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Sven Hassel’s Wheels of Terror: the Graphic Novel


By Sven Hassel, illustrated by Jordy Diago (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-878-6

Although his true history remains controversial and hotly contested in his home country, Børge Willy Redsted Pedersen AKA Sven Hazel AKA Sven Hassel is indisputably one of the most influential authors of the late 20th century. The fourteen novels bearing his nom de guerre/plume, based on his war-time experiences as a decorated soldier in the German army (and latterly as a POW), have sold 53 million copies worldwide, published in more than 50 countries, and a fair few of those were to readers who went on to create many of the last forty-five years’ worth of great war comics.

He was born in 1917 and, after turbulent times in the post-war years following his return to his fatherland, left forever his native Denmark in 1964 for Barcelona. He stayed put and peacefully passed away in there in 2012. Now, with his canon once more lined up for screen adaptations, his stories have finally begun the transition to the genre he so particularly inspired: graphic novels.

Published in 1953, Legion of the Damned was a colossal hit, delineating his entire time in the Army of the Reich, including prompt desertion, recapture, confinement and sentencing to a Penal Battalion on the Eastern Front.

The remaining thirteen books are elaborations of that book and period, offering greater depth and many more unforgettable moments of horror and camaraderie, which is presumably why these adaptations – by son Michael and granddaughter Mireia, illustrated with subdued yet expressionistic verve by Spanish artist and photographer Jordy Diago (Fix und Foxi, El Cuervo, the Disney Company) – begin with the second novel.

Wheels of Terror was first released in 1958 and is regarded by many as the ultimate anti-war novel; each chapter a gut wrenching, thought-provoking, seemingly pointless exploit in a never-ending succession of brushes with near-death, human brutality and the appalling consequences of total war as experienced by the diffident narrator and his comrades. Those include charismatic thief Joseph Porta, hulking Tiny, former Foreign Legionnaire Alfred Kalb, elderly Troop Sergeant “The Old ‘Un”, somehow still-religious Möller, aging Bauer, big, steadfast Pluto and the rest…

This oversized (296 x 208 mm) full-colour paperback opens with no preamble or fanfare with ‘Nox Diaboli’ as the old lags are driven into Hamburg during an Allied firebombing raid and used as a clean-up crew during the still on-going devastation. The worst part was probably the children’s home…

‘Furioso’ then pauses to introduce the cast as they return to the Eastern Front, but still lumbered with shifting corpses, “aided” by Russian POWs with whom they have far more in common than any German officer. ‘A Shot in the Night’ then describes an uneventful night in the barracks at the Sennelager Training Grounds involving a near-fatal confrontation with a martinet Sergeant-Major who has no time for convicts and unconventional Commandant Colonel Von Weisshagen. As usual, Porta’s nervy, anarchic impromptu antics turn potential catastrophe into a war-story worth retelling many times over…

Penal battalions get all the choice jobs and ‘State Murder’ describes what happens when the squad are ordered to execute prisoners – even young women – after which ‘Porta as Pope’ finds the still-distraught men gathered to drink and play cards whilst the indefatigable fixer regales his chums with the time he accidentally became padre to the barbarous counterattacking “Ivans” before Sven sneaks away to enjoy an unlikely ‘Love Scene’ with a woman living in the bombed-out ruins…

The account kicks into grim high gear with ‘Return to the Eastern Front’ as the dirty business of trench-fighting resumes in earnest, punctuated with moments of inactivity spiced up by Porta’s ribald stories and songs, but soon the gregarious scene-stealer is risking his life with our narrator at a forward listening post mere metres from the Russians where he learns that ‘At 11.30 AM the Germans Will be Blown Sky High’.

The subsequent devastating clash between advancing Ivans and a doughty crew of German flamethrower operators is appalling to witness and the pointless action soon leads to ‘Close Combat in Tanks’ with the reprobates stuck inside a malfunctioning Tiger, narrowly avoiding being butchered by the advancing enemy before having to fight for their lives in freezing close quarters at apocalyptic atrocity-site ‘Cherkassy’…

A relative moment of calm only gives the squad time to brood and indulge in torture masquerading as interrogation before ‘The Sneaking Death’ sees another firefight erupt, killing a third of the company…

In the bright day of a forest reconnaissance, loquacious Porta describes his favourite meal of ‘Mashed Potatoes with Diced Pork’ to the ones who made it, leading to a shockingly bloodless and almost comic confrontation with a Russki patrol before ‘The Partisan’ sees the scruffy survivors trying to help a girl rescue her already-arrested father from execution. Nazi fanatic Julius Heide then learns to his cost that the scum hate him as much as he despises them…

When the quartermaster asks the starving troops in all seriousness ‘What Do You Want to Eat?’ following an upcoming attack, the wary warriors realise the hell they’re about to enter, resulting in the loss of yet another cast regular, after which a frenzied retreat in tanks is interrupted by more murderous Soviets and a crazy interlude wherein Kalb risks everything to help a Russian woman in the final stages of ‘Childbirth’…

This story doesn’t end; the reader just finds a place to stop watching and that occurs here with ‘Long Live Death’ as the ravaged survivors hide in a trench with Ivans inexorably advancing. The grim moments pass as the convict soldiers observe how proper German officers die before finding two Soviet women soldiers who would rather stay with them than be returned to their male Russian comrades. And then the shooting starts again and your narrator is hit. Fade to black…

Grim, bleak, blackly funny and still ferociously forceful, this pictorial interpretation is a splendid first outing from all involved, deftly negotiating the minefield of how to keep the necessarily horrendous visual aspect from overpowering the events. Purists who love the prose novels might, however, feel cheated that some of the more racy (by today’s standards that might as well read as sexually exploitative) content has been toned down or expurgated, but all in all this is a book to satisfy old fans and make a legion of new ones.
© MHAbooks aps 2015. All rights reserved.

