Now Read This!

March 12, 2015March 10, 2015

Goodbye God? – An Illustrated Examination of Science Vs Religion

By Sean Michael Wilson & Hunt Emerson (New Internationalist)
ISBN: 978-1-78026-226-0

I don’t mind if you like Strictly Come Dancing. Why do you care that I don’t?

Faith is the ability to accept as true (believe in) things you can’t prove.

Belief is a choice to have faith (implicit trust) in certain things. Many people choose to believe Evolution doesn’t exist but that won’t protect them from a new strain of Bird Flu, rats that have developed immunity to Warfarin or even a Strep bug which has bred beyond the capabilities of contemporary antibiotics to kill it.

I choose to trust – call it â€œbelieveâ€ if you want – in physically measurable, quantifiable, repeatable phenomena which work irrespective of what I want or how much I beg them to change.

I want to believe that I’m in no way socially, developmentally, biologically or genetically connected to racists, homophobes, abusers or cretins but, just like I wish I had superpowers, praying cannot make it true.

You can choose to think of evolution as open to debate and refuse to believe you’re descended from an unending chain of constantly changing and developing animals, but that only makes you more a horse’s arse than a monkey’s uncle.

The comforting notion that any book or unverifiable opinion is infallible and that you are of more significance to the universe than a bee, a rock or a bad odour is equally wrong – and completely pointless too: but if a sense of superiority helps you sleep at night, fine. Just stop killing bees, crushing rocks and making a nasty smell for the rest of us – and don’t even get me started on the kinds of monsters and morons who think their beliefs afford them the right to inflict institutionalised cruelty upon animals or their own children and justifies desecrating art and destroying artefacts of history – whether it be Christians painting over erotic murals at Herculaneum and Pompeii or fanatical Islamic splinter groups pillaging and destroying temples in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraqâ€¦

I believe know that the above statement was a rant – but a heartfelt and honest one.

I choose to rant and shout and shoot off my mouth because I’m not smart, patient or reasonable, unlike author Sean Michael Wilson and grand master cartoonist Hunt Emerson who have diligently gathered data, arguments, opinions and those pesky imps we call â€œfactsâ€ into a superbly even-handed and open-minded graphic narrative discourse.

Taking up the most commonly employed arguments of Big Religion, Wilson & Emerson have carefully arranged and scrupulously countered them, resulting in a plausibly inviting examination of issues dividing Faiths (all of them, not any one faction who might prefer to and profit from thinking of themselves as persecuted intellectual â€œmartyrsâ€) from the world as it appears to the rest of us and shining a warm yet uncompromising light of rationality upon them.

It makes for gripping and genuinely revelatory reading.

All religious organisation and faith workers – from the Catholic Church to TV ghost hunters to that shoddy charlatan medium/spiritualist conning your aunty out of her pension – derive approval, power and money from their highly organised activities, but whereas we officially godless individuals may sell a book or two and cop an appearance fee from the occasional chat show, Humanists (people who don’t believe in God and generally can’t even agree with each other) gain nothing from pointing out that – based on the evidence – we are on our own in the world and bear the sole responsibility for taking care of the place and all its inhabitants and fittings.

That’s something to sincerely meditate onâ€¦

Following an Introduction by Professor Lawrence M. Krauss (Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University), the dissection of Big Questions and how people choose to react to them opens with Part 1: Evolution and Creationism wherein the ground rules of serious discussion are laid down before ‘Creationism v Evolution’ systematically lists and methodically shoots down one by one the major claims used to â€œdisproveâ€ and cast doubt on the nature of reality, beginning of course, with a clear concise definition of the terms of reference of each sideâ€¦

A quick prÃ©cis of the development of Darwin’s discoveries and principles is compared with Christian Creationism’s contention that the world is significantly less than 10,000 years old. Outrageous things many Americans believe are counterbalanced by helpful facts from Richy Thompson of the British Humanist Association before a number of Creationist claims such as Earth’s declining magnetic field, slowing rotation and that all humanity and attendant life came from a survivors of a global flood 4,000 years ago are dealt withâ€¦

A hilarious aside explaining just why such fallacious arguments are harmful leads into a skilful dissection of â€œIntelligent Designâ€ with helpful interjections and clarifications from Philosophy Lecturer Stephen Law with other cognitive heavyweights such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Noam Chomsky piling in to explain why such notions are so harmful to children.

Following a lecture on the damage the proliferation of such propaganda has had on American education and government policy, Richy Thompson pops back to expose the situation in British schools before going on to deliver his own description of the difference between Belief and Fact. The section then ends with a description of the gloriously wry scientific response to Creationism that is Project Steveâ€¦

This is followed by a review of the wider universe (as we understand it at this moment, and Creationists never will) and concludes with a detailed examination of Law’s Eight Mechanisms, by which all religions – and a goodly proportion of New Age Tomfoolery – introduce, promote and promulgate their particular brand of Revelation and Salvation.

Part 2: Science and Religion then expands the discussion into a broader examination of the debate, pictured as the sporting contest ‘Science v Religion’ and running down the inherent fallacies manipulated by theistic proponents.

Historical examples and contemporary scenes are followed by definitions of Humanism from the likes of Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Isaac Asimov, Gloria Steinem and Kurt Vonnegut as well as AC Grayling, Hitchens and the wonderful Dawkins who offers his own joyous antidote to slavish acceptance of other peoples’ unproven opinions as well as few much-needed debunkings of such religious Whited Sepulchres as the obnoxious contention that people cannot be moral or â€œgoodâ€ without God (seen in ‘Darwin = Facism’).

There’s mention of the Catholic Church’s connections to many tyrants and arguments pointing religion’s role in the rise of Hitler, Stalin and too many othersâ€¦

Also including a gallery of prominent Humanists from John Stuart Mill to Katherine Hepburn and a delicious selection of pertinent and elucidating jokes from Hitchens, this section concludes with lawyer and Democrat politician Sean Faircloth’s ’10 Practical Points for a Secular America’â€¦

This appetisingly sensible treatise also includes essays on both The American Humanist Association (â€œGood Without a Godâ€) and The British Humanist Association (â€œFor the one life we haveâ€) offering general glimmerings of good tidings for common sense as well as Bios and contact details of the creators.

