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Evaristo: Deep City


By F. Solano Lopez & Carlos Sampayo (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0874160345 (Album TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

For British and Commonwealth comics readers of a certain age, the unmistakable artistic style of Francisco Solano Lopez always conjures up dark moods and atmospheric tension because he drew such ubiquitous boyhood classics as Janus Stark, Kelly’s Eye, Adam Eterno, Tri-Man, Galaxus: The Thing from Outer Space, Pete’s Pocket Army, Nipper, The Drowned World, Raven on the Wing, Master of the Marsh and a host of other stunning tales of mystery, imagination and adventure in the years he worked for British publishers.

However, the master of blackest brushwork was not merely a creator of children’s fiction. In his home country of Argentina he was considered a radical political cartoonist whose work eventually forced him to flee to more hospitable climes.

On October 26th 1928 Francisco Solano López was born in Buenos Aires. He began illustrating comics in 1953 with Perico y Guillerma for publisher Columba. With journalist Héctor Germán Oesterheld (a prolific comics scripter “disappeared” by the Junta in 1976 and presumed killed the following year) Solano López produced Bull Rocket for Editorial Abril’s magazine Misterix. After working on such landmark series as Pablo Maran, Uma-Uma, Rolo el marciano adoptive and El Héroe, López joined Oesterheld’s publishing house Editorial Frontera to become a member of the influential Venice Group which included Mario Faustinelli, Hugo Pratt, Ivo Pavone and Dino Battaglia.

López alternated with Pratt, Jorge Moliterni and José Muñoz on Oesterheld’s legendary Ernie Pike serial but their most significant collaboration was the explosively political and hugely popular allegorical science fiction thriller El Eternauta, which began in 1957. By 1959 the series had come to the unwelcome attention of the Argentinian and Chilean authorities, forcing López to flee to Spain. Whilst an exile there, he began working for UK publishing giant Fleetway from Madrid and London. In 1968 he returned to Argentina and with Oesterheld started El Eternauta II for Editorial Records, producing sci-fi series Slot-Barr (written by Ricardo Barreiro) and period cop drama Evaristo with kindred spirit Carlos Sampayo.

In the mid-1970s López was e again compelled to flee his homeland, returning to Madrid where he organised publication of El Eternauta and Slot-Barr in Italian magazines LancioStory & Skorpio. He never stopped working: producing a stunning variety of assorted genre tales and mature-reader material and erotica such as El Instituto (reprinted by Eros as Young Witches), El Prostibulo del Terror (story by Barreiro) and Sexy Symphonies: bleak thrillers Ana and Historias Tristes with his son Gabriel. He illustrated Jim Woodring’s adaptation of the cult movie Freaks and once safely home in Argentina, continued El Eternauta with new writer Pablo “Pol” Maiztegui. He even found time for more British comics with strips such as ‘Jimmy’, ‘The Louts of Liberty Hall’, ‘Ozzie the Loan Arranger’ and ‘Dark Angels’ in Roy of the Rovers, Hot-Shot and Eagle.

Francisco Solano López passed away in Buenos Aires on August 12th 2011.

Poet, critic and author Carlos Sampayo is most well-known for his grimly powerful comics collaborations with Muñoz on Joe’s Bar and Alack Sinner (both also long overdue for comprehensive re-release) as well as other contemporary classics like Jeu de Lumières, Sophie, Billie Holiday and ‘Sudor Sudaca’.

Born in 1943, Sampayo was another outspoken creative Argentinean forced to flee the Junta in the early 1970s. Travelling to Europe he found a home for his desolate, gritty, passionately evocative stories in France and Italy, working with Julio Schiaffino, Jorge Zentner and Oscar Zarate before settling in Spain. Here in 1985, he and fellow expat Solano López produced compelling anti-hero Evaristo.

The long-running serial featured a seemingly brutish ex-boxer who had risen to the rank of Police Commissioner in late 1950s Buenos Aires: a debased and corrupt city of wealth and prestige, cheek-by-jowl with appalling poverty and desperate degradation.

After a compelling introduction by Xavier Coma, the graphic odyssey begins with ‘Breaking the Ties’ as a bank hostage crisis devolves into a long-postponed grudge match when Commissioner Evaristo is confronted by old ring-rival Fournier, who has returned to finally settle an old score. As is so often the case in such long-lived hatreds, there’s a woman at the heart of it…

‘The Famous Lubitsch Case’ sees the grizzled morally ambivalent prize-fight veteran pushed by his bosses to locate a missing heiress who has either been abducted or eloped with a notorious gangster and womaniser. Unfortunately, for reasons even he can’t fathom, Evaristo seems determined to discover the truth, rather than follow the “clues” his bosses have directed him to find…

In ‘The Herman Operation’, secretive guys with German accents and connections to the Argentinean military keep disappearing and the Commissioner is no use at all. It’s like he isn’t even trying…

The hunt for a cop-killing bandit takes a long hard look at the Commissioner’s sordid past – and some dubious child-care practises by the local clergy – in ‘The Crazy Grandson’, whilst ‘Shanty Town’ catches the cops looking for a serial killer whilst a corrupt minister causes a devastating water-shortage – and riots – in the slums. As usual, Evaristo ignores his bosses and keeps looking for the “wrong” people…

As a hit-squad tasked with assassinating the troublesome cop uses what seems to be perfect leverage by kidnapping a kid claiming to be his son, Evaristo appears more concerned with an escaped lion causing ‘Terror in the Streets’ before this superb noir mini-masterpiece concludes with ‘Legend of a Wounded Gunman’ as a case from the Commissioner’s early days eerily replays itself. This this time the ending will be different…

Released in America as Deep City this oversized (277 x 206mm), 112 page monochrome collection depicts the compelling solutions found by a cop who bends all the rules just to win a modicum of justice in an utterly corrupt society: a powerfully cynical, shockingly effective series of vignettes examining freedom and equality in a totally repressive time and place devoid of hope. However at no time does the ideology overwhelm the artistry of the narrative or distract from the sheer power of the art.

This magnificent book and all the other Evaristo tales are long overdue for revival, and this series has never been more relevant. Surely some savvy publisher must take another shot at the big time for this big tale?…
© 1986 F. Solano López, Carlos Sampayo & Xavier Coma. English language edition © 1986 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

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Charley’s War – The Definitive Collection volume 3: Remembrance


By Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-621-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Uncompromising and Unmissable… 10/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

The Great War officially ended today in 1918. I can’t tell you how glad I am that we got all that jingoism, racism, seductive superiority, addictive violence and nationalistic avarice out of our collective systems back then. It’s a much calmer, nicer world now, right?