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Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Secret Love Affair with a Famous Cartoonist


By Bill Griffith (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-895-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Awesomely Educative Treat for Mystery Lovers… 8/10

Starting life as an underground feature in 1971, Bill Griffith’s absurdist commentary on American society Zippy the Pinhead has grown into such a prodigious and pervasive counter-culture landmark that it’s almost a bastion of the civilisation it constantly scrutinises and ridicules. What I never suspected before and – according to the revelations stunningly catalogued and depicted in this powerful and absorbing Graphic Memoir, nor did he – was the subtle influence the gods of cartooning had been constantly exerting upon his family’s lives for generations…

As much a detective yarn and memorial to simpler (but just as complex) times as a straight biography, Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Secret Love Affair with a Famous Cartoonist reveals how the cartoonist and social commentator (already long-schooled in the proud achievements of artistic ancestor and photographic pioneer William Henry Jackson) latterly uncovered further pictorial predecessors and briefly became an impassioned genealogist and investigator after an elderly uncle decided it was time to pass on a boxful of dusty family memorabilia.

An uneventful yet evocative journey from Connecticut to North Carolina – miles slowly passing as the traveller is immersed in internet research – starts memories flowing and when Uncle Alan then hands over a historical treasure trove the naturally contemplative cartoonist’s childhood memories are triggered and his instincts for a good story are piqued…

Bill’s thoughts continually return to his own childhood in Levittown when he and his passionate, beautiful, aspiring-author mother regularly posed for neighbour and legendary pulp illustrator Ed Emshwiller‘s many magazine covers, and by the time the voyager stops discussing the past Bill is powerfully aware of just how real and earthy and fallibly human his relatives were.

As yet however the discourse still offers no insight into why his own cold, abusive father turned out the way he did…

Meticulous Alan is a mine of useful minutiae with his catalogue of familial foibles and passed-down stories, but even he is un aware of Barbara Griffith (nee Jackson)’s greatest indiscretion: a fifteen year, full-on tempestuous love affair with cartoonist, cartooning-teacher, publisher, comicbook pioneer, crime-writer and indefatigably restless entrepreneur Lawrence Lariar: an innocuously smooth operator who, although moderately successful for his entire life, was in many ways the Forgotten Man of Comics.

With the flow of information now going both ways, Bill shares the day in 1972 when word came of his dad’s imminent death and of how, in a moment of overwhelmed, grieving guilt and with the family gathered at the hospital, his mother the widow of mere minutes confessed that she had been wife in all but name to another man since 1957…

As Bill further re-examines his own memories, cross-referencing with pictures, diaries and his mother’s epic unpublished novel which clearly and cleanly transfers her complicated life into the refuge of putative fiction, a series of pictures starts to form…

Startlingly frank, scrupulously detailed, diligently analytical and brilliantly reconstructed using a variety of styles, this is a fact-filled, graphic tour de force which elevates the players to the rank of perfect archetypes whilst still leaving them authentic, living creatures we are convinced we know.

Superbly applying the techniques of fiction to the discipline of documentary, Invisible Ink is a wonderful leap forward in the growing genre of comics memoirs and one no serious reader can afford to miss.
© 2015 Bill Griffith. All rights reserved.

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Heart in a Box


By Kelly Thompson & Meredith McClaren (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-694-5

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Fearsome Mature Fable for the Family Season… 8/10

Let’s face it kids, Love Hurts and this mesmerising modern parable demonstrates that maxim with stunning audacity and devilish charm as author Kelly Thompson (Storykiller, The Girl Who Would be King, Jem and the Holograms) and illustrator Meredith McClaren (Hinges) take a young woman on a harsh yet educative road trip to learn a life lesson regarding ill-considered wishes and Faustian bargains…

After young Emma had her heart broken by her unforgettable “Man with No Name” she foolishly listens to an insistent stranger who promises to make the shattering pain go away forever.

He’s as good as his word, too, but within nine days Emma realises that what she feels after he’s worked his magic is absolutely nothing at all and that’s even worse than the agony of loss and betrayal which nearly ended her…

The aggravating Mephistophelean advisor – she calls him “Bob” – is still popping in however, and promptly offers her a way to can reclaim the seven shards of sentiment/soul she threw away. There will of course be a few repercussions: as much for her as those folks who have been enjoying the use of a little feeling heart ever since Emma so foolishly dispensed with it and might not want to relinquish that additional loving feeling…

But as she doggedly travels across America, hunting down those mystically reassigned nuggets of passion, she discovers not only how low she’ll stoop to recover what’s hers but also where and when all the moral boundaries she never thought she had can’t be bent, bartered or broken…

A dark delight, Emma’s literal emotional journey takes her into deadly danger, joyous cul-de-sacs and life-changing confrontations with her past and future in a clever reinvigoration of one of literature’s oldest plots and probably mankind’s most potent and undying philosophical quandaries…

Funny, sad, scary and supremely uplifting Heart in a Box is a beguiling rollercoaster ride to delight modern lovers and every grown-up too mature to ever be lonely or dependent…
© 2013, 1979 Semi-Finalist Inc. & Meredith McClaren. All rights reserved.

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Zombillenium volume 3: Control Freaks


By Arthur de Pins (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-956-4

Arthur de Pins is a British-born French filmmaker, commercial artist and Bande Dessin̩es creator whose strips Рsuch as adult comedy Peccadilloes (AKA Cute Sins) and On the Crab Рhave appeared in Fluide Glacial and Max.