Any â€œfactâ€ that comes with a price ticket and pledge of allegiance isn’t worth knowing and sometimes it’s hard to see any space for compromise in this argument, but Goodbye God? is not bloodymindedness in action or the theological equivalent of bear-baiting.

The purpose of this book and the only thing most Humanists want is simple. We’re not telling anyone what to believe or how to act: all we want is to teach nothing but science and scientific principles in science classes.

It would be nice if political and social decisions that affect all humanity were made solely on the basis of rational exploration and logical conclusion, but we’ll settle for giving the next generation all the intellectual tools needed to deal with the increasingly unforgiving and extremely inhospitable planet we’re leaving them rather than blinkering them and having everybody wait for a miracle which will not be forthcomingâ€¦

By all means keep your Intelligent Design or Creation Myths if you need them so badly but present them in Religious and Social Studies classes where they belong and where, quite frankly, they can be examined and debated on their own merits and contrasted with other equally baseless suppositions, rather than unquestioningly delivered to developing minds with the same unshakable conviction and intensity which correctly states â€œfire hotâ€, â€œstuff falls to ground when let go ofâ€. You could even hopefully add â€œsome people and animals only want sex within their own genderâ€ and â€œclimate change is real and is going to kill us allâ€â€¦

If only the rationalists weren’t so patently â€œpreaching to the convertedâ€ tooâ€¦

But don’t you dare take my word for it: examine the book for yourselves and draw your own conclusionsâ€¦
Â© Sean Michael Wilson. All rights reserved.

March 11, 2015March 10, 2015

Essential Hulk volume 5

By Len Wein, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Chris Claremont, Herb Trimpe, Sal Buscema, Jack Abel, Joe Staton & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-7851-3065-9

By the close of the 1960s the Incredible Hulk had settled into a comfortable niche – and satisfyingly effective formula as radioactively afflicted Bruce Banner sought cures for his gamma-transformative curse, alternately aided or hunted by US General (and father of the scientist’s one true love) Thaddeus â€œThunderboltâ€ Ross and a variety of guest-star heroes and villains.

Illustrator Herb Trimpe had made the character his own; the â€œhouseâ€ Jack Kirby-based art-style quickly evolving into often startlingly abstract mannerism, augmented by an unmatched facility for drawing technology – especially honking great ordnance and vehicles – all of which looks especially great in the crisp black and white of these magically affordable Essentials volumes.

Most importantly, no one could possibly deny the sheer cathartic reader-release rush of a great big â€œHulk Smash!â€ momentâ€¦

This chronologically complete monochrome mammoth contains Incredible Hulk #171-200, plus Hulk King Size Annual #5 (spanning January1974-November 1976) and opens with excessive bombast but no appreciable fanfare as ‘Revenge!’ (by Gerry Conway – from a Steve Englehart plot with art by Trimpe & Jack Abel) finds the Green Goliath a stowaway on a plane back to military Mecca Hulkbuster Base carrying new Project: Greenskin commanding officer Colonel John D. Armbruster who has taken over from the politically sidelined Thunderbolt Ross.

The camp is eerily deserted and the reason soon becomes clear as bludgeoning brutes Abomination and The Rhino attack. Having subdued the entire garrison, they plan on detonating the base’s gamma-bomb self-destruct device but are utterly unprepared for the Hulk’s irascible interventionâ€¦

Roy Thomas plotted Tony Isabella’s script for #172 wherein the Hulk – captured by the ungrateful soldiers he saved – is hurled into another dimension, allowing a mystic menace to inadvertently escape. ‘And Canst Thou Slayâ€¦ The Juggernaut?’ reveals that even that magically augmented menace cannot resist our favourite monster’s might and features a telling cameo by the X-Men, after which Thomas scripts all-Trimpe art-fest ‘Anybody Out There Rememberâ€¦ The Cobalt Man?’, wherein another old X-adversary – Ralph Roberts – picks up the Jade Giant at sea before sailing his research vessel into a nuclear test explosionâ€¦

Dying of radiation exposure the deranged technologist then determines to demonstrate atomic bombs are bad to a callous, uncaring world by detonating one over Sydney in Doomsdayâ€¦ Down Under’ (Conway, Thomas, Trimpe & Abel). The second clash with the azure-armoured Cobalt Man results in a blistering battle in the stratosphere, a cataclysmic explosion and Hulk crashing to earth far, far away as a ‘Man-Brute in the Hidden Land!’ (#175, Thomas, Trimpe & Abel)â€¦

Here a typically short-tempered encounter with the Uncanny Inhumans and devastating duel with silent super-monarch Black Bolt, after the usual collateral carnage, ends with the gamma gladiator hurtling to the far side of the sun in a rocket-ship for a date with allegory if not destiny.

During the early 1970s a throwaway Fantastic Four character dubbed Him was turned into a modern interpretation of the Christ myth and placed on a world far more like our own than the Earth of Marvel’s universe.

That troubled globe was codified as Counter-Earth and upon it the messianic Adam Warlock battled a Satan-analogue known as the Man-Beast. Hulk had briefly visited once before and now he crashed there again to complete the allegorical epic beginning with ‘Crisis on Counter-Earth!’ by Conway, Trimpe & Abel.

Since the Hulk’s departure Man-Beast and his animalistic minions (all spawned by godlike genetic meddler The High Evolutionary) had become America’s President and Cabinet. Moving decisively they had finally captured Warlock and led humanity to the brink of extinction, leaving the would-be messiah’s disciples in utter confusion.