Meanwhile, here’s more of the best story – bar none, in any medium – to translate those appalling, internationally insane, diplomatically deranged and pointlessly self-destructive days into scenarios we can accept and process, if not understand today. Charley’s War evocatively and emotionally depicts not only the mud and mire, military madness and mass mortality of that conflict, but also shared with the young and impressionable the social impact on the poor and the mighty who survived into the totally different world that followed. You must read it and the other two collected volumes. Message ends.

When Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun began their tale of a patriotic working-class kid who broke the rules to proudly fight for his country just in time for the disastrous Somme campaign, I suspect they had, as always, the best of authorial intentions but no real idea that this time they were making comics history. The epochal feature was originally published in UK anthology Battle (AKA Battle Picture Weekly, Battle Action, etc.). A surprise hit, the serial proper launched in #200, eventually running from January 1979 to October 1986. It recounted, in heartrending, harrowing and often utterly surreal detail – and with amazing maturity and passion for a Boys’ Periodical – the life of an East End teen who grew up in the British Army reinforcements setting out to fight the Hun in 1916.

The strip contingent in this third stunning collection covers episodes #177-293 spanning October 2nd 1982-January 26th 1985, and closes the book on our lad’s wartime life, although the series did go on, as Charley went back to war when the Germans did in 1939…

One of the most powerful and influential characterisations of the oh-so-ironic “war to end all wars”, the comic feature was lovingly researched, lavishly limned and staggeringly authentic. Stories touched upon many diverse aspects of the conflict and even reveal the effects on the Home Front, all delivered with a devastatingly understated dry sense of horror and cruel injustice, albeit constantly leavened with gallows humour as trenchant as that legendarily “enjoyed” by the poor trench-bound “Tommies” of the time.

It all began  with “the Story of a Soldier in World War One” which saw 16-year-old London Bus Company worker Charley Bourne lie about his age to illegally go “over there”. Once he got there, Bourne endured unending, horror on the muddy, blood-soaked battlefield of The Somme. He also experienced the callous ineptitude and toxic entitlement of the upper class idiots running the war, most of whom believed their own men were utterly expendable. Military life was alternately hard and unremittingly dull – except for brief bursts of manic aggression and strategic stupidity which ended so many lives. Closely following the recorded course of the war, Mills & Colquhoun placed young Charley in the Westshire Regiment and added a rapidly changing cast constantly whittled away by various modes of combat attrition.

The weekly hellscapes showed lesser known, far from glorious sides of the conflict readers in the 1980s had never seen in any other war comic. Each episode was punctuated by a narrative device of the simple lad’s letters to his family in “Blighty” whilst also cleverly utilising reproductions of cartoons and postcards of the period. For this closing edition most of those conceits were absent, leaving room for astounding action, increasingly surreal true incidents folded into Charley’s story and mounding indignation in every script Mills submitted…

With Boer War veteran Ole Bill Tozer as his mentor, Charley narrowly survived shelling, mudslides, digging details, gas attacks, the Trench Cat, rats, snipers, smug stupidity of commanding officers – although there are examples of good “brasshats” too – and the far too often insane absurdity of a modern soldier’s life.

On July 1st 1916 The Battle of the Somme began and Charley and his comrades were ordered “over the top”: expected to walk steadily into mortars and machine gun fire of entrenched German defenders. When his commanding officer was unable to stand the stupidity and ordered them to charge at a run, it saved the squad but ultimately led to Lt. Thomas being executed by firing squad. Charley and former musical hall ventriloquist Weeper Watkins refused to shoot him and were extensively punished by sadistic military policemen.

When Charley and his crooked brother-in-law Oliver Crawleigh were caught in the first tank battle in history and the dreadful German response, “Oiley” offered to pay Charley to either protect him or wound him in some minor way that would get safely back to Britain. When Charley refused, Oiley misused a tank to earn his “Blighty” passage home…

As previously stated, Charley’s War closely followed key historic events, using them as a skeleton to hang specific incidents upon, but this was not the strip’s only innovation. Highly detailed research concentrated more on character development than fighting – although there is so much shocking action – and declared to the readership (which at time of publication was categorically believed to be boys aged 9-13) that “our side” was as monstrous and stupid as “the Boche.” Mills also fully exercised his own political and creative agendas on the series and was constantly amazed at what he got away with and what seeming trivialities his editors pulled him up on (more fully expanded upon in the author’s informative ‘Strip Commentary’ which concludes this edition)…

No longer a fresh-faced innocent but a weary, battle-scarred veteran, Charley and the strip marched beyond the cataclysmic Somme Campaign into the conflict’s most bloody events. He was wounded again and sent home, albeit via torturous routes involving amnesia and U-Boat warfare. Mills & Colquhoun delivered acerbic social criticism as the recuperating lad experienced fresh horrors when the troop ship carrying him and Bill Tozer was torpedoed…

When the perilous North Sea odyssey at last brought Charley back to Silvertown in London’s West Ham, it was in the wake of a real-world catastrophic disaster wherein 50 tons of TNT detonated at a munitions factory, killing 70 workers and injuring a further 400.

No longer comfortable around civilians and with no stomach for the jingoistic nonsense of the stay-at-homes or the lies of boastful “war-hero” Oiley, Charley hung out in pubs with the Sarge, but was caught up in enemy air raids (giving the creators room to explore the enemy side via the zealous actions of devoted family man Kapitan Heinrich von Bergmann who led Zeppelins in night sorties against the hated English)…

London was under constant threat, not just from increasingly common aerial bombing raids which provoked mindless panic and destruction at the very heart of the British Empire, but also profiteering British industrialists and greedy munitions magnates who cared more for profit than the safety of their workers or even the victory of their homeland. During one raid Charley realised his mum was still in the local works as her boss refused to sound air raid evacuation alarms because he had profits and contracts to consider. His view of the land he was fighting for barely survived his valiant efforts to save her and took an even bigger hit when an unscrupulous army recruiter (earning bonuses for every volunteer signed up) attempted to entrap his underaged but battle-obsessed little brother Wilf…

The second volume opened with a bold experimental diversion as, in March 1917 readers experienced the testimony of a charismatic deserter. ‘Blue’s War’ was a story within a story with the strip’s titular character reduced to an avid and appalled listener…

Set in bombed-out London Streets where Red Caps hunted deserters, Charley learns even more horrific truths about “his side”. The military police are led by a pitiless, fanatical dying-of-wounds officer The Drag Man obsessively hounding a desperate character called Blue – based on real-world “Monocled Mutineer” Percy Toplis. The knife-wielding fugitive met Charley while looking for Oiley who has graduated from thievery and looting to selling fake papers and passage abroad to military absconders …

Disgusted, but unwilling to force anyone back into the war, Charley says nothing, and hears the hows & whys of Blue’s situation – a staggering tale of combat, cruelty, bravery and more army ineptitude. Blue is an Englishman who joined the French Foreign Legion. He served with the French Army and survived the hell of Verdun (longest battle of the WWI, lasting from February 21st to December 18th 1916), commandeering the strip for months to come.

