baby stolen by the Little People one night in 1959 results in the unlikely hero making a fool’s bargain.

All the graves are full but he must find a final and proper resting place for a very vocal cadaver before the sun rises…

The action-packed errand leads to confrontations with ghosts, devils and worse before our scarlet champion parks the body and gets back the bairn…

Immediately following is thematic epilogue ‘The Iron Shoes’ which rapidly relates another Celtic saga set two years later when Hellboy drags a goblin out of the holy site it’s defiling before laying it at the feet of Father Edward Kelly…

‘The Baba Yaga’ was created specially for this compilation and describes in dire detail how the legendary Russian witch lost her eye to Hellboy in their first confrontation. Thereafter, ‘A Christmas Underground’ (from 1997’s Hellboy: Christmas Special) offers eerie and ethereal miasmic horror in the best seasonal manner. England, Christmas Eve, 1989 and Hellboy is on a death-watch. Aged and ailing Mrs. Hatch talks of her long-lost baby girl Annie. Leaving her, the un-horned hero follows a trail to a graveyard and down beneath it. Soon he is attending a dark soiree to rescue the child, now the restless bride of a prince of the Pit. After a most brutal struggle Hellboy celebrates the nativity by setting two souls to rest…

In 1995 Dark Horse Presents 100 #2 debuted ‘The Chained Coffin’. Here Mignola has partially redrawn the tale and Dave Stewart has added colour to the story of Hellboy’s return to the English church where he first arrived on Earth in 1943. Fifty years of mystery have passed, but as the demon-hunter observes ghostly events replay before his eyes and learns the truth of his origins, Hellboy devoutly wishes he had never come back…

‘The Wolves of Saint August’ ran in Dark Horse Presents #88-91 during 1994 before being reworked a year later for the Hellboy one-shot of the same name. Set in 1994 it sees the red redeemer working with BPRD colleague Kate Corrigan, investigating the death of Hellboy’s old friend Father Kelly in the Balkan village of Griart. It’s not long before they realise the sleepy hamlet is a hidden den of great antiquity where a pack of mankind’s most infamous and iniquitous predators thrive…

Mignola has a sublime gift for setting mood and building tension with great economy. It always means that the inevitable confrontation between Good and Evil has plenty of room to unfold with capacious visceral intensity. This clash between unfrocked demon and alpha lycanthrope is one of the most unforgettable battle blockbusters ever seen…

The story-portion of this magnificent terror-tome concludes with the 2-part miniseries ‘Almost Colossus’ from 1997 wherein traumatised pyrokinetic BPRD agent Liz Sherman awaits test results.

During her mission to Castle Czege (Hellboy volume 2: Wake the Devil) her team uncovered a hidden alchemy lab with a stony homunculus inside. When she touched the artificial man Liz’s infernal energies rushed uncontrollably into the creature and brought it to life…

Now as her own gradually slips away, Hellboy and Corrigan are back in the legend-drenched region, watching a graveyard from which 68 bodies have been stolen…

Elsewhere the fiery homunculus is undergoing a strange experience: he has been abducted by his older “brother” who seeks through purloined flesh, blackest magic and forbidden crafts to perfect their centuries-dead creator’s techniques.

Before the curtain falls, Hellboy, aided by the ghosts of repentant monks and the younger homunculus, is forced to battle a metal giant determined to crown itself the God of Science and save the world if he can and Liz because he must…

Wrapping up the Grand Guignol show is another splendid and whimsical ‘Hellboy Gallery’, featuring stunning efforts from Kevin Nowlan, Matt Smith, Duncan Fegredo, Dave Johnson, Thierry Robin and B.C. Boyer…

Bombastic, lightning-paced, moody and astonishingly addictive, this will delight adventure and horror fans in equal amounts: an arcana of thrills and chills no comics fan should be without.
™ and © 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2003 Mike Mignola. Introduction © 1998 P. Craig Russell. Hellboy is ™ Mike Mignola. All rights reserved.

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The Brave and the Bold Team-Up Archives volume 1


By Bob Haney, Robert Kanigher, George Roussos, Howard Purcell, Joe Kubert, Alex Toth, Bruno Premiani, Ramona Fradon, Charles Paris & Bernard Baily (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012- 0405-1

The Brave and the Bold premiered in 1955; an anthology adventure comic featuring short complete tales starring a variety of period heroes: a format mirroring that era’s filmic fascination with historical dramas. Devised and written by Robert Kanigher, issue #1 led with Roman epic Golden Gladiator, medieval mystery-man The Silent Knight and Joe Kubert’s now legendary Viking Prince. Soon the Gladiator was sidelined by the company’s iteration of Robin Hood, but the high adventure theme carried the title until the end of the decade when the burgeoning superhero revival saw B&B transform into a try-out vehicle like the astounding successful Showcase.