Now with the nation in foment the Hulk’s shattering return gives Warlock’s faithful flock an opportunity to save their saviour in ‘Peril of the Plural Planet!’ but the foray badly misfires and Warlock is captured. Publicly crucified at the behest of the people, humanity’s last hope perishesâ€¦

Meanwhile on true-Earth Ross and Armbruster discover trusted comrade (and Ross’ son-in-law) Major Glenn Talbot has escaped from a top security Soviet prison and is making his triumphant way back to the USAâ€¦

The quasi-religious experience concludes with ‘Triumph on Terra-Two’ (Conway, Isabella, Trimpe & Abel) as the dead prophet resurrects whilst Hulk is waging his last battle against Man-Beast in time to deliver a cosmic coup de grace before ascending from Counter-Earth to the beckoning starsâ€¦

Incredible Hulk #179 signalled a much-need thematic reboot as Len Wein signed on as writer/editor with strong ideas on how to put some dramatic impact back into the feature. It begins with ‘Re-enter: The Missing Link’, as the Jade Juggernaut loses patience during his return trip and bursts out of his borrowed spaceship just as America’s military defences shoot it down.

He crashes to earth in the mining district of Appalachia and, reverting to befuddled Bruce Banner, is adopted by the dirt-poor Bradford family. They have a habit of taking in strays and have already welcomed a strange, huge yet gentle being they’ve named Lincoln.

As time passes Banner recognises the creature as a former Hulk foe known as the Missing Link. The colossal brute is neither evil nor violent (unless provoked) but is lethally radioactive, and the fugitive physicist faces the dilemma of having to break up a perfect happy family before they all die.

The Link of course, refuses to cooperate or go quietlyâ€¦

Next comes the most momentous story in Hulk history which starts with ‘And the Wind Howlsâ€¦ Wendigo!’ (#180, October 1974, Wein, Trimpe & Abel), wherein the blockbusting brute bounces across the Canadian Border and encounters a witch attempting to cure her lover of a curse which has transformed him into a rampaging cannibalistic monster.

Unfortunately that cure meant Hulk had to become a Wendigo in his steadâ€¦

It was while the Great Green and Weird White monsters were fighting that mutant megastar Wolverine first appeared – in the very last panel – and that’s what leads into the savage fist, fang and claw fest that follows.

‘And Nowâ€¦ The Wolverine!’ captivatingly concluded the saga as the Maple nation’s top-secret super-agent is unleashed upon both the Emerald Goliath and man-eating Wendigo in an 18-page romp stuffed with triumph, tragedy and lots of slashing and hitting. The rest is historyâ€¦

Back south of the border, Major Talbot has been reunited with his wife and family and is eagerly expecting a meeting with President Ford as ‘Between Hammer and Anvil!’ (with Trimpe taking sole charge of the art chores) finds the ever-lonely Hulk meeting and losing a true friend in jolly hobo Crackerjack Jackson.

The Ã¼ber-action portion of the tale comes from two escaped convicts who despise each other but are forced to endure togetherness because of an alien chain which shackles them whilst imparting overwhelming power. It’s not, nearly enough, however, enough to stop a fighting-mad, heartbroken Hulkâ€¦

Electrical vampire and life-stealer ZZZAX returns in ‘Fury at 50,000 Volts!’, wrecking a new life Banner surreptitiously carves for himself in Chicago, after which ‘Shadow on the Land!’ finds the wandering man-mountain battling alien invader Warlord Kaa who has taken possession of the Hulk’s shadow. This close encounter leads to Banner’s capture by Armbruster just in time for the President’s visit and a shocking ‘Deathknell!’ as the truth about Talbot is revealed when the trustworthy major attempts to assassinate the Commander-in-Chief.

During the attendant death and chaos Hulk busts out and General Ross regains his credibility by recapturing him, but the Soviet infiltration of the base is far from over as a traitor dons super-armour to continue the attacks in ‘The Day of the Devastator!’

This time when the Jade Juggernaut smashes their common foe, the American army are suitably gratefulâ€¦

Sometime later SHIELD intelligence discovers the real Talbot is still a prisoner in Siberia and that Hulkbuster Base’s current problems have been caused by a Soviet mutant genius they’ve all battled beforeâ€¦

‘There’s a Gremlin in the Works!’ (Incredible Hulk #187, with Joe Staton joining the team as inker) features the return of the son of the Green Goliath’s very first foe The Gargoyle – see Essential Hulk volume 1 – a vicious mastermind with plans far beyond merely serving the Soviet state.

The little maniac is holding Talbot at his Bitterfrost fortress and quite prepared for Ross and SHIELD agent Clay Quartermain to stage a rescue bid, but all the cyborg super-soldiers and giant mutant monster dogs in the world are not enough when mission stowaway Bruce Banner gets scared and goes greenâ€¦

The fiend’s personality-altering technology is exposed in ‘Mind Over Mayhem!’ but as the heroes escape with Talbot’s comatose body Hulk seemingly dies in Bitterfrost’s explosive death-throes. Nothing could be further from the truth and #189 sees the monster battle the Mole Man to secure a miracle-remedy for a sightless little Russian girl in ‘None Are So Blindâ€¦!’

Veteran Hulk illustrator Marie Severin inks Trimpe on ‘The Man Who Came Down on a Rainbow!’ as alien benefactor Glorian whisks the solitary man-monster to a veritable promised land in the stars, only to have the idyll shattered by invading Toad Men hungry for the secret power fuelling paradiseâ€¦

After murdering Glorian, ‘The Triumph of the Toad!’ (Trimpe & Staton) is short-lived and catastrophically self-destructive after the enraged Hulk and the Shaper of Worlds extract a measure of justice for their fallen friendâ€¦

Cast back to Earth, the Green Giant lands in Scotland in time to get between feuding hotheads with violently opposing attitudes to ‘The Lurker beneath Loch Fear!’ after which Banner heads back to America where Ross and Quartermain have recruited a famous psychologist to fix the catatonic Glenn Talbot.

‘The Doctor’s Name isâ€¦ Samson!’ finds the one time Gamma-powered superhero falling victim to another scientific gaffe and accidentally reborn as the green-haired strongman, yet still unable to cure his patient. For that he needs Banner, but when his wish comes true, Leonard Samson just isn’t tough enough to hold onto himâ€¦

After years on the strip Trimpe moved on to other things and Incredible Hulk #194 saw the pencilling debut of Sal Buscema in ‘The Day of the Locust!’ (with Wein & Staton still doing what they did best).