Bourne’s grudging return to the Western Front in April 1917 sees him a seasoned veteran posted to the Salient before the Third Battle of Ypres and caught up in daily skirmishes, sudden deaths, simmering feuds among his comrades and even more arrant stupidity from the Brass. His job become more difficult when arrogant old enemy and ruthless aristocrat Captain Snell – who thinks the war a terrific lark – returns as commanding officer and appoints Charley his manservant/dogsbody…

Snell constantly undermines and crushes the spirit of the riffraff cannon fodder under his command and loves making their lives intolerable. By May the infantry have survived heat, the Third Battle of Ypres and – by August – Passchendaele. Snell’s unit is posted to an engineering detail where Bourne and co. endure backbreaking toil as “clay-kickers”, risking cave-ins, flood, gas, explosions and Germans above them digging into their tunnels: a year-long project undermining a vast ridge of solid rock that is the enemy artillery emplacement on the Messine Ridge. The goal was the biggest manmade explosion in history… thus far. In the build-up everyone dies, but at least Snell also goes to his infernal reward, with the pitiful survivors despatched to a brutal retraining centre, bringing Charley into contact with organised deserters and reuniting him with many lost comrades. In England Oiley facilitates war-mad Wilf Bourne’s enlistment years before he is legally eligible, and Charley spends agonised months trying to find out what happened to Wilf…

The mounting tensions, barbarous treatment and institutionalised class injustice at Etaples leads to a British army mutiny in September, triggering the most shameful moments of Charley’s life when he is forced to join another firing squad. The mutiny goes on for days, emptying stockades and allowing the settling of many old scores, but Charley’s war is even more complicated after encountering Blue again. Bourne is even more astonished by the Army’s capitulation to the mutineers’ terms, and totally unprepared for inevitable retaliations. In response he transfers to the most dangerous job in the army to expiate his guilt…

This final mostly monochrome collection commences with Charley’s utterly astounding experiences as a stretcher bearer, enduring insane rules of conduct and increased enemy action whilst ferrying wounded and the dead from the battlefields. In another experimental sortie the story even switches to “the future” to follow one of the Tommies Charley saves.

The creators wallow in bizarre historical accuracy and intriguing gallows humour but such heartfelt sentimental moments are truly breathtaking. Just keep telling yourself it’s a kids’ comics and see if you believe it…

Due to shocking injustices and standard army prejudices, Charley is soon a shooting soldier again, just in time for some of the most horrific tank and cavalry battles in history. He then becomes a sniper at the same time as a fanatical corporal named Adolf Hitler starts haunting the trenches in his sights, before the scene again shifts. Interlaced with Charley’s exploits, focus shifts week-by-week to encompass the air war as seen via the illicit adventures of under-age Wilf Bourne. An extended, crushing sequence follows as the dead end kid gives everything he has to achieve his dreams of being a fighter pilot…

It’s January 1918, and Charley is accused of shooting himself in a ploy to dodge combat. The storyline involves his surviving a court martial and meeting a nurse who will – after much misunderstanding – become his “missus”. As ever Mills seeks to demonstrate how this war and this strip affected the non-combatants involved. The sequence also sees the return of arch-nemesis Snell: released from an English mental asylum to lead his old regiment, because he’s apparently the “still-useful” side of “mad as a hatter”…

Another military sidestep brings Charley’s cousin Jack into the picture, allowing a powerful and memorable exploration of the sea war, particularly the disaster of Gallipoli and sinking of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Nürnberg at the first Battle of the Falkland Islands. Somehow, this overt political act of comics subversion and antiwar protest completely escaped editors in the months after the country experienced the second one…

At last surrendering to the forces of narrative, as the war staggered to a close, Charley was back at the front facing a desperate defeated enemy now fighting for their families’ lives. Gradually re-meeting and saying farewell to almost everyone he had met along the way Charley soldiered on to the end. The vicious fighting was aided by American troops. Some were brave, valiant and good comrades-in-oppression. Others were white…

In the end, the entire war comes down to a brutal personal grudge match with Snell, who was determined to kill the peasant who had ruined his life. It happened on November 11th 1918, but even though Bourne was triumphant, Snell had the posthumous last world. It also allowed the creators to extend the strip and shine a light on another shameful episode. Although most soldiers downed arms in November 1918, in Russia the conflict continued as Tsarist White Russians battled the growing Soviet power of Red Russians. Two dozen countries – England included – sent men and resources to fight communism at a distance. And thanks to Snell, poor Charley was one of them…

What he saw and did there would shape the rest of his life…

These compilations of Mills & Colquhoun’s comic strip condemnation of the Great War (and war-mongering and profiteering in general) reaffirm how then and now the feature was one of the most sophisticated and adult dramas ever seen in fiction, let alone the pages of a kids’ war comic. Lifted to dizzying heights of excellence by the phenomenal artwork of Joe Colquhoun – much of it in colour as the strip alternated between the prized cover spot and almost as prestigious centre-spread slot – these are masterpieces of subversive outrage. Included in this volume are restored colour sections (reproduced in monochrome for earlier collections but vibrantly hued here to vivid effect) plus Mills’ amazingly informative chapter notes and commentary on episodes 177-293. These were not the last strips to feature Charley Bourne or indeed Joe Colquhoun’s incredible art, but in Mills’ view were the true end of the dramatic arc as the soldier boy came home to his wife, and decades of poverty and unemployment… until WWII saw him return to fighting for a country that really didn’t care about its people, only prestige, status and entrenched power. The book concludes with the author’s incisive essay and pleas for more comics featuring ‘A Working Class Hero’…