In recent years his superbly arch and beautifully illustrated supernatural horror-comedy Zombillénium has become his greatest success (keep your eyes peeled for the upcoming movie!): a truly addictive comics cult classic which began in 2009 (serialised in Spirou from #3698 on) and has now filled three albums released in English thanks to Canadian publisher NBM.

Rendered with beguiling style and sleek, easy confidence, the unfolding saga details the odd goings-on in a horror theme park run by real monsters and operated by capitalistically-inclined infernal powers and, with this latest volume, we finally get to peek behind the curtain a little to see who – and what – is pulling the strings…

Zombillenium is a truly magical entertainment experience celebrating all aspects of the spooky and supernatural, where (human) families can enjoy a happy day out rubbing shoulders with werewolves and witches and all breeds of bogeyman. Of course, those enthralled visitors customers might not laugh so hard if they knew all the monsters were real, usually hungry and didn’t much like humans … except in a culinary fashion…

The inaugural volume introduced hard-working, humane Director/vampire Francis Von Bloodt, newly-reborn Aurelian Zahner (a pathetically inept thief until he expired at the park and returned transformed into a demonic indentured employee of the business) and quirky British Witch Gretchen: a young newcomer interning at the park whilst secretly advancing her own agenda.

As they individually toiled away at the vast entertainment enterprise its true nature was slowly revealed: for unwary, unlucky mortals the site is a conduit to the domain of the damned and its devilish overlord Behemoth: an intolerant horror ever-hungry for fresh souls…

For the uncanny undead workers in Zombillenium, conditions of employment worsen every day: it is one of the least profitable holiday destinations on Earth and The Board are always threatening to make sweeping changes…

Despite the incredible bargaining power of the many monster Trade Unions, the only way out of a Zombillenium contract is the True Death and a final transition to Hell; yet for some reason the shop-stewards prefer to blame Aurelian for all their woes and seem determined to drive him out.

Stuck between a rock and a hot place, Zahner gradually adapts to his new (un)life of constant sorrow and grows closer to Gretchen after she shares with him her own life-story; revealing what he has become whilst disclosing what she’s really doing at the Park. The big boob has no idea how much she left out…

The saga moves into apocalyptic high gear with Control Freaks as Gretchen’s private plot gathers pace after she makes contact with a loved one currently confined in Hell. The bold sorceress promises a seemingly impossible liberation before sneaking out, whilst in the mortal world a long-dreaded day dawns and all the arcane artisans and supernatural staff quail at some really Big News…

A Consultant has been despatched to “observe” how the park is run but everybody from Von Bloodt to the Shop-Stewards know that elite vampire Bohémond Jaggar de Rochambeau is actually here to take the business by the throat and shake things up. They have no idea just how much everything is about to change…

One of the most unfortunate aspects of the fearsome funfair is that any human who dies on Zombillenium property is instantly reborn as a monster, owned by Behemoth and compelled to work eternally in the theme park until the master takes them below. Under Francis’ governance that’s been wisely offset by a set of stringent rules, the first of which states that no employee is ever allowed to attack a human…

Jaggar has other ideas. Before long he has impetuously killed a little girl and delivered in no uncertain terms the new working time directives to Francis and the astounded staff. The Park is a pump designed to generate money for the shareholders and a steady supply of souls to Behemoth. Now the old, timid tolerant ways championed by Von Bloodt have been superseded by more robust policies which demand bigger returns on both sides of the investment…

The news is met with mixed feelings by the workforce: most are scared, appalled and resistant. For some however it’s the opportunity they’ve long argued for: a chance to feed and feast and hunt all those obnoxious yet tasty human morsels…

With isolated attacks reported all over the park Aurelian suddenly goes into a rage-fuelled meltdown and Gretchen uses his colossal rampage to trigger an evacuation of Zombillenium. Casualties are kept to a minimum even though Jaggar is openly egging on the demonically transcendent Zahner to cut loose. With the park emptied by panic, however, the cutthroat Consultant is temporarily stymied…

Unfortunately, his new business model very much piques the greedy interest of the Board and before long Francis is out and Jaggar is Director; actively encouraging the killing of unattached or unaccompanied humans, who now come in droves to the most exciting entertainment experience in the world.

It’s all too much for ambulatory Egyptian Mummy Aton who enlists the aid of change-resistant union boss Sirius Jefferson to orchestrate an inspired industrial action which closes the Park. Management’s retaliation is swift, decisive and infernally effective and, as Gretchen and Aurelian get a message from an ally in Hell, in Jaggar’s Zombillenium irrevocable lines are drawn for a final battle to win the stilled hearts and captive souls of the enslaved employees…

To Be Continued…

One of the most engaging candidates in a burgeoning category of seditiously mature and subversively ironic horror-comedies, this superb and deliciously arch tale combines pop-cultural archetypes with smart and sassy contemporary insouciance and a solid reliance on the verities of Nature, Human and not…

Sly, smart, sexy and scarily hilarious, Zombillenium achieves that spectacular trick of marrying slapstick with satire in a manner reminiscent of Asterix and Cerebus the Aardvark, whilst easily treading its own path. You’ll curse yourself for missing out and if you don’t there are things out there which will. © Dupuis 2013 by De Pins. All rights reserved.