Lost in the American heartland the Hulk stumbles upon young lovers pursued by an overly possessive dad determined to end the affair. This angry parent however is a former X-Men enemy who can enlarge insects to immense size so the kids are more than grateful for the assistance of a Jolly Green Cupidâ€¦

With Samson and the army one step behind him, the Hulk befriends a small boy running away from home in ‘Warfare in Wonderland!’ Eager for any advantage Ross tricks the Abomination into attacking the Jade Giant but is unprepared for the gamma gladiators to team up rather than tussle in #196’s ‘The Abomination Proclamation!’

The villain’s innate viciousness soon alienates his temporary ally however and after winning another spectacular fight Hulk blasts off on a runaway rocket and crashes down in the Everglades where the invidious Collector has made his latest lairâ€¦

The phenomena fanatic is on a monster kick and, having scooped up Banner and a mute young man who is in actuality The Glob, feels ‘â€¦And Man-Thing Makes Three!’ to be the perfect set. He has grossly underestimated the deeply buried humanity of his living trinkets and soon must face a mass-escape and the loss of all his living exhibits after ‘The Shangri-La Syndrome!’ hits homeâ€¦

Hulk Annual #5 (November 1976) was the first all new King-Size compendium since 1968 and featured a huge monster mash reviving a half dozen iconic threats and menaces from the company’s pre-superhero phase. Written by Chris Claremont, with art by Sal B & Jack Abel, ‘And Six Shall Crush the Hulk!’ offers little in the way of plot but stacks of sensational action as a procession of resurrected aliens attack one after another, beginning with ‘Where There’s Smoke, There’s Diablo!’, ‘And Taboo Shall Triumph!’ and ‘It Is Groot, the Monster from Planet X!!’, after which ‘For I am Goom!!’ and ‘Beware the Blip!’ pile on the pressure until an evil mastermind is revealed as grudge-bearing Defenders foe Xemnu in ‘A Titan Shall Slay Him!’

Naturally even exhausted the Hulk is too much for the spiteful schemerâ€¦

Building up to a spectacular anniversary, Incredible Hulk #199 saw Samson and Ross employ all America’s most advanced assets in ‘â€¦And SHIELD Shall Follow!’ (Wein, Sal B & Staton) to capture the critically necessary Jade Giant, but in the end it is the psychologist’s sheer guts and determination which won the day, allowing the big issue #200 resolution as Hulk is shrunk to infinitesimal size and injected into Talbot’s brain to battle materialised memories and a viciously sentient tumour as ‘An Intruder in the Mind!’

The struggle to restore the mind of Banner’s rival for Betty Ross-Talbot‘s undying affections is not without complications, however, and at the moment of his greatest triumph and sacrifice the Hulk suffers a major setback and begins uncontrollably shrinking beyond the ability of Samson and his team to rescue himâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

This superbly cathartic tome also includes Hammer and Anvil pages taken from the Marvel Universe Handbook plus an alternative cover to Incredible Hulk #174.

The Incredible Hulk is one of the most well-known comic characters on Earth, and these stories, as much as the movies, cartoons, TV shows, games, toys and action figures are the reason why. For an uncomplicated, earnestly vicarious experience of Might actually being Right, you can’t do better than these yarns, so why not Go Green – even if it’s only in monochrome and in your own delirious head?
Â© 1974, 1975, 1976, 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

March 10, 2015March 9, 2015

Jesse James: Lucky Luke volume 4

By Morris & Goscinny, translated by Frederick W. Nolan (CineBook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-14-4

It’s hard to think of one of Europe’s most beloved and long-running comics characters being in any way controversial, but when changing times caught up with the fastest gun in the West (â€œso fast he can outdraw his own shadowâ€) and the planet’s most laconic cowboy moved with them, the news made headlines all over the world.

Lucky Luke is a rangy, good-natured, lightning-fast cowboy who roams the fabulously mythic Old West, having light-hearted adventures with his horse Jolly Jumper and interacting with a host of historical and legendary figures of the genre.

His continued exploits over nearly seventy years have made him one of the best-selling comic characters in Europe (81 collected books and more than 300 million albums in 30 languages thus far), with spin-off toys, computer games, animated cartoons and even a plethora of TV shows and live-action movies.

He was created in 1946 by Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de BÃ©vÃ¨re (â€œMorrisâ€) for the 1947 Annual (L’Almanach Spirou 1947) of Le Journal de Spirou, before launching into his first weekly adventure ‘Arizona 1880’on December 7th 1946.

Prior to that, while working at the CBA (Compagnie Belge d’ActualitiÃ©s) cartoon studio, Morris met future comics super-stars Franquin and Peyo, and worked for weekly magazine Le Moustique as a caricaturist – which is probably why (to my eyes at least) his lone star hero looks uncannily like the young Robert Mitchum who graced so many memorable mid-1940s B-movie Westerns.

Morris quickly became one of â€œla Bande des quatreâ€ – The Gang of Four – which comprised creators JijÃ©, Will and his old comrade Franquin: the leading proponents of the loose and free-wheeling artistic style known as the â€œMarcinelle Schoolâ€ which dominated Spirou in aesthetic contention with the â€œLigne Claireâ€ style used by HergÃ©, EP Jacobs and other artists on Tintin Magazine.

In 1948 said Gang (all but Will) visited America, meeting US creators and sightseeing. Morris stayed for six years, meeting fellow traveller RenÃ© Goscinny, scoring some work from the newly-formed EC sensation Mad whilst making copious notes and sketches of the swiftly vanishing Old West.

That research would resonate on every page of his life’s work.

Working solo until 1955, Morris produced another nine albums worth of affectionate sagebrush parody before reuniting with Goscinny, who became the regular wordsmith as Luke attained the dizzying heights of superstardom, commencing with ‘Des rails sur la Prairie’ (Rails on the Prairie), which began in Spirou on August 25^th 1955.

In 1967 the six-gun straight-shooter switched sides, transferring to Goscinny’s own magazine Pilote with ‘La Diligence’ (The Stagecoach). Goscinny eventually produced 45 albums with Morris before his death, from whence onwards Morris continued both singly and with fresh collaborators.