Used to launch enterprising concepts and characters such as Task Force X: the Suicide Squad, Cave Carson, Strange Sports Stories, Hawkman and the epochal Justice League of America, the title then created a whole sub-genre – although barely anybody noticed at the time…

As related in the Foreword by Robert Klein and Michael Uslan, National Periodicals/DC Comics had for nearly a decade enjoyed great success pairing Superman with Batman and Robin in World’s Finest Comics and in 1963 looked to create another top selling duo from their growing pantheon of masked mystery men. It didn’t hurt that the timing also allowed extra exposure for characters imminently graduating to their own starring vehicles after years as back-up features…

This was at a time when almost no costumed heroes acknowledged the jurisdiction or usually existence of other costumed champions. When B&B offered this succession of team-ups, they were laying the foundations for DC’s future close-knit comics continuity. Now there’s something wrong with any superstar who doesn’t regularly join every other cape or mask on-planet every five minutes or so…

This sublime, compellingly quirky full-colour hardback extravaganza collects those first eight exploratory alliances from October/November 1963-April/May 1965: re-presenting The Brave and the Bold #50-56 plus #59 (issues #57-58 having diverged to debut solo sensation Metamorpho, the Element Man). This run resulted in two long-running series and would be followed by a further eight pairings… hopefully in a follow-up volume one day…

Those yarns included a return engagement for the kids – now dubbed the Teen Titans – two issues spotlighting Earth-Two colluding champions Starman & Black Canary; Wonder Woman teamed with Supergirl and, as an indication of things to come, Batman duelling hero/villain Eclipso in #64: an acknowledgement of the brewing TV-induced mania mere months away.

Within two issues, following Flash/Doom Patrol and Metamorpho/Metal Men, B&B #67 saw the Caped Crusader take de facto control of the title and the lion’s share of the team-ups. With the exception of #72-73 (Spectre/Flash and Aquaman/Atom) The Brave and the Bold became “Somebody and Batman”: a place the Gotham Gangbuster invited the rest of the company’s heroic pantheon to come and play…

The ancient hero-histories commence with Brave and the Bold #50 which saw Ace Archer Green Arrow team-up in a book length adventure with the Manhunter from Mars. ‘Wanted – the Capsule Master!’ pitted the newly-minted Green Team in a furious fight with marauding extraterrestrial menace Vulkor; a fast-paced thriller by Bob Haney & George Roussos.

Haney scripted the majority of the stories in B&B, and followed up with a magnificently manic tale of eerie excitement for superb veteran artist Howard Purcell in ‘Fury of the Exiled Creature’ (#51, December 1963/January 1964) in which the fearsome Outcast of Atlantis turned mystical mutative powers against not just Aquaman but also new DC superstars Hawkman and Hawkgirl.

Superheroes were not the overarching force then that they became. DC’s war division was also spectacularly popular and Brave and the Bold #52 (February/March 1964) grouped Haunted Tank commander Jeb Stuart with Sgt. Rock and Navajo air ace Lt. Cloud as the 3 Battle Stars in ‘Suicide Mission! Save Him or Kill Him!’. Produced by Kanigher & Kubert, this superbly moody WWII combat-thriller saw Air Force, Armoured Cavalry and Infantry stars combine forces to escort and safeguard a vital Allied agent. Codename Martin had been sealed into a cruel and all-encompassing iron suit by the Nazis and in their rush to complete the mission nobody could spare the time to crack the spy out of the metal box…

Fast-paced, explosive and utterly outrageous, the chase across occupied France resulted in one of the best battle blockbusters of the era, and culminated in the revelation that the precious cargo had been a fourth war star in mufti all along…

One of the most memorable and visually evocative team-ups was ‘The Challenge of the Expanding World’ (#53, April/May 1964) in which the Atom and Flash strove valiantly to free a sub-atomic civilisation from mad dictator Attila 5 and simultaneously battled to keep that miniature planet from explosively enlarging into our own…

The concept of juvenile-hero teams was not a new one when a trio of kid sidekicks were assembled in a hip, fab and groovy ensemble as dedicated to helping kids as they were to stamping out insidious evil.

The biggest difference between wartime groups as The Young Allies, Boy Commandos and Newsboy Legion or such 1950s holdovers as The Little Wise Guys or Boys Ranch and the creation of the Titans was quite simply the burgeoning phenomena of “The Teenager” as a discrete social and commercial force. These were kids who could be allowed to do things themselves without constant adult help or supervision.