Charley’s War is a highpoint and benchmark in the narrative examination of the Great War in any artistic medium and exists as a shining example of how good “Children’s Comics” can be. It is also one of the most powerful pieces of fiction ever produced for readers of any age. I know of no anti-war story that is as gripping, as engaging and as engrossing, no strip that so successfully transcends mass-market origins and popular culture roots to become a landmark of fictive brilliance. I’d bribe Ministers to get these wonderful books onto the National Curriculum. We can only thank our lucky stars no Hollywood hack has made it a “blockbuster” inescapably undercutting the tangibility of the “heroes” whilst debasing the message. There is nothing quite like it and you are diminished by not reading it.
© 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985 & 2018 Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Charley’s War is ™ & © Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash


By Dave McKean & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-108-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Magnificent and thought-provoking… 9/10

After so many years of being sidelined and despised, sequential narrative has finally been acknowledged as one of humanity’s immortal and intrinsic art forms. That’s never been more apparent than in this astounding biographical examination of celebrated surrealist, landscape painter and war artist Paul Nash, as conceived, designed and created here by modern master of many disciplines Dave McKean.

Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash was commissioned to supplement a retrospective exhibition of Nash’s work, running at London’s Tate Gallery from October 26th 2016 to March 5th 2017. Thia was done as part of 14-18 Now: the Arts plank of Britain’s national centenary commemoration of the Great War. The project was set in motion as a result of the always wonderful Lakes International Comic Art Festival (so you should also look them up, send an effusive thank you and book early for next year’s shindig). At the time the book also came in a limited edition run of 400 signed hardbacks…

This huge (280 x 219 mm) comics chronicle is rendered in a stunning melange of styles alternatively racing and meandering in evocatively sequential manner through Nash’s nightmares and memories. Distilled from his art works, correspondence and writings, it examines the artist’s thoughts and reactions in dreamlike snippets as he comes to terms with a troubled family life, the staggering shocks of war and his lifelong striving for a clear artistic vision. These visions are filtered through a lens of mud, blood and unremitting horror which didn’t diminish after surviving life in the trenches.

Potent and evocative, this is a compelling visual poem not meant as a primer, biographical introduction or hagiography. It’s a celebration of Nash’s art and ethos, and a reminder of the pointless futility of throwing away people’s lives, delivered in styles and imagery deftly chosen for emotional impact. As such it might require you to consult a favourite search engine to grasp the subtler nuances, but any fool can see that a century on from the close of the War to end all Wars, we’ve all individually or collectively made precious little progress or changed in any significant way…

At least we can all still appreciate and be moved by beauty and horror, or art and suffering, and here, it’s definitely worth the effort.
Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash ™ & © Dave McKean. All rights reserved.

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Enemy Ace: War Idyll


By George Pratt (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-93028-965-2 (HB) 978-0-93028-978-2 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Visions of Hell to Witness Ever After… 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

During the 1960s Marvel gave industry leader National (now DC) Comics an artistic and sales drubbing, overhauling their 20-year position as industry leader – but only in the resurgent genre of super-heroes. In such areas as young kids’ comics, teen-comedies and romance, the House of Ideas still lagged way behind, and in the venerable and gritty war-comics market they rated lower even than Charlton.

Admittedly, they weren’t really trying, with only the highly inconsistent Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and latterly Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders as publications of any longevity, but that didn’t stop National’s editors and creators from forging ahead: creating a phenomenal number of memorable series and characters to thrill and inform a generation very much concerned with all aspects of military life.

Enemy Ace first appeared as a back-up in issue #151 of flagship war comic Our Army at War (cover-dated February 1965): home of the already legendary Sergeant Rock. Crafted by combat comics dream-team Robert Kanigher & Joe Kubert, the series told bitter tales of valour and honour from the point of view of German WWI fighter pilot Hans Von Hammer: a pure and noble old-world warrior fighting for his country in a conflict that was swiftly excising all trace of such outmoded concepts from the extremely profitable business of industrialised mass-killing.

The tales – loosely based on “Red Baron” Manfred von Richthofen – were a magnificent tribute to the discipline of soldiering whilst wholeheartedly condemning the utter madness of war, produced during the turbulent days of Vietnam: first conflict to be televised and contemporaneously news-packed.

They are still moving and powerful beyond belief.

As is this seminal sequel Enemy Ace: War Idyll. Delineated in moody, misty, strikingly sombre images by painter George Pratt, the story follows the quest of troubled veteran Edward Mannock, a recently returned Vietnam grunt turned photo-journalist. This is a man desperately seeking answers to imponderable questions, and great truths to cure the damage his own combat experiences have caused.

It’s 1969, and Mannock’s search takes a pivotal turn when, on a routine assignment, he discovers elderly, infirm Von Hammer. The mythic “Hammer of Hell” is dying in a German nursing home, but instantly sees that he and the distraught young man share a deep kinship, common bond and the same nightmares…

Inexplicably allowed to drop out of print in both hardback and softcover editions and still criminally unavailable in digital formats, this is an astounding, excoriatingly incisive exploration of war and its extended repercussions good and bad, and the effect that combat has on singular men. War Idyll is visceral, poetic, emotive, evocative and terrifyingly instructive: with as much impact as All Quiet on the Western Front, Goddam This War! or Charley’s War. Every child who wants to be a soldier should be made to read this book.

You don’t want me to talk about it, but you do need to experience it, and once you have you’ll want to share that experience with others, This is one of those items worth every iota of effort required to find it…
© 1990, 1998 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The British Invasion


By Hervé Bourhis, translated by James Hogan (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1681123424 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Pourquoi pas, non?… 9/10

Despite a thousand years of “not getting on”, Britain and France are neighbours who have bathed and basked in the glow of each other’s culture, arts, achievements… and failures… with remarkable constancy and consistency. For as long as each nation has existed, this peculiarly dysfunctional relationship has periodically cross-fertilised the lives and adventures and judgements of all of us. We love their stuff and apparently they’re pretty cool about ours. The strange state of affairs (oh tee hee!) has also baffled countless observers from other countries and probably always will. C’est la vie, innit?

Now and here, music writer, graphic novelist, culture vulture and avowed anglophile Hervé Bourhis (The Little Book of Rock) has encapsulated his – possibly forbidden – love for les anglaise and all their works in a fabulously eclectic years-by-year catalogue of events, achievements, style-&-fashion forays, music-&-movie moments, and less definable landmarks. Beginning in 1962, and meandering all the way to 2022, the best, worst, weirdest, and wildest pub talking points, quiz question fodder and modern minutia of pop culture have been assiduously counted and crafted into a dossier of our innate spiffiness.