Morris himself died in 2001 having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus spin-off sagas of Rantanplan (â€œdumbest dog in the Westâ€ and a charming spoof of cinema canine Rin-Tin-Tin), with AchdÃ©, Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac, Xavier Fauche, Jean LÃ©turgie, Jacques Pessis and others all taking a crack at the evergreen franchiseâ€¦

Moreover, apart from that very first adventure, Lucky (to appropriate a quote applied to the thematically simpatico TV classic Alias Smith and Jones) â€œin all that timeâ€¦ never shot or killed anyoneâ€â€¦

Lucky Luke first appeared in Britain syndicated to weekly comic Film Fun in the late 1950s and again in 1967 in Giggle where he was renamed Buck Bingo. In all these venues – as well as the numerous attempts to follow the English-language successes of Tintin and Asterix albums from Brockhampton and Knight Books – Luke had a trademark cigarette hanging insouciantly from his lip, but in 1983 Morris, no doubt amidst both pained howls and muted mutterings of â€œpolitical correctness gone madâ€, substituted a piece of straw for the much-travelled dog-end, which garnered him an official tip of the hat from the World Health Organization.

The most recent attempt to bring Lucky Luke to our shores and shelves comes from Cinebook (who have rightly restored the foul weed to his lips on the interior pages if not the coversâ€¦) and Jesse James was the fourth of 50 albums (and counting) currently available both on paper and as e-book editions.

On the continent it was the 35^th comic cowboy chronicle and Goscinny’s 26^th collaboration with Morris, originally appearing in 1969 and featuring an engaging overlapping of real world history and fantastic fiction. You have been warnedâ€¦

After an informative and funny graphic reintroduction to our splendid stars and their impressive capabilities, the saga commences as a recuperating gentleman named Jesse reads a book about Robin Hood and decides that he too is going to rob from the rich and give to the poor.

His first foray as a gun-toting social worker goes well except for the moral quandary resulting from giving a poor man all the money he’s just liberated and making him a rich one. Shakespeare-quoting brother Frank has a clever solution: if they keep the money, but keep passing it back and forth to each other, they can take from the rich and give to the poor at the same time and keep it in the family tooâ€¦

To make sure nobody stays rich for too long they bring hulking practical joking cousin Cole Younger into the pact and set about making themselves the most feared and unwelcome bandits in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri. After robbing banks and derailing trains throughout the region the gang heads for Texas where events are already unfolding to their eventual detriment.

In sleepy, prosperous Nothing Gulch two of the least undercover detectives ever employed by the Pinkerton Agency approach lean, laconic Luke. Agents Smith and Jones (not their real names) want his aid in apprehending the most wanted men in America, but our hero can only promise that since they’ve committed no crimes in Texas he will watch them and act accordingly if they doâ€¦

Satisfied with the compromise, the very Public Eyes retire to their camp outside town whilst Lucky proceeds to warn the locals of their impending guests. He is greeted with a wave of Texan bombast and bravado but realises the people are not-so-secretly terrified by the prospect of the James Boysâ€¦

The subjects of all that apprehension have just crossed the border into Texas and, after much pleading, foolishly allowed Cole to try his hand at derailing a train. The big lunk simply doesn’t have the knack for it however and soon Main Street is torn up as a runaway locomotive and still-attached carriages – having careened across county without benefit of rails – plough to a halt outside the saloonâ€¦

The spectacular event is the trigger for every citizen to pull their cash out of the town bank before the bandits do and spurs Luke into riding off and intercepting Jesse and Co to deliver a friendly warning.

Unfortunately Jesse is too proud to be told and the gang hit town only to discover the residents have taken even more extreme measures, donating enough cash to the town drunk to make him – comparatively – the richest man in Nothing Gulchâ€¦

With Lucky Luke watching and pickings slim, the James Boys begin a sly charm offensive to put everybody at ease but once the townsfolk calm down enough to put their money back in the bank all bets are off. Luring Luke away Jesse goes to work, raiding the Bank whilst Cole has another go at derailing, unaware that Lucky has second-guessed him and turned the gold-carry train into a trapâ€¦

However, on dragging the owlhoot back to town he finds the citizens so cowed that they organise a quick sham trial just so they can clear Younger of all charges and get him out of the district. Utterly disgusted, our hero and Jolly Jumper abandon the yellow Texans and Cole rides off to tell his cousins that the town is wide open for another raidâ€¦

In the shameful night time the citizens gather and something strange happens. Disgusted with themselves the ordinary folk talk themselves into a froth of righteous indignation and seek out Lucky. They need to redeem themselves and humbly beg the disgusted hero to join them as they prepare for Jesse James’ inevitable returnâ€¦

Fast-paced, seductive slapstick and wry cynical humour colour this splendidly mad ride, making it another grand old hoot in the tradition of Destry Rides Again and Support Your Local Sheriff (perhaps Paint Your Wagon, Evil Roy Slade or Cat Ballou are more your style?), superbly executed by master storytellers and a wonderful introduction to a unique genre for today’s kids who might well have missed the romantic allure of an all-pervasive Wild West that never wasâ€¦

And in case you’re worried, even though the interior art still has our hero chawin’ on that ol’ nicotine stick, trust me, there’s very little chance of anyone craving a quick snout – especially since Jolly Jumper is acting like a Greek chorus warning of the hazards of the evil weed – but quite a high probability that they’ll be addicted to Lucky Luke Albumsâ€¦
Â© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1969 by Goscinny & Morris. Â© Lucky Comics.
English translation Â© 2006 Cinebook Ltd.

March 9, 2015March 8, 2015

Batman: Silver Age Dailies and Sundays 1966-1967

By Whitney Ellsworth, Joe Giella, Sheldon Moldoff, Carmine Infantino & various ()
ISBN: 987-1-61377-845-6

For nearly seventy years in America the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail cartoonists and graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country and the planet, winning millions of readers and accepted (in most places) as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic-books, it also paid better. And the Holiest of Holies was the full-colour Sunday page.

So it was always something of a poisoned chalice when a comicbook character became so popular that it swam against the tide (after all weren’t the funny-books invented just to reprint the strips in cheap accessible form?) and became a syndicated serial strip. Both Superman and Wonder Woman made the jump soon after their debuts and many features have done so since.