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Terror Assaulter: O.M.W.O.T. (One Man War on Terror)


By Benjamin Marra (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-878-6

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Comedy as Black as Santa’s Coal for Naughty Kids… 8/10

We live in perilous times and everywhere Terrorists lurk, just waiting to get the jump on us. Everybody knows that…

Mercifully, thanks to the blessed wisdom of President G. W. Bush there are professionals in place to take the war right back to them. Following the attacks on 9/11 the clearly-prescient Dubya, in his infinite wisdom, convened a team of All-American specialists in excessive force and clandestine skulduggery. They were designated as Terror Assaulters: utterly autonomous from government oversight and tasked with ending any and every threat to world Freedom & Democracy by any means necessary…

Thus the scene is set for a sly and ferociously stark satire on the American Public’s simplistic view of its pre-eminent role in a very complex world, conceived and concocted by a master of visual retro-stylisation, deftly utilising nostalgic forms to pillory modern sensibilities and the country’s obsessions with untrammelled masculinity, consequence-free sex, violence and conspiracy.

Benjamin Marra was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1977 and after graduating with a Degree in Fine Arts from Syracuse University studied in Florence (Europe!) where he was clearly seduced away from clear-thinking and right-mindedness. He later studied under David Mazzucchelli at the School of Visual Arts and, as well as running his own self-publishing comics imprint Traditional Comics, works as web designer for Major League Baseball Advanced Media, freelances for advertising companies, Marvel and in publications such as Playboy, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and many others.

Rendered in hard-edged, stiff-figured ink-lines, augmented by dot-screens and flat primal colours like a classic four-colour comicbook from the 1960s or 1970s (and looking and feeling very much like Spain Rodriguez’s iconic Trashman tales), these extremely over-the-top adult escapades are delivered with machine gun rapidity and bleak economy, all softness and nuance carefully excised in favour of inexpressive, declamatory, expository dialogue – like a little boy playing out scenes with action-figures until he smashes them all in his building frenzy…

Our harshly-drawn hero is an emotionless, lethally capable agent codenamed O.M.W.O.T. (One Man War on Terror) whose propensity to find trouble wherever it lurks is only outmatched by his capacity to expunge it with ruthless efficiency. And of course whenever there’s evil and death there also plenty of callous, selfish sex, with whoever is left breathing when all the shooting stops…

Our involvement begins with ‘Cyber Attack Part 1‘ wherein a perpetually sunglasses-wearing wonder man invades a nondescript business building in Jakarta and spectacularly kills all the bad guys before his search for ‘Funding’ leads him into a pitched, brutal battle on an airliner jam-packed with hijackers before a profitable meeting with the lizard-men who actually run everything…

Abruptly changing tack, ‘Cyber Attack Part 2’ reveals how, after Terrorists sneakily invade and conquer America, the Terror Assaulters lead the fightback; with the indomitable O.M.W.O.T. at the forefront of battle, exposing a TA traitor who is almost as deadly a fighter as he…

With America free again our ultimate hero then deals with another outrageous attack on decency when ‘Loyalties’ sees him framed for child abandonment by an invisible enemy using the latest gender-bending technologies to trap him in matrimony and a spurious child-support scheme. It’s the Terrorists’ greatest and most insidious and apparently inescapable trap…

Blending rebellious Punk Rock sensibilities with a trenchant, deadpan yet aggressive expressionism and irrevocably linking hyper-violence to loveless, self-gratifying casual sex, this so-very-graphic inquisition into the nature of a society’s obsessions and the excesses of its self-appointed protectors is a blackly hilarious attack on US interventions, NeoCon demagoguery and the self-delusions of the oppressed and near-extinct God-Fearing, White American Male that will delight and amaze all us dubious lefty, liberal-humanist weirdoes…
Terror Assaulter is © 2015 Benjamin Marra. This edition is © 2015 Fantagraphics Books Inc.

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The Broons and Oor Wullie: The Fabulous Fifties


By R.D. Low & Dudley D. Watkins (DC Thomson)

ISBN: 978-0-85116-678-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: How the Holidays Must Be Celebrated… 10/10

The Broons is one of the longest running newspaper strips in British history, having appeared continuously in Scottish newspaper The Sunday Post since their debut in the March 8th 1936 edition: the same issue which launched mischievous, equally evergreen wee laddie Oor Wullie.

Both the boldly boisterous boy and the gregariously engaging working class family were co-created by journalist, writer and Editor Robert Duncan Low in conjunction with DC Thomson’s greatest artist Dudley D. Watkins and, once strips began to be collected in reprint editions as Seasonal Annuals, those yuletide tomes alternated stars and years right up to the present day.

Low (1895-1980) began at the publishing monolith as a journalist, rising to the post of Managing Editor of Children’s Publication and launching, between 1921 and 1933, the company’s “Big Five” story papers for boys: Adventure, The Rover, The Wizard, The Skipper and The Hotspur.

In 1936 his next brilliant idea was the Fun Section: an 8-page pull-out comic strip supplement for Scottish national newspaper The Sunday Post. The illustrated accessory launched on 8th March and from the very outset The Broons and Oor Wullie were unchallenged stars…

Low’s shrewdest notion was to devise both strips as comedies played out in the charismatic Scottish idiom and broad unforgettable vernacular where, supported by features such as Auchentogle by Chic Gordon, Allan Morley‘s Nero and Zero, Nosey Parker and other strips, they laid the groundwork for the company’s next great leap.

After some devious devising in December 1937 Low launched the first DC Thomson weekly comic. The Dandy was followed by The Beano in 1938 and early-reading title The Magic Comic in 1939.

War-time paper shortages and rationing sadly curtailed the strip periodical revolution, and it was 1953 before the next wave of cartoon caper picture paper releases. The Topper started the ball rolling again (with Wullie in the logo and masthead but not included in the magazine’s regular roster) in the same year that Low & the great Ken Reid created Roger the Dodger for The Beano…

Low’s greatest asset was prolific illustrator Dudley Dexter Watkins, whose wholesomely realistic style, more than any other artist’s, shaped the look of DC Thompson’s comics output until the bombastic advent of Leo Baxendale shook things up in the mid-1950s.