In the June/July 1964 issue (#54), Haney turned out a gripping mystic thriller superbly illustrated by unsung genius Bruno Premiani. ‘The Thousand-and-One Dooms of Mr. Twister’ united solo problem-solvers Kid Flash, Aqualad and Robin, the Boy Wonder in a desperate battle against a modern wizard and deranged Pied Piper who had claimed the teenagers of Hatton Corners in lieu of an ancestral debt. Our young champions had met in town by chance when students invited them to mediate in a long-running dispute with the adults…

In issue #55 (August/September 1965) Haney and illustrators Ramona Fradon & Charles Paris detailed the ‘Revenge of the Robot Reject’ which embroiled the Atom and Metal Men in deadly peril. When a series of suspicious lab accidents destroyed the Heavy Metal Heroes, distraught Doc Magnus was menaced by rogue robot Uranium and his silver-metal lover Agantha until size-changing champion Professor Ray Palmer intervened. Soon the scrap-heap scrappers were once more resurrected to end the evil automaton’s nuclear threat forever.

In #56 Haney and Bernard Baily flooded the 1964 World’s Fair with bizarre costumed antics as ‘The Flash and the Manhunter from Mars: Raid of the Mutant Marauders’ found the heroes battling an army of hybrids based on themselves and their Justice League comrades. Due diligence soon revealed that a lovesick artificial warrior and a haughty alien princess were responsible for the chaos, but not before the saga ended in tragedy…

Closing these epic annals is the landmark from The Brave and the Bold #59 (April/May 1965) which became the prototype of the title’s next twenty years. Illustrated by Fradon & Paris it found Batman and Green Lantern reliving the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo as they strived to foil ‘The Tick-Tock Traps of the Time Commander!’

Devious criminal scientist John Starr had tricked Bruce Wayne into clearing his name and stolen the Emerald Crusader’s power to fuel his chronal assault on Gotham but had severely underestimated his foes’ resilience and ingenuity…

With covers by Roussos, Purcell, Kubert, Bob Brown, Premiani, Fradon & Paris, Baily and Gil Kane and a full Biographies section, this is a stellar collection of groundbreaking Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction every fantastic action fan will adore.
© 1963, 1964, 1965, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Yoko Tsuno Volume 2: The Time Spiral


By Roger Leloup translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-43-4

Arch-adventuress and scientific investigator Yoko Tsuno debuted in Spirou in September 1970 and is still going strong. As detailed by Roger Leloup, the astounding, all-action, uncannily edgy, excessively accessible exploits of the slim, slight Japanese techno-hero are amongst the most intoxicating, absorbing and broad-ranging comics thrillers ever created.

Leloup’s brainchild is an expansively globe-girdling, space-&-time-spanning series devised by the monumentally talented Belgian maestro after finishing his time as a studio assistant on Herge’s The Adventures of Tintin. Compellingly told, superbly imaginative but always solidly grounded in hyper-realistic settings underpinned by authentic, unshakably believable technology and scientific principles, his illustrated epics were the forefront of a wave of strips changing the face of European comics in the mid-1970s.

They all featured competent, clever and brave female protagonists, revolutionising Continental comics and they are as timelessly engaging and potently empowering now as they ever were.

The very first stories ‘Hold-up en hi-fi’, ‘La belle et la bête’ and ‘Cap 351’ were brief introductory – and possibly beta-testing – vignettes before the superbly capable Miss Tsuno and her valiant but less able male comrades Pol Paris and Vic Van Steen properly hit their stride with premier full-length saga Le trio de l’étrange which began in Spirou‘s May 13th 1971 issue…

In the original European serialisations, Yoko’s exploits alternated between explosive escapades in exotic corners of our world and sinister deep-space sagas with the secretive, disaster-prone alien colonists from Vinea but, for the majority of the English translations thus far, the extraterrestrial endeavours have been mostly sidelined in favour of epically intriguing Earthly exploits. That changes with this particular tale as a new thematic strand of classic sci fi endeavour is convincingly introduced…

There have been 27 European albums to date and this one was first serialised in 1980 (Spirou #2189-2210 before being released the following year as compellingly gripping thriller album La Spirale du temps. It was chronologically the 11th album, yet due to the quirks of publishing reached us Brits as Yoko’s second Cinebook outing, offering enigma and mystery and three shots of global Armageddon…

Yoko is visiting a cousin and enjoying old childhood haunts in Borneo, with Vic and Pol along for the ride and – as ever – scouting film footage for another of their documentary projects. As the boys take to the skies in a helicopter their companion is befriending elephants and exploring an ancient, ramshackle and beloved temple. She is particularly taken with the bas-relief of a beautiful dancer on the wall of the crumbling edifice which has fascinated her since her earliest years…

This night, however, her bucolic routine is shattered by a strange sequence of events. Staying out later than usual, Yoko observes a bizarre machine appear out of thin air near the temple. As a young girl steps out of the contraption she is barracked by two men, one of whom then shoots her.