Due to a number of war-time complications, the newspaper Batman and Robin strip was slow getting its shot but when the Dynamic Duo finally hit the Funny pages the feature soon proved to be one of the best-regarded, highest quality examples of the trend, both in Daily and Sunday formats.

The strips never achieved the circulation they deserved, but the Sundays were eventually given a new lease of life when DC began issue vintage stories in the 1960s for Batman 80-page Giants and Annuals. The exceedingly high-quality adventures were ideal short stories and added an extra cachet of exoticism for young readers already captivated by simply seeing tales of their heroes that were positively ancient and redolent of History with a capital â€œHâ€.

Such was not the case in the mid-1960s when, for a relatively brief moment, mankind went bananas for superheroes in general and most especially went â€œBat-Madâ€â€¦

The Silver Age of comicbooks utterly revolutionised a creatively moribund medium cosily snoozing in unchallenging complacency, bringing a modicum of sophistication to the returning genre of masked mystery men.

For quite some time the changes instigated by Julius Schwartz (in Showcase #4, October 1956) which rippled out in the last years of that decade to affect all of National/DC Comics’ superhero characters generally passed by Batman and Robin. Fans buying Batman, Detective Comics, World’s Finest Comics and latterly Justice League of America would read adventures that – in look and tone – were largely unchanged from the safely anodyne fantasies that had turned the Dark Knight into a mystery-solving, alien-fighting costumed Boy Scout just as the 1940s turned into the 1950s.

By the end of 1963, however, Schwartz having – either personally or by example – revived and revitalised the majority of DC’s line and, by extension and imitation, the entire industry with his reinvention of the Superhero, was asked to work his magic with the creatively stalled and nigh-moribund Caped Crusaders.

Bringing his usual team of top-notch creators with him, the Editor stripped down the core-concept, downplaying all the ETs, outlandish villains and daft transformation tales, bringing a cool modern take to the capture of criminals whilst overseeing a streamlining rationalisation of the art style itself. The most apparent change to us kids was a yellow circle around the Bat-symbol but, far more importantly, the stories also changed. A subtle aura of genuine menace had crept back in.

At the same time Hollywood was in production of a television series based on Batman and, through the sheer karmic insanity that permeates the universe, the studio executives were basing their interpretation upon the addictively daft material DC was emphatically turning its editorial back on rather than the â€œNew Look Batmanâ€ currently enthralling readers.

The Batman TV show premiered on January 12^th 1966 and ran for three seasons (120 episodes in total), airing twice weekly for the first two. It was a monumental, world-wide hit and sparked a wave of trendy imitation. The resulting media hysteria and fan frenzy generated an insane amount of Bat-awareness, no end of spin-offs and merchandise – including a movie – and introduced us all to the phenomenon of overkill.

No matter how much we might squeal and foam about it, to a huge portion of this planet’s population Batman is always going to be that â€œZap! Biff! Pow!â€ buffoonish costumed Boy Scoutâ€¦

â€œBatmaniaâ€ exploded across the world and then as almost as quickly became toxic and vanished, but at its height led to the creation of a fresh newspaper strip incarnation. The strip was a huge syndication success and even reached fuddy-duddy Britain, not in our papers and journals but as the cover feature of weekly comic Smash! (with the 20^th issue onwards).

The overwhelmingly successful Batman TV show ended in March, 1968. As the series foundered and faded away, the global fascination with â€œcampâ€ superheroes – and no, the term had nothing to do with sexual orientation no matter what you and Mel Brooks might think about Men in Tights – burst as quickly as it had boomed and the Caped Crusader was left with a hard core of dedicated fans and followers who now wanted their hero backâ€¦

From the time when the Gotham Guardians could do no wrong comes this superb collection re-presenting the bright and breezy, intentionally zany cartoon classics augmented by a wealth of background material, topped up with oodles of unseen scenes and detail to delight the most ardent Baby-boomer nostalgia-freaks.

It opens with an astonishingly informative and astoundingly picture-packed, candidly cool introduction from comics historian Joe Desris entitled ‘A History of the Batman and Robin Newspaper Strip’, stuffed with a wealth of newspaper promotional materials, premiums and giveaways, sketches, comicbook covers and the intimate lowdown on how the strip was coordinated to work in conjunction with regular comicbooks.

The Dailies and Sundays were all scripted by former DC editor (and the company’s Hollywood liaison) Whitney Ellsworth and initially illustrated by Bob Kane’s long-term art collaborator Sheldon Moldoff, before inker Joe Giella was tapped by the studio to provide a slick, streamlined and modern look to the visuals – frequently as penciller but ALWAYS as embellisher.

Since the feature was a seven-day-a-week job, Giella often called in few comicbook buddies to help lay-out and draw the strip; luminaries such as Carmine Infantino, Bob Powell, Werner Roth, Curt Swan and othersâ€¦

In those days, black-&-white Dailies and full-colour Sundays were mostly offered as separate packages and continuity strips often ran different stories for each. With Batman the strip started out that way, but switched to unified seven-day storylines in December 1966.

For convenience, this collection begins with the Sunday-only yarns. ‘Penguin Perpetrated a Prank’ (May 29^th – July 10^th 1966) saw the Fowl Felon and his masked moll Beulah go on a rather uninspired crime spree, after which ‘The Nasty Napoleon’ (July 17^th – October 16^th) introduced a pint-sized plunderer with delusions of military grandeur and larcenous intent. Moldoff was replaced by Giella and Infantino at the end of August, if you were wonderingâ€¦

â€œSwinging Englandâ€ was almost as big a craze as Batman at this time so it was no surprise that the Dynamic Duo would hop across The Pond to meet well-meaning but bumbling imitators ‘Batchap and Bobbin’, fighting crime in the sleepy hamlet of Lemon Regis (October 23^rd – December 18^th) after which the Sundays were incorporated into the working week storylinesâ€¦

The monochrome Dailies launched on May 30^th, Ellsworth & Moldoff kicking off the festivities with a healthy dose of sex & violence as ‘Catwoman is a Wily Wench’ (running until July 9^th 1966) had the sultry bandit quickly captured only to break out of jail and go on a vengeance-fuelled spree intended to end Batman’s career and lifeâ€¦

‘Two Jokers and a Laughing Girl’ (July 11^th – September 24^th) found the Clown Prince of Crime paroled into the custody of Bruce Wayne whilst secretly robbing Gotham blind by employing a body-double.