These are all graphically combined with listicles, celebrity call-outs, name checks, scandals, disasters, tragic passing (and a few who are probably still feeling someone’s boots dancing on their tombs, even through six feet of well-packed Albion dirt) and all the kinds of True Brit bewilderments that provoke our always astonished amis to doff their berets, scratch their pomaded bonces and mutter “sacred blue et focquinelle”…

Joking, japing and jesting aside, this is a superbly astute, stunning researched and wittily wrought dose of weaponised memorabilia, stuffed with fun facts captivating drawn and even offers the best index I have ever seen in its ‘Britbook Playlist’ section. This is something so many boomers deserve in their wrinkled gabardine (or latex: live and let live sez me) stocking this year.

I’ve been around – if not always awake – for all of the stuff cited here, and while I can’t say it was all as much fun as what’s on show on these crisp, fab-hued pages, it does stir memories, bouts of quiet pride and an odd urge to mumble “been there, did that, gottit, mum threw it away,” and “where are they now?”

Gosh, I say! Do you think the Germans could be induced to commit their thoughts on how terrific we’ve been to paper too?
Le Britbook, © DARGUAD 2023, by Hervé Bourhis, All rights reserved. © 2024 NBM for the English translation.

The British Invasion is published on November 12th 2024 and is available for pre-order now.
Most NBM books are also available in digital formats so for more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

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I Killed Adolf Hitler


By Jason, coloured by Hubert and translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-828-2 (HB/Digital edition

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

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

In this deliciously wry novella his signature surreality is marginally restrained in favour of a shaggy-dog-story plot, although the quirky tale is – as ever – populated with cinematic, darkly comic anthropomorphs and features more bewitching ruminations on his favourite themes of relationships and loneliness viewed, as ever, through a charmingly macabre cast of bestial archetypes and socially-lost modern chumps. Here he puts his sedately fevered mind to an issue that has perplexed the intellects and consciences of many modern generations and produced – as you would imagine – the very last thing anybody expected…

This post-modern short-and-speculative fable unfolds through the usual beguilingly sparse-dialogued, pantomimic progressions Jason favours, but also resonates with the best of B-Movie Sci Fi shtick. The solidly formal page layouts are rendered in Jason’s minimalist evolution of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style: solid blacks, thick lines and settings of seductive simplicity augmented here by Hubert’s enticing but reductive palette of stark pastels and muted hues.

In a world much like our own, but where petty annoyances can be readily eradicated by one of the many contract killers legally plying their trade in shops and cafes, a certain hard-working hitman toils his weary way through the unchanging days. The murder mechanic’s love life is troubled and the work-life balance tipped too far into the repetitive tedium of the next execution. He barely breaks a sweat as someone fails to erase him, and he’s pretty sure he knows who sent the gunman to kill him whilst he watched TV…

That missing spark rekindles the next day, however, when an old professor comes into the office. This decrepit duffer wants him to kill Hitler and has even built a time machine to accommodate accomplishing the assignment. Soon, our assassin is prowling the halls of the Berlin Chancellery, but hasn’t reckoned on the fanatical devotion of the Fuehrer’s minions. His crucial first attempt spoiled, the job becomes impossible after Adolf steals the time machine and escapes to the future, where he makes the best of his opportunity to start over…

Still, a job is a job and the hunter finds a way to persevere – and that’s when things get really complicated…

Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, probing the nature of “human-ness” by using the beastly and bizarre to ask persistent and pertinent questions. Although the clever sight-gags are less prominent here, his repertory company of “funny-animal” characters still effectively depicts the subtlest emotions with devastating flair, proving again just how good a cartoonist he is.

This comic tale is best suited for adults, but makes us all look at the world through wide-open childish eyes. Jason is instantly addictive and a creator serious fans of the medium should move to the top of the “Must-Have” list.
All characters, stories and artwork © 2007 Editions de Tournon-Carabas/Jason. All rights reserved.

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Ginette Kolinka Adieu Birkenau


By Ginette Kolinka, JDMorvan & Victor Matet, Cesc & Efa, Roger, Tal Bruttmann & various; translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91422-423-2 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: An Awful Truth That Must Be Told… 8/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

With its world-shaking reordering of society and all the consequent, still-felt repercussions of the rise of fascism and (hopefully) temporary triumph of totalitarianism, World War II – and the apparently ongoing/slowly gaining momentum third one – remain very much in people’s minds. I fear current events may well be inviting the world to revisit and reemphasise those hard learned lessons in the months and years to come…

The role of history in avoiding repeating past mistakes has never been more crucial and -thanks to brave and talented individuals and a trend for biographical and autobiographical sequential narratives – better armed than now. One chilling yet charming case in point is this testament, detailing the life and work of a Frenchwoman who survived Nazi concentration camps and enjoyed a “normal” life before latterly dedicating her last years to educating the world and preventing the reoccurrence we’re all anticipating today…

Born in February 1925, Parisian Ginette Kolinka (nee Cherkasky) enjoyed an unexceptional early life within a large, loving, non-religious Jewish family. That changed in 1940 when the Nazis took over. Fleeing across the divided nation (half under direct German administration and half under the puppet “Vichy” regime), Ginette and her kin were inevitably captured, processed through a methodically inhuman system and sent to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Birkenau. Ginette somehow survived as so very many did not and was liberated in May 1945.

She returned to France, married and remained silent about what she endured for fifty years, but was convinced by other Shoah survivors to share her experiences – particularly with school children. Kolinka became a tireless and passionate “ambassador for the memory” of those dark days and actions. Her efforts have been acknowledged with fame and numerous accolades, including a knighthood from (and eventual officer status in) the Legion of Honour, and appointment as commander of the Ordre des Palmes académiques for services to education.

Kolinka is a major force in spreading awareness of atrocity and in 2022 her life and achievements became this engaging and compelling graphic tome thanks to writers JDMorvan & Victor Matet, illustrators Cesc & Efa and colourist Roger. Rather than further précising Kolinka’s amazing story, I’ll just say that the tone seamlessly switches from sweetly engaging to appallingly chilling (and back again) with deft ease and the narrative conceit of contrasting flashbacks of Ginette’s historical recollections with a present day trip back to camp with a group of modern-day schoolchildren is shockingly effective and powerfully evocative.

Adding academic vigour and heartbreaking veracity, the tale is appended by Tal Bruttmann’s pictorial essay ‘Ginette Kolinka: A Survivor’s Story’, detailing everything from Paris under Nazi occupation to life in the camps, supplemented by photos, sketches, recovered artefacts and family memorabilia.