Instantly Yoko intervenes but when she decks the shooter he vanishes in an explosive swirl of light. Incredible explanations follow as the girl introduces herself as Monya, a time traveller from the 39th century. It’s hard to believe but she does have a gadget which closes and repairs her wound in seconds…

Monya has come back in time to prevent a scientific experiment currently running in the area which will result in Earth’s destruction in her era. In fact, the voyager from 3872 saw her father die and the planet turn to a cinder relative moments before arriving. Now she is intent on finding scientist Stephen Webbs and stopping his imminent test of an antimatter bomb…

Taking Monya to cousin Izumi‘s home, Yoko confers with Vic and Pol, who listen with astonishment to her story of future war, a devastated ecology and the planet’s destruction and how the fourteen year old has been tasked with ensuring that her reality never comes to pass. Monya’s attacker had been a man named Stamford: a fellow time-traveller who had gone off-mission and died because of it. Chrononauts cannot exist outside their own time without biological regulators to attune them to foreign times, and he must have damaged his when he tried to kill her…

A lucky chance then points them to a remote area where an Australian named Webbs has set up a site for an international telecomms company. The next morning our heroes are heading for the Dragon Mountain in two helicopters, although they are not sure what they will do when they get there: certainly not kill Webbs as Stamford wanted…

Bluffing their way in, Yoko and Monya leave the boys in the air as back-up and quickly discover the site has precious little to do with radio communications. It’s an old Japanese fortress from WWII, reconditioned to be utterly impregnable and manned by a private army. They even have a particle accelerator…

Whatever the researchers are up to, they don’t discount Monya’s story. Too many strange things have happened lately. Webbs was acquainted with Stamford; another colleague – Leyton – has gone missing and a rash of strange events has plagued the project. Before suspicious Webbs can explain further, and as if to underscore the point, a massive piece of machinery flies across the room and almost kills the girls…

Webbs is at his wits end, but Monya’s futuristic tech detects a strange energy field and leads Yoko to another fantastic discovery. On a tunnel wall sealed for decades she reads a military warning inscription. It is signed by her uncle, Toshio Ishida. An engineer and part of the occupation forces, he stayed and married a local after the war. Yoko is staying in his home with the colonel’s son Izumi…

Webbs is desperate to talk. Taking the girls aside he reveals what Monya already knows: he has isolated antimatter. What she didn’t know, however, is that the revelation was given to him by some unknown manipulator and only he can handle the material. Everybody else is held back by the kind of force that is causing objects to fly about and explode. Most terrifying of all, Webbs has uncovered evidence that the Japanese also had antimatter. If so, why didn’t they win the war…?

With no other option available Yoko decides she and Monya must travel back to 1943 to solve the mystery…

What they discover is a viper’s nest of criminality and intrigue, a scheme to unleash hell on Japan’s democratic enemies and an arcane horror which tests Yoko’s guts and ingenuity to the limit. Moreover, even after spectacularly defeating the threat in 1943, the alien menace remembers its enemies once they return to the present…

Complex, devious and superbly fast-paced, this mesmerising thriller is an onion-skinned marvel of clever plotting: a fabulous monster-hunting yarn which reveals more of Yoko’s past as she tackles a threat to today and saves a distant tomorrow.

Building to a thundering climax and uplifting conclusion, it again confirms Yoko Tsuno as an ultimate hero, at home in all manner of scenarios and easily able to hold her own against the likes of James Bond, Modesty Blaise, Tintin or other genre-busting super-stars: as triumphantly capable facing spies and madmen as alien invaders, weird science or unchecked forces of nature…

As always the most effective asset in these breathtaking tales is the astonishingly authentic and staggeringly detailed draughtsmanship and storytelling, which superbly benefits from Leloup’s diligent research and meticulous attention to detail.

The Time Spiral is a magnificently wide-screen thriller, tense and satisfying, which will appeal to any fan of blockbuster action fantasy or devious derring-do.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1981 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation 2007 © Cinebook Ltd.