Watkins (1907-1969) had started life in Manchester and Nottingham as a genuine artistic prodigy before entering Glasgow College of Art in 1924. It wasn’t long before he was advised to get a job at burgeoning, Dundee-based DCT, where a 6-month trial illustrating boys’ stories led to comic strip specials and some original cartoon creations.

Percy Vere and His Trying Tricks and Wandering Willie, The Wily Explorer made him a dead cert for both lead strips in the Sunday Post‘s proposed Fun Section and, without missing a beat, Watkins later added The Dandy‘s Desperate Dan to his weekly workload in 1937, eventually including The Beano‘s placidly and seditiously outrageous Lord Snooty seven months later.

Watkins soldiered on in unassailable triumph for decades, drawing some of the most lavishly lifelike and winningly hilarious strips in illustration history. He died at his drawing board on August 20th 1969.

For all those astonishingly productive years he had unflaggingly drawn a full captivating page each of Oor Wullie and The Broons every week, and his loss was a colossal blow to the company.

DC Thomson’s chiefs preferred to reprint old Watkins episodes of both strips in the newspaper and the Annuals for seven years before a replacement was agreed upon, whilst The Dandy reran Watkins’ Desperate Dan stories for twice that length of time.

An undeniable, rock-solid facet of Scots popular culture from the very start, the first Broons Annual (technically Bi-Annual) appeared in 1939, alternating with Oor Wullie (although, due to wartime paper restrictions, no annuals at all were published between 1943 and 1946) and for millions of readers a year cannot truly end without them.

So What’s the Set Up?: the multigenerational Broon family inhabit a tenement flat at 10 Glebe Street, in the timelessly metafictional Scottish industrial everytown of Auchentogle (or sometimes Auchenshoogle), based in large part on the working class Glasgow district of Auchenshuggle. As such it’s an ideal setting in which to tell gags, relate events and fossilise the deepest and most reassuring cultural archetypes for sentimental Scots wherever in the world they might actually be residing.

As is always the case, the adamant, unswerving cornerstone of any family feature is long-suffering, understanding Maw, who puts up with cantankerous, cheap know-it-all Paw, and a battalion of stay-at-home kids comprising hunky Joe, freakishly tall Hen (Henry), sturdy Daphne, gorgeous Maggie, brainy Horace, mischievous twins Eck and the unnamed “ither ane” plus the wee toddling lassie referred to only as “The Bairn”.

Not officially in residence but always hanging around is gruffly patriarchal buffoon Granpaw – a comedic gadfly who spends more time at Glebe Street than his own cottage and constantly tries to impart his decades of out-of-date, hard-earned experience to the kids… but do they listen?

Offering regular breaks from the inner city turmoil and a chance to simultaneously sentimentalise, spoof and memorialise more traditional times, the family frequently repair to their But ‘n’ Ben (a dilapidated rustic cottage in the Highlands) to fall foul of the weather, the countryside and all its denizens: fish, fowl and farm-grown…

As previously stated, Oor Wullie also debuted on March 8th 1936 with his own collected Annual compilations subsequently and unfailingly appearing in the even years.

The basic set-up is sublimely simple and eternally evergreen, featuring an imaginative, good-hearted scruff with a talent for finding trouble and no hope of ever avoiding parental retribution when appropriate…

Wullie – AKA William MacCallum – is an archetypal good-hearted rascal with time on his hands and can usually be found sitting on an upturned bucket at the start and finish of his page-a-week exploits.

His regular cast includes Ma and Pa, local copper P.C. Murdoch, assorted teachers and other interfering adults who either lavish gifts or inflict opprobrium upon the little pest and his pals Fat Bob, Soapy Joe Soutar, Wee Eck and others. As a sign of the changing times however in this book he’s sometimes seen in the company of fetching schoolgirl Elizabeth…

An enchanting compilation in monochrome with some colour, The Fabulous Fifties was released in 1998 as part of a concerted drive to keep that early material available to fans: a lavish sturdy hardback (still readily available through internet vendors and something no baby-boomer should be without as our upcoming Christmasses become less and less likely or lively!) offering a tantalising selection of Sunday pages from 1950-1959, covering every aspect of that halcyon era’s rapidly changing technological and sociological existence, and all still deliciously funny even now…

The jolly procession of Celtic comedy commences with atmospheric photo-and news headline feature ‘New Years Day 1950 – and All Year Through’ and bookends every following year with a similar capsule feature of the unfolding decade often accompanied by a full colour Watkins cover or title page from a fifties Annual.

The endless escapades of the strip stars comprise the usual subject-matter: galling goofs, family frolics, sly pranks and cruel comeuppances: whilst the regular menu of gloriously slapstick shenanigans including plumbing pitfalls, decorating disasters, fireplace fiascos, food foolishness, dating dilemmas, appliance atrocities, fashion freak-outs, bothered Bobbies, excessive exercise exploits, chore-dodging and childish pranks by young and old alike, all seen through the lens of a comfortably traditional world inexorably altering as fashionable technology slowly creeps into the lives of everyone, welcoming or otherwise…

Jings! The fuss when a television is obtained for the Coronation or as the advent of Hire Purchase enables a wave of unwanted home appliances to appear…

Uncontested and always welcome are wry and crafty comparisons of the good old days with mere modernity, rib-tickling scenes of sledding and skating, stolen candies, torn clothes, recycled comics, visiting circuses, sparring school kids, ladies and lassies lost and found, harmless practical jokes and social gaffes: stories intended to take our collective mind off troubles abroad, and for every thwarted romance of poor Daphne and Maggie, embarrassing fiasco focussed on Paw’s cussedness or recalcitrance , there’s an uproarious chase, riotous squabble and no-tears scrap for the little ‘uns.