This tale is a potent counterpoint to the usual shock-&-bombast approach, devoting as much time to showing how far we’ve come and what we all stand to lose if those days and attitudes are allowed to resurface. Adieu Birkenau reveals how inhumanity, stupidity and simple evil can only be defeated by endurance and will. Here, we see acknowledgment of the nigh-universally disregarded contributions of women caught up in the conflict, and how the way to win against monsters is to not to be like them and never let them win.
© Éditions Albin Michel Départment bande dessinée, 2023. All rights reserved.

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Audrey Hepburn


By Michelle Botton, Dorilys Giacchetto & various, translated by Nanette McGuiness (NBM
ISBN: 978-1-68112-346-2 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-347-9

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: An Elegant Invitation to Enjoy Finer Things… 8/10

A few years back publisher NBM struck pure gold with a line of European-originated contemporary arts histories and dramatized graphic biographies. This one is a gently moving but deceptively sharp peek at one of cinema’s most beloved icons and a very human star we all think we know…

As first revealed in a candid introduction from her second son Lucca Dotti, ‘Everyone has their own Audrey’, and what follows is a sweetly beguiling account that seeks to show the crushing lack of confidence that did not hold back a young wannabe dancer who eventually took the world by storm. Her hard work, lucky breaks, hard work, captivated mentors, unwise affairs, helpful and hindering men, hard work, recurring family tragedies and sheer determination are meticulously explored as the ingenue starlet navigates the most momentous period of social change women have ever experienced.

The lonely girl’s film and stage works are deconstructed and assessed through Audrey’s own harshly judging eyes, as are her relationships, and – in the end, just like a movie – the right ending finally occurs…

This is very much a classic rags-to-riches account, fetchingly rendered by Dorilys Giacchetto (Blind Date, Storie di vittime innocenti di Mafia, Idromele), who adds by turns sparkle and poignancy to the complex, almost accidental stellar stardom of meek yet resolute Audrey Hepburn. Detailed by writer Michele Botton (Abe Sada, il fiore osceno, Bukowski, Hotel Mezzanotte, Pink Future) what we want and expect to see all show up, paving the way for surprises and twists no one could foresee…

Bracketed by a ‘Prologue’ and ‘Epilogue’ focussed on Hepburn’s real passion – her work with children for UNICEF – and summed in ‘My Audrey by Michele Botton’, this easy breezy life story also offers academic rigour in ‘Essential Filmography, Book and Documentaries’ listings, resulting in a sweet confection any fan would by overjoyed to own.
© BelloGiallo2023. © 2024 NBM for the English version.

Most NBM books are also available in digital formats so for more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

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Batman: The Golden Age volume 2


By Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, George Roussos & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-6808-4 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Batman: The Golden Age volume 2 is another paperback-format feast (there’s also a weightier, pricier and more capacious hardback Omnibus available) re-presenting our anniversarial Dark Knight’s earliest exploits. Set out in original publishing release order, it forgoes glossy, high-definition paper and reproduction techniques in favour of a newsprint-adjacent feel and the same flat, bright-yet-muted colour palette which graced the originals. Those necessary details dealt with, what you really need to know is that this is a collection of Batman tales depicting how the character grew into the major player who would inspire so many: developing a resilience to survive the stifling cultural vicissitudes coming decades would inflict upon him and his partner, Robin.

With the majority of material crafted by Bill Finger and illustrated by Bob Kane, there’s no fuss, fiddle or Foreword, and the book steams straight into mesmerising mysterious action, re-presenting astounding cape-&-cowl classics and iconic covers from Detective Comics #46-56, Batman #4-7 and the Dynamic Duo’s stories from World’s Best Comics #1 and World’s Finest Comics #2-3: cumulatively covering all groundbreaking escapades from December 1940 to November 1941…

Plunging right into perilous procedures, Detective #46 (Kane with regular embellishers Jerry Robinson & George Roussos) features the return of Batman’s most formidable fringe scientific adversary as the heroes must counteract the awesome effects of ‘Professor Strange’s Fear Dust’, after which #47 delivers drama on a more human scale in ‘Money Can’t Buy Happiness’. This action-packed homily of parental expectation and the folly of greed leads into Batman #4 (Winter 1941) which opens with a spiffy catch-all visual resume prior to ‘The Joker’s Crime Circus’, plus the piratical plunderings of ‘Blackbeard’s Crew and the Yacht Society!’. ‘Public Enemy No.1’ tells a gangster fable in the manner of Jimmy Cagney’s movie Angels With Dirty Faces, and ‘Victory For the Dynamic Duo’ involves the pair in the treacherous world of sports gambling.

Detective Comics #48 finds the lads defending America’s bullion reserves in ‘The Secret Cavern’, and they face an old foe when ‘Clayface Walks Again’ (Detective Comics #49, March 1941), as the deranged horror actor resumes his passion for murder and re-attempts to kill Bruce Wayne’s old girlfriend Julie. DC #50 pits Batman & Robin against acrobatic burglars in ‘The Case of the Three Devils’, leading neatly into Batman #5 (Spring 1941). Once again, Joker plays lead villain in ‘The Riddle of the Missing Card’, before the heroes prove their versatility by solving a quixotic crime in Fairy Land via ‘The Book of Enchantment’.

‘The Case of the Honest Crook’ follows: one of the key stories of Batman’s early canon. When a mugger steals only $6 from a victim, leaving much more behind, his trail leads to a vicious gang who almost beat Robin to death. The vengeance-crazed Dark Knight goes on a rampage of terrible violence that still resonates in the character to this day. The last story from Batman #5 –‘Crime does Not Pay’ – once again deals with kids going bad and their potential for redemption, after which World’s Best Comics#1 (Spring 1941 – destined to become World’s Finest Comics with its second issue) offers an eerie murder mystery concerning ‘The Witch and the Manuscript of Doom’. With most stories still coming from unsung genius Finger and art chores shared out between Kane, Robinson & Roussos, the team got a new top contributor as Fred Ray signed on to produce fantastic World’s Finest covers that offered the only venue to see the Gotham Gangbusters operating beside the Metropolis Marvel.

Sordid human scaled wickedness informs ‘The Case of the Mystery Carnival’, ‘The Secret of the Jade Box’ and ‘Viola Vane’ (Detective #51, 52 and 53 respectively): all mood-soaked crimebusting set-pieces featuring fairly run-of-the mill thugs, serving as perfect palate-cleansers for ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Remember!’ from WF #2: a powerful character play and a chilling conundrum that still packs a punch today.