As Giella took over the art chores, it took a guest shot from Superman to iron out that macabre miscreant’s merry muddleâ€¦

Claiming he had been robbed of his rightfully stolen loot the Wily Bird brigand became ‘Penguin the Complainant’ (September 26^th – October 8^th), demanding his greatest enemies and the Gotham police catch a modern-day pirate plaguing him.

That led in turn to a flotilla of fists and foolishness as Batman and Robin began ‘Flying the Jolly Roger’ (October 10^th – December 9^th) after which Daily and Sunday segments unified as our courteous but severely outmatched Chivalrous Crusaders faced their greatest challenge from a trio of college girls – The Ivy League Dropouts.

The co-ed crooks and their floral field commander in ‘The Sizzling Saga of Poison Ivy’ (December 10^th 1966-March 17^th 1967) were unrelated to the psychotic poisoner created by Robert Kanigher (in Batman #181, June 1966) in everything but nameâ€¦

Like its TV counterpart, the strip began increasingly featuring real-world guest stars and the bad girl’s scheme to plunder hospitality magnate Conrad Hilton‘s latest enterprise – The Batman Hilton – led to comedic cross-dressing hijinks, a doomed affair for Bruce and plenty of publicity for all concernedâ€¦

The guest policy was expanded in ‘Jack Benny’s Stolen Stradivarius’ (March 18^th – April 30^th) as the infamously penny-pinching comedian promised the Gotham Gangbusters a thousand dollar-an-hour stipend (for charity, of course) to recover his fiddle but insisted on accompanying them everywhere to ensure they worked at top speedâ€¦

A major character debuted in ‘Batgirl Ain’t your Sister’ (May 1^st – July 9^th) as a masked mystery woman began prowling the night streets. She was beating up plenty of baddies but their loot never seemed to be recoveredâ€¦

With no clues and nothing to go on, all Batman and Robin could do was masquerade as crooks and start robbing places in hopes of being caught by the â€œDominoed Daredollâ€, but by the time they found each other The Riddler had involved himself, planning to kill everybody and keep all that accumulated loot for himselfâ€¦

Riding a wave and feeling ambitious, Ellsworth & Giella began their longest saga yet as ‘Shivering Blue Max, â€œPretty Boyâ€ Floy and Flo’ (running from July 10^th 1967 to March 18^th 1968) saw a perpetually hypothermic criminal pilot accidentally down the Batcopter and erroneously claim the underworld’s million dollar bounty on Batman and Robin.

The heroes were not dead, but the crash had caused the Caped Crusader to lose his memory and, whilst Robin and faithful manservant Alfred sought to remedy his affliction, Max collected his prize and jetted off for sunnier climes.

With Batman missing, neophyte crimebuster Batgirl then tracked down the heroes – incidentally learning their secret identities – and was instrumental in restoring him to action if not quite his full functioning facultiesâ€¦

When underworld paymaster BG (Big) Trubble heard that the heroes had returned he quite understandably started procedures to get his money back, forcing Max to return to Gotham where he stupidly fell foul of Pretty Boy before that hip young gunsel and his sister Flo kicked off a murderous scheme to fleece a horoscope addicted millionaireâ€¦

To Be Continued, Bat-Fansâ€¦

Supplementing the parade of guilty pleasures is a copious, comprehensive and fabulously educational section on ‘Notes on Stories in this Volume’ – also generously illustrated with covers, photos and show-&-strip arcana – as well as a fascinating behind-the-scenes display highlighting editorial corrections and alterations to the strips required by those ever-so-fussy TV studio people. Everything then ends for now with a schematic key to ‘The Batman Cast’ as depicted on the back cover.

The stories in this compendium reflect gentler times and an editorial policy focusing as much on broad humour as Batman’s reputation as a manhunter, so the colourful, psychotic costumed super-villains are in a minority here, but if you’re of a certain age or open to fun-over-thrills this a collection well worth your attention.

Batman: Silver Age Dailies and Sundays 1966-1967 is the first in a series of huge (305 x 236mm) lavish, high-end hardback collections starring the Gotham Gangbusters, and a welcome addition to the superb commemorative series of Library of American Comics which has preserved and re-presented in luxurious splendour such landmark strips as Li’l Abner, Tarzan, Little Orphan Annie, Terry and the Pirates, Bringing Up Father, Rip Kirby, Polly and her Pals and many other cartoon icons.

If you love the era, the medium of just graphic narratives, these stories are great comics reading, and this is a book you simply must have.
Â© 2014 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. Batman and all related characters and elements â„¢ DC Comics.

March 7, 2015March 6, 2015

Secret Warriors volume 5: Night

By Jonathan Hickman, Mirko Colac, Alessandro Vitti, David Marquez & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4803-6

In his â€œInfinity-formulaâ€ extended career, Marvel’s immortal secret agent Nick Fury fought in every war since WWII, worked for the CIA and ran numerous iterations of superspy agency S.H.I.E.L.D.; generally finding over and again that nobody could be trusted – not to stay clean and decent – in a world of temptation.

Worse yet, even the best of men could be forced to whatever was necessary given the right motivationâ€¦

Too many times the spooks â€œon our sideâ€ became as debased as the bad guys in a world where covert agencies were continually exposed as manipulative, out-of-control tools of subversion, oppression and ambition.

The taste of betrayal and those seeds of doubt and mistrust never went away, and following a succession of global crises – including a superhero Civil War and the rise of a certified maniac to the second most powerful position in America – Fury was ousted as S.H.I.E.L.D. director.