With snobs to deflate, bullies to crush, duels to fight, chips to scoff, games to win and rowdy animals (from cats to cows) to escape, the timeless affable humour and gently self-deprecating, inclusive frolics make these superbly crafted strips an endlessly entertaining superbly nostalgic, unmissable treat.

So why not slip back to a time of soapbox carts, catapults, scrumping, home perm kits, teachers who used rulers for smacking not measuring, best china, full employment, sub-four minute miles, neighbours you knew by first names and trousers that fell apart or blew away?

You can even get in on the end of rationing and birth of family viewing, package holidays, airbeds, long trousers for schoolboys, hire cars, caravans, Op Art and the decline of gas lampposts, indoor wall posters, Daylight Saving Time, Duffel Coats, Sputniks and Rock ‘n’ Roll…

There are even occasional crossovers to admire with Wullie and Granpaw Broon striving to outdo each other in the “adorable horrors” stakes…

Packed with all-ages fun, rambunctious slapstick hilarity and deliriously domestic warmth, these unchanging examples of happy certainty and convivial celebration of a mythic lost life and time are a sure cure for post-modern glums… and you can’t really have a happy holiday without that, can you?
© D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd. 1998.

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Lady Killer volume 1


By Joëlle Jones, Jamie S. Rich & Laura Allred (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-757-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Wildly Witty and Nostalgically Nasty… 8/10

1962 was a strangely portentous and memorable year.

We all nearly died in a Cuban mushroom cloud; the United States Supreme Court ruled mandatory prayers in public schools were unconstitutional; The Beatles released their debut single Love Me Do; Vivian Vance became the first person to portray a divorcée on an American TV series and paragon of femininity/First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy took television viewers on a tour of the White House.

Way back then in a cosy era of prim, proper and perfectly contented wives and mothers, Josie Schuller is a bit of an oddball – although you’d never know it to look at her…

In a consumer culture when men wear hats and smoke at work, proper ladies are pliable, obedient “homemakers” and appearance and conformity are paramount but Josie is shamefully keeping a secret from hubby Gene, their two adorable kids and even her nosy live-in mother-in-law. The busybody biddy does have her suspicions though: a strange man is always hanging around, trying to talk to Josie when no one’s looking, and Mother Schuller suspects the worst.

Her nasty mind might be relieved to know that her daughter by marriage is not cheating on her beloved son, merely indulging in a little freelance work on the side. The deceitful little minx is actually an assassin and really, really good at her job…

Unfortunately Josie wants to leave the business, but her increasingly obnoxious handler Peck and his boss Stenholm keep piling on the pressure to take on more and more contracts, with no regard to the happy home-life she wants to preserve. Eventually the devotedly domestic death-dealer decides that her dreams mean nothing to her employers and, after she’s despatched to dispatch another lady trying to quit the lethal game, Josie realises that if she wants to retire she’s going to have to remove the organisation that owns her first…

Devised and illustrated by Joëlle Jones, scripted by Jamie S. Rich and coloured by Laura Allred, with an Introduction from crime-writer Chelsea Cain, this wickedly witty satirical blow for femininity and feminism collects issues #1-5 of Lady Killer from January-May 2015, mischievously mauling the virginal, compliant stereotypes handed down to us from the heydays of Doris Day, Leave it to Beaver and The Lucy Show – by way of Mad Men and Red – and resulting in a fast-paced high-octane period thriller which is a joy to behold.

Bedded in with a wealth of additional material Рroughs, working studies, faux contemporary ads, cover-&-variants gallery and commentary from the creators in a stylish Sketchbook section Рthis is a taut and tantalising thriller, packed with plenty of action and suspense delivered with electric ̩lan and perilous panache, to delight every reader who loves their comedy black and their body-counts high.
Lady Killer™ © 2015 by Joëlle Jones and Jamie S. Rich. All rights reserved.

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Chicago – a Comix Memoir


By Glenn Head (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-878-6

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Momentous reading for Mature Minds… 9/10

One of the things comics can do better than almost any other medium is autobiography. Words are immensely potent but when wed to the images a confessor wants you to see and has devised especially for that purpose, the response is always immediate, visceral and permanent.

Cartoonist, illustrator and editor Glenn Head (Hot Wire, Snake Eyes, Weirdo) studied under Art Spiegelman at the School for Visual Art in the early 1980’s but has bided his time in commercial illustration for publications like Advertising Age, Screw, Sports Illustrated and The Wall Street Journal and with comix such as Guttersnipe and Head Shots before releasing his first graphic novel.

It was worth the wait…

In monochrome hardback Chicago Head has turned a harsh, stark spotlight on his own life, literally baring all as he details how a troubled teenaged virgin from New Jersey turned his back on the American Dream – as well as his own personal hopes and aspirations – touching bottom and courting madness before reaching his current (still tenuous) state.

Following an incisive Introduction from Phoebe Gloeckner, the history lesson begins in a graveyard in the Garden State. “Glen” is nineteen and troubled, but not necessarily unhappy: he’s just painfully aware that he doesn’t fit in.