‘Hook Morgan and his Harbor Pirates’ finds the Dynamic Duo cleaning up the docks whilst the quartet from Batman #6 (‘Murder on Parole’, ‘The Clock Maker’, ‘The Secret of the Iron Jungle’ and ‘Suicide Beat’) offer a broad range of yarns encompassing a prison-set human interest fable to the hunt for a crazed maniac to racket busting and back to the human side of being a cop. Detective #54 heads back to basics with spectacular mad scientist thriller ‘The Brain Burglar’, after which a visit to a ghost town results in eerie romp ‘The Stone Idol’ (Detective #55) before World’s Finest #3 launches a classic villain with the first appearance of one of Batman’s greatest foes in ‘The Riddle of the Human Scarecrow’.

The volume ends with a grand quartet of tales from Batman #7. ‘Wanted: Practical Jokers’ again stars the psychotic Clown Prince of Crime, whilst ‘The Trouble Trap’ sees our heroes crushing a spiritualist racket before heading for Lumberjack country to clear up ‘The North Woods Mystery’.

The last story is something of a landmark case, as well as being a powerful and emotional melodrama. ‘The People Vs. The Batman’ finds Bruce Wayne framed for murder and the Dynamic Duo finally sworn in as official police operatives. They would not be vigilantes again until the grim ‘n’ gritty 1980s…

Kane, Robinson and their compatriots created an iconography which carried Batman well beyond his allotted life-span until later creators could re-invigorate it. They added a new dimension to children’s reading… and their work is still captivatingly accessible.

Moreover, these early stories set the standard for comic superheroes. Whatever you like now, you owe it to these stories. Superman gave us the idea, but inspired and inspirational writers like Bill Finger refined and defined the meta-structure of the costumed crime-fighter.

Where the Man of Steel was as much Social Force and juvenile wish-fulfilment as hero, Batman and Robin did what we ordinary mortals wanted to do most: teach bad people the lessons they richly deserved…

These are tales of elemental power and joyful exuberance, brimming with deep mood and addictive action. Comic book heroics simply don’t come any better.
© 1940, 1941, 2017 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Buz Sawyer volume 1: The War in the Pacific


By Roy Crane (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-362-0 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Perfect Comics with Timeless Punch… 10/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Modern comics evolved from newspaper comic strips. Until relatively recently these pictorial features were utterly ubiquitous, hugely popular with the public and valued by publishers who used them as a sales weapon to guarantee and increase circulation and profits.

It’s virtually impossible for us to today to understand the overwhelming power of the comic strip in America (and the wider world) from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. With no television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comic sections of daily and especially Sunday Newspapers. The Funnies were the most common recreation for millions: well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality. From the very start humour was paramount; hence the actual terms “Funnies” and “Comics”, and from these gag and stunt beginnings – a blend of silent movie slapstick, outrageous fantasy and the vaudeville shows – came a thoroughly entertaining mutant hybrid: Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Debuting on April 21st 1924,Washington Tubbs II was a breezily comedic gag-a-day strip that evolved into a globe-girdling adventure serial. Crane crafted pages of stunning, addictive quality yarn-spinning whilst his introduction of moody swashbuckler Captain Easy in the landmark episode for 6th May, 1929 led to a Sunday colour page that was arguably the most compelling and visually impressive of the entire Golden Age of Newspaper strips (as seen in Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volumes 1-4).

Improving almost minute by minute, Crane’s imagination and his fabulous visual set pieces achieved a timeless immediacy that made each page a unified piece of sequential art. The influence of those pages can be seen ever since in the works of near-contemporaries such as Hergé, giants-in-waiting like Charles Schulz and comics creators including Alex Toth and John Severin.

The work was obviously as much fun to create as to read. In fact, the cited reason for Crane surrendering the Sunday strip to his assistant Les Turner in 1937 was NEA/United Features Syndicate’s abrupt and arbitrary demand that all its strips must be henceforward produced in a rigid panel-structure to facilitate their being cut up and re-pasted as local editors dictated – although the compelling text features in this book dedicated to his second masterpiece reveal a few more commercial and professional reasons for the jump from the small and provincial syndicate to the monolithic King Features outfit. At the height of his powers Crane just walked away from the astounding Captain Easy page, concentrating on the daily feature, and when his contract expired in 1943 he left United Features to create the World War II aviation strip Buz Sawyer; lured away by the grandee of strip poachers William Randolph Hearst.

The result is still one of the freshest and most engaging comics strips of all time…

Where Wash Tubbs was a brave but comedic Lothario and Easy a surly, tight-lipped he-man, John Singer “Buz” Sawyer was a happy amalgam of the two: a plain & simple, good-looking popular country-boy who went to war because his country needed him.

After the gripping and informative text feature ‘Crane’s Great Gamble’ by Jeet Heer, the strip explodes into action on Christmas Eve 1942, as new Essex Class Aircraft Carrier USS Tippecanoe steams for the Pacific Theatre of Operation carrying 100 fighter-bombers and an extremely keen pair of cartoon paladins.

Buz Sawyer is a fun-loving, skirt-chasing, musically-inclined pilot and his devoted gunner Rosco Sweeney, a bluff, simple ordinary guy – as well as one of the best comedy foils ever created.

The strip is a marvel of authenticity: picturing not just the action and drama of the locale and situation, but more importantly capturing the quiet, dull hours of training, routine and desperate larks between the serious business of killing whilst staying alive. Like contemporaries Bill Mauldin and Milton Caniff, Crane was acutely aware that all his readers had someone involved in the action and therefore felt a duty to inform and enlighten as well as entertain. Spectacular as the adventure was, the truly magical moments focus on the off-duty camaraderie and candid personal interactions that pepper the daily drama.

This beautiful archival hardback covers the entire war years of the strip from November 1st 1943 to October 5th 1945, wherein the inspired artist perfected his masterly skill with Craftint (a mechanical monochrome patterning effect used to add greys and halftones which Crane employed to add miraculous depths and moods to his superb drawing) and opens with the lovable lads shot down whilst tackling a Japanese carrier.

Marooned, their life raft washes up on a desolate desert island where they’re hunted by enemy troops and discover a marooned German farmer and his beautiful daughter. At first hostile, lovely fräulein April soon succumbs to Buz’s boyish charm. Helping Buz and Roscoe escape, the trio only make it as far as the next islet, where fellow pilot and friendly rival Chili Harrison has also been stranded since his plane went down.