It’s the summer of 1977 and he’s obsessed with the cartoons and paraphernalia of the hippie Counterculture which is experiencing its death-throes. Dad works on Wall Street and desperately wants to understand why his son seems at such a loss. The boy doesn’t even seem that happy to be going to Art School in Cleveland, even though he claims that’s what he wants…

What Glenn wants most, however, is Sarah: his best friend and a girl appallingly emotionally scarred by the treatment she has receive from her Holocaust-Survivor parents. She’s already well down the road to dissolution though: pregnant, a runaway and being used to turn tricks by her latest scumbag boyfriend…

The season turns and Glen reluctantly reports to the Cleveland Institute of Art, his intolerant, abrasive attitude winning him few friends amongst staff or students. There’s something indefinably wrong inside his head and before long he drops out and begins panhandling to survive. A casual conversation with another student attains the status of a sign from God and Glen – who we’re starting to think might suffer from manic Depression/Bipolar Disorder – abruptly hitchhikes to Chicago, determined to sell cartoons to Playboy magazine…

And thus begins an intense period of privation, hallucination, harassment by hustlers, constant danger and creeping horror, all punctuated by unexpected kindnesses from strangers, rejections, connections and moments of incomprehensible good fortune as chance meetings with Muhammad Ali and Robert Crumb begin to turn the street kid’s life around…

‘Decompression’ sees Glen back in comfortably suburban Madison, N.J. in January 1978, thanks to his amazingly understanding yet still-uncomprehending father, but although the threat of imminent starvation and murder have faded, the boy is still at risk – from his own actions after a telephone conversation with ideal inamorata Sarah’s manic mother and his own father’s poorly hidden handgun…

The final section of this diary occurs in 2010 as Brooklyn-dwelling single-dad Glen gets an email one morning. Sarah, the one that got away, the great missed opportunity, has tracked him down and wants to meet up. Is this his chance to stop being that painful, pathetic, unresolved 19-year old virgin at last?

Breathtakingly candid, intoxicatingly forthright and irresistibly visually exhilarating, Chicago is a stunning examination of the power of obsessions and memories and potential roadmap to finding your own identity as long as you have the nerve and stomach to try…
Chicago © 2015, Glenn Head. This edition © 2015 Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

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Something at the Window is Scratching


By Roman Dirge (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-349-9

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Gloriously Skewed, Marvellously Inventive… 10/10

Roman Dirge is the multi-award winning, creatively twisted auteur behind the epically eccentric and deliriously disquieting Lenore: the Cute Little Dead Girl, but like quicksand and scabs he also has a hidden, softer, side.

Way back in 1998 he first compiled a compendium of poetic paeans to the weirder side of life, death and all points betwixt; all superbly synched with a wealth of his uniquely unsettling, chillingly cute Graphic Grotesques and this has now been remastered and re-released as part of Titan Comic’s sinisterly sublime full-colour hardback line archiving his entire canon.

Scaring and simultaneously delighting kids with poetry has always been a popular sport and this turbulent tome echoes with the ghosts of such luminaries as Roald Dahl, Edward Lear, Ogden Nash and Berke Breathed (he’s not actually dead yet, but his kids stuff is so good, he’s certain to be one day…) as it exposes a host of hidden wonders ranging from single page epigrams to extended verse sagas, beginning with ‘The Coo Coo Lady’ whose love for her clock knew no bounds and was – apparently – mutual, before a brief digression reveals the secrets of making ‘Critter Pie’ after which vampiric brothers settle a long-held beef in ‘The Sideways Man’…

The eponymous ‘Something at the Window is Scratching’ details the death of a certain mythological creature and the lengths to which a guilty lad goes to adopt its orphaned child, whilst bear-loving ‘Mr. Seephis’ miscalculates the amount of mutuality they might afford him and ‘Little Lisa Loverbumps’ learns a thing or two about swimming safety…

‘Peter the Pirate Squid’ gets very little time to prosper before ‘The Ghost in the Spider’ exposes a most mismatched pair of travellers whilst ‘Pear Head Man and Bread Boy’ and

‘The Alien Ballerina’ both come and go with astounding alacrity after which we all share every parent’s nightmare – just how to deal with a dying pet – in ‘The Bunny Came Back’…

The nautical misadventure of ‘The Captain’ and the infinite recursiveness of ‘Devil Bunny’ segue neatly into a doomed love between ‘The Reindeer and the Bumble Bee’ whilst old wisdom decrees – and proves – ‘Weird Family Weird Baby’ and a salutary warning is offered by the unlucky temporary inhabitant of ‘Fly Paper’…

Negotiation and resistance both prove pointless when a little bear is drawn into the ‘Dance of the Bedbugs’ but undead performers ‘Boodini and Choobie’ don’t really care, whilst neither ‘The Guy With a Thing on his Head’ or pumpkin imperilled ‘Eddie Poe’ can muster the energy to join in with the game proposed by ‘Mr. Pork Chop’ to end this eerie epistle of eclectic eccentricity.

And don’t think scrutinising all ‘About the Author’ will give you any idea about where this kind of carton craziness comes from…

Wittily weird, gorily gregarious and darkly hilarious, these vivid verses and portentous pictures blend bleak-edged charm with absurdist abstractions and arcane attractions to create visual mood music and Goth-toned glee for the culturally sated; reprising the mordant merriment of Charles Addams’ cartoons as so readily revisited by mirthful modern macabrists like Tim Burton, Jhonen Vasquez (Squee!, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and who here provides and enthusiastic, confusiastic Foreword), Ted Naifeh & Serena (Gloom Cookie) and Jill “Scary Godmother” Thompson.

These odd odes are an unwholesome treat for kids of all ages with a taste for the richer, darker, more full-bodied flavours of life and its inevitable final consequences.

Ever so much better for you than absinthe, idolatry or unsanctioned unicorn safari …
Something at the Window is Scratching ™ & © 2015 Roman Dirge. All rights reserved.

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Groo: Friends and Foes volume 1


By Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier, Stan Sakai & Tom Luth (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-814-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A welcome wave of nostalgic nonsense and comic craziness… 8/10

Groo is the smelliest, ugliest, stupidest, unluckiest mercenary in the world – but he’s also the best swordsman in creation and far too stupid to be harmed. He is always hungry and wanders because most places he pauses in burn down, wash away or crash into rubble soon after his arrival.