Eventually rescued, the Navy fliers return to “the Tip” for training on new planes (sublimely detailed and delineated Curtiss SB2C Helldivers; in case you were wondering) in preparation for the push to Japan. Amidst spectacular action sequences, shipboard life goes on, but during a raid on an occupied island Buz and Sweeney are once more shot down. In the middle of a fire-fight they effect repairs and head back to the Tippecanoe, but not without cost. Rosco has been hit…

Sawyer’s exemplary exploits haven’t gone unnoticed and, whilst Sweeney is recovering from wounds, the titular hero is selected for a secret mission deep into enemy territory; ferrying an intelligence agent to a meeting with enigmatic underground leader the Cobra. It all goes tragically wrong and the US agent is captured. With the enemy hunting high and low for the pilot, Buz then falls back on his most infuriating ability: dropping into the willing laps of beautiful women…

‘Sultry’ is a gorgeous collaborator high in the favour of the occupying Japanese, but she too finds the corn-fed aviator irresistible. Of course, it might simply be that she’s also Cobra…

This extended epic is a brilliant, breathtaking romp blending action, suspense, romance and tragedy into a compelling thriller that carries Buz all the way to December 1944. As a result of his trials, the hero is sent back to America on a 30-day leave – enabling Crane to reveal some enticing background and invoke all the passions, joys and heartbreaks of the Home Front.

Buz doesn’t want to go, but orders are orders, so to make things a little more bearable he takes still-recuperating Sweeney with him. It isn’t that the young flier despises his origins – indeed, his civilian life is a purely idyllic American Dream – it’s simply that he wants to get the job done against the enemy. Nevertheless, with a warrior’s grace under pressure, he resigns himself to peace and enjoyment whilst his comrades soldier on. If he knew the foe he would face in his little hometown, Buz would probably have gone AWOL…

Crane’s inspirational use of the War at Home was a masterstroke: it’s not a world of spies and insidious Bundists, but just an appetising little burg filled with home comforts and proud people: the kind of place soldiers were fighting to preserve and a powerful tool in the morale-builder’s arsenal. It’s also a place of completely different dangers…

Buz is the son of the town’s doctor; plain, simple and good-hearted. In that egalitarian environment, the kid was sweetheart to the richest girl in town, and when Tot Winter‘s upstart, nouveau riche parents hear of the decorated hero’s return they hijack the homecoming and turn it into a self-serving publicity carnival.

Moreover, ghastly, snobbish Mrs. Winter conspires with her daughter to trap the lad into a quick and newsworthy marriage. Class, prejudice, financial greed and social climbing are enemies Buz and Sweeney are ill-equipped to fight, but luckily that annoying tomboy-brat Christy Jameson has blossomed into a sensible, down-to-earth, practical and clever young woman. She’s scrubs up real pretty too…

After a staggeringly smart and compelling soap opera sequence that would do Eastenders or Coronation Street proud, Buz ends up (accidentally) engaged to Tot after all. Mercifully, his leave ends and he and Sweeney must return to the war – but even then, they are disappointed to discover that they won’t immediately be fighting again.

Posted to Monterey, California, they are to be retrained for new planes and a new squadron, reuniting with rowdy rival Chili Harrison. Even so, Mrs Winter is determined to have a war hero in the clan and pursues them with Tot in tow, determined to get Buz married before he returns to the Pacific. Insights into another aspect of the military experience (Crane had almost unfettered access, consultation privileges and the grateful willing cooperation of the US Navy) are revealed to readers as the whiz-kid is suddenly back in school again; and usually in the dog-house because of his hot-dogging.

Dramatic tension divides evenly between Buz’s apparent inability to be a team-player and the increasingly insistent and insidious ploys of Mrs. Winter. Moreover, the squadron’s training commander has an uncanny ability to predict which pilots will die in training or combat and Buz’s name is high on that list…

At last the training concludes and – miraculously alive and unmarried – Buz & Sweeney ship out to the Pacific and the relatively easy task of ending the war. Part of a vast fleet mopping up island fortresses en route to Tokyo, they are soon flying combat missions, and before long, shot down once more. This time they are taken prisoner aboard an enemy submarine…

After more incredible escapes and rousing triumph, the war finishes, but Crane actually ratcheted up the tension by covering the period of American consolidation and occupation as Buz & Sweeney await demobilisation. Whilst posted to a medical facility in Melatonga, the lads and Chili meet a woman from Buz’s chequered past they had all believed long dead…

When discharge papers finally arrive (in the episode for September 9th 1945) an era of desperate struggle closes. However, with such a popular and pivotal strip as Buz Sawyer, that only means that the era of globe-girdling adventure is about to begin…

This superb monochrome hardback also offers a selection of Sunday strips in full colour. The eternal dichotomy and difficulty of producing Sunday Pages (many client papers would only buy either dailies or Sunday strips, not both) meant that some strip creators produced different story-lines for each feature – Milt Caniff’s Steve Canyon being one of the few notable exceptions. Crane handled the problem with typical aplomb: using the Sundays to tell completely unrelated stories. For Wash Tubbs he created a prequel series starring Captain Easy in exploits set before the mismatched pair had met; with Buz Sawyer he turned over the Sabbath slot to Rosco Sweeney for lavish gag-a-day romps, big on laughs and situation comedy.

Set among the common “swabbies” aboard ship, it was a lighter family-oriented feature and probably far more welcome among the weekend crowd of parents and children than the often chilling or disturbing realistically and sophisticated saga that unfolded Mondays to Saturdays.

Also included here – and spanning November 28th 1943 to 25th February 1945 in delicious full-page fold outs – are 15 of the best (many with appearances by Buz): a cheerily tantalising bonus which will hopefully one day materialise as an archival collection of their own. Whilst not as innovative or groundbreaking as Captain Easy, they’re still superb works by one of the grand masters of our art-form.

This initial collection is the perfect means of discovering or rediscovering Crane’s second magnum opus – spectacular, enthralling, exotically immediate adventures that influenced generations of modern cartoonists, illustrators, comics creators and storytellers. Buz Sawyer: War in the Pacific ranks as one the greatest strip sequences and best war stories ever crafted: thrilling, rousing, funny, moving yarn-spinning that is unforgettable, unmissable and utterly irresistible.
Strips © 2010 King Features Syndicate, Inc. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books, all other material © the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.