He loves to fight and entire nations and navies reel at the mention of his name. Of course they do the same when they stand downwind of him too…

Produced in a unique traditional fashion by storyteller Sergio Aragonés, wordsmith Mark Evanier, colourist Tom Luth – with assistance from Michael Atiyeh – and letterer Stan Sakai (yeah, that Usagi Yojimbo guy), the Itinerant Imbecile’s adventures form one of the longest running comicbook humour series in America and there seems to be no chance of stopping his creators as long as we keep buying these incredible, hilarious sagas…

Both in comic narrative and the infinitely tougher field of gag-cartooning, Aragonés has produced vast volumes of incomparable work. His darkly skewed sensibilities and instinctive grasp of the cosmically absurd, wedded to his anarchically meticulous drawing style and frankly terrifying professional discipline, have made his pantomimic doodles vibrant proof of the maxims that laughter is universal and one picture is worth a thousand words.

In 1981, after years working for Mad Magazine whilst also producing gags for DC’s horror titles (plus the occasional full strip), he joined with Mark Evanier (who writes lots of stuff and Writes it Good), Sergio crafted a madcap 4-page parody of Sword-&-Sorcery yarns as a contribution to Eclipse Comics’ Creators Rights benefit comic Destroyer Duck.

Following a second outing in Mike Grell’s Starslayer (#5), Pacific Comics launched Groo the Wanderer in his own title. After 8 issues (December 1982-April 1984) the troubled company folded but the unsinkable barbarian (that’s a joke you’ll understand later) resurfaced in the Groo Special one-shot from Eclipse (October 1984), before finding a home at Epic Comics: Archie Goodwin’s creator-owned corner of the Marvel Universe.

Aragon̩s had first devised his witless warrior in the 1970s but no publisher would take on the property unless he surrendered all rights Рan almost universal situation in the comics industry until the advent of the Direct Sales market transferred power from companies and distributors to creators and consumers.

With ownership issues settled to his maker’s satisfaction, Groo bedded in for an uproarious 120 issue run at Epic – resulting in loads of graphic novel compilations – until the imprint died, after which the witless wonder moved on to Image and Dark Horse Comics. They haven’t sunk yet…

In fact, the latter (gluttons for punishment) have even let the bumbling bladesman loose with new 12-issue miniseries Groo: Friends and Foes; each issue revisiting one of the silly saga’s regular cast who had inconceivably escaped being slaughtered by the star. This tawdry tome is but the first of four trade paperback collections and this first compilation collects issues #1-4, finding the perpetually puzzled peripatetic poltroon meeting again merchant mariner Captain Ahax, who has good reason to dread the consequences…

That sinking thing? Among his other lack of abilities Groo cannot travel by ship. He’s not sea-sick or anything, it’s just that his mere physical presence on a nautical apparatus of any sort causes it to founder and plunge into the fearsome fathoms below. Knowing that fact and unable to get rid of the affable oaf, Ahax surrenders to fate and opts to replace the crew with drunks, sell his ship and even his clients’ cargoes. Then he over-insures the vessel, confident that at least this time when she goes down he’ll actually profit from it.

But this time his ship comes in, despite Groo constantly waving sharp objects about, an attack by pirates and Ahax’s own increasingly desperate efforts to scuttle his livelihood. Perhaps it’s the calming influence of the sweet little girl who befriends the woeful warrior’s adoring dog Rufferto? She’s a fellow passenger all alone, searching for her long-lost father…

As disaster finally strikes – far too late for Ahax – the smelliest, ugliest, stupidest mercenary in the world shambles off and soon encounters a band of gypsies who seem familiar. They ought to: they’re led by his calculating grandmother Granny Groo. How fondly the weary wanderer remembers the way she used to beat him and his sister Grooella before selling him. Of course, being the kind of kid he was, Granny had to sell him many times before it finally stuck…

Now that he’s become the most terrifying person on Earth, however, she decides on a different plan to get rid of him before he brings calamity upon them all: raffling him off to greedy villagers who think they might profit from “controlling” the most dangerous man alive…

Baffled Rufferto gamely sticks with his master and soon discovers that the little girl from the ship has joined the gypsies too…

When that brief debacle ends as all Groo gigs do, the dog and his hero head further inland and soon encounter a magic-blighted region controlled by old enemies and devilish witches Arba and Dakarba.

The female fiends have good reason to fear the innocently intruding idiot and decide to get their retaliation in first by conjuring up the scariest thing they can think of to destroy him. Sadly, a marauding 50-foot Groo – even backed up by a hundred normal-sized facsimiles – are no match for the sheer force of destructive stupidity the real McCoy can muster and the witches inevitably fail, leaving their noodle-nosed nemesis to saunter off accompanied by a little girl he thinks he might have met before…

Groo’s initial outings end after a frantic reunion with Legendary Hero and shameless fraud Arcadio whom our pack of peregrinators stumble across as he tries to train a brace of dragons. The crafty champion plans on using them to gull villagers into hiring him, but when good-natured Groo offers his help, the plan – and the villagers – soon go up in smoke…

Closing this inaugural volume is a quartet of wordless strips starring Rufferto and a captivating cover-gallery by Aragonés adding to the wonderfully wonky misshapen madness and grand display of confusions, contusions, conflagrations, conflicts, pratfalls, pitfalls, punch-lines and punch-ups…

These are true masterpiece of mirth comedy addicts will love and the great strength of the series is that new readers can start practically anywhere – and still be none the wiser…
© 2015 Sergio Aragonés. Groo, all related characters and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of Sergio Aragonés. All rights reserved.