His immediate successor Tony Stark proved to be a huge – if well-meaning â€“ mistake, and after an alien invasion by Skrulls the entire organisation was mothballed. He was replaced by the dynamic Norman Osborn and his cultishly loyal H.A.M.M.E.R. outfit. It was a case of giving a rabid fox the keys to the henhouseâ€¦

As America’s Director of National Security, the former Green Goblin instituted a draconian â€œDark Reignâ€ of oppressive, aggressive policies which turned the USA into a paranoid tinderbox.

The nation’s Top Fed was specifically tasked with curbing the unchecked power and threat of a burgeoning metahuman community, but he was also covertly directing a cabal of the world’s greatest criminals and conquerors; intent on divvying up the planet between them. The repercussions of Osborn’s rise (and inevitable fall) were felt throughout and featured in many series and collections throughout the entire fictive universe.

His brief rule also drastically shook up the entrenched secret empires of the planet and his defeat destabilised many previously unassailable clandestine Powers and Statesâ€¦

Fury, a man driven by duty, fuelled by suspicion and powered by a serum which kept him vital far beyond his years, didn’t go away. He just went deep undercover and continued doing what he’d always done – saving the world, one battle at a time. From this unassailable, unsuspected vantage point, free of the shackles of politically motivated oversight, Fury picked his battles and slowly gathered assets and resources he had personally vetted or constructedâ€¦

The indomitable freedom fighter had always known that to do the job properly he needed his own trustworthy forces and no constraints. To this end he had spent decades secretly sourcing and stockpiling his own formidable, unimpeachable army. Decades in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. had provided him with mountains of data on metahumans. From these he had compiled â€œCaterpillar Filesâ€ covering many unknown, unexploited and, most importantly, untainted potential operatives who might one day metamorphose into true assetsâ€¦

His first move was to assemble a crack squad of super-human agents. Team White initially comprised Yo Yo Rodriguez AKA Slingshot, neophyte mystic Sebastian Druid, Jerry â€œStonewallâ€ Sledge, J.T. â€œHellfireâ€ James, instinctive leader Daisy Johnson – codenamed Quake – and the terrifyingly volatile Alexander: a 12-year old boy with incredible power.

The child Phobos was destined to become a true god and personification of Fear itself but until then his daily-growing divine gifts were Fury’s to useâ€¦ if he daredâ€¦

In the aftermath of the wave of crises the old soldier had come across a truly shocking piece of intel: for most of his career, S.H.I.E.L.D. had been no more than a deeply submerged and ring-fenced Hydra experiment.

All Fury’s world-saving triumphs had been nothing more than acceptable short-term losses for a secret society which claims to reach back to ancient Egypt, secretly steering the world for millennia.

However since Osborn and the Skrull invasion had shaken things up, the old war-dog now had an honest chance of wiping out his perfidious many-headed, faceless foe foreverâ€¦

Hydra had been badly damaged by the crisis, and as the dust settled Baron Wolfgang von Strucker sought to capitalise on the chaos to regenerate the cult in his own image, seizing all fallow assets, technology and even experienced agents abandoned by friends and enemies alikeâ€¦

To this end, Strucker co-opted breakaway factions of Hydra and convened a new hierarchy of deadly lieutenants loyal to him alone. However even with Viper, Madame Hydra, Kraken, Silver Samurai, The Hive and mystically resurrected mutant ninja The Gorgon on board, the prospect of wedding super-science and corporate rapaciousness with ancient magic and millennial covert cabals was a risky ployâ€¦

Their rabid rapid expansion also gave Fury an opportunity to place one of his own deep within the organisationâ€¦

To further bolster his own relatively meagre forces, Fury reached out to selected old S.H.I.E.L.D. comrades and especially his former second-in-command Dum-Dum Dugan who had gathered up the most trustworthy agents and veterans into a private security agency – the Howling Commandos Private Military Company. Warriors to the last, they were all looking for one last good war and a proper way to dieâ€¦

Some of them got their wish when the good guys launched a daring raid and stole three of the mothballed colossal flying fortress warships dubbed Helicarriers, laying the groundwork for an imminent, unavoidable and very public shooting warâ€¦

Fury’s counterattack failed spectacularly and in the resultant chaos that followed things only got worseâ€¦

Now Hydra has once more splintered into factions again leaving Strucker embroiled in a globe-spanning vendetta with Soviet-founded subversive organisation Leviathan. Moreover, their once-covert conflict has escalated into a monstrously damaging and destructively public shooting war resulting in thousands of collateral civilian casualties all over Earthâ€¦

Written throughout by Jonathan Hickman, this fifth complex and intriguing espionage epic collects Secret Warriors #20-24 (November 2010-March 2011) and opens with the eponymous 3-parter ‘Night’ and ‘How Did Things Ever Come to This?’ (art by Mirko Colak and Alessandro Vitti) wherein Fury briefs his diminished White team – Hellfire, Stonewall, Slingshot, Daisy, Phobos and human teleporter Eden Fesi – about the growing crisis and tells them how they’re going to stop it.

Once the squad’s preparations to raid and eradicate Hydra’s key base are finalised, the traitor in Fury’s handpicked team takes the first opportunity to pass on the plans to the always-one-step-ahead oppositionâ€¦

Infiltrating the supposedly unsuspecting Gehenna Base in ‘This is How it was Always Going To Be’ Team White find a veritable army of hostiles led by Gorgon, Strucker and Madame Hydra waiting for them, but still manage to plant a devastating â€œmountain-breakerâ€ bomb before beginning a frantic retreat. In the melee Fury and Phobos are separated from the rest.

Confronted by Gorgon, the boy-god tricks his grizzled human mentor into leaving before turning to duel the Gorgon. After a shattering battle with enchanted swords Alex dies heroically, enigmatically stating â€œthis is how it’s supposed to beâ€â€¦

The tragedy concludes with ‘I Gave Everything I Had’ as the mountain-breaker – aided by Daisy’s quake powers – detonates and Fury pragmatically drives his protÃ©gÃ©s to a secret rendezvous where his back-up escape plan is waiting.

The old warrior then selects one of the squad to join him in a rearguard action and, as they hold back the Hydra hordes, makes it plain that he’s aware of the greedy treachery which caused this debacle and Phobos’ death.

Only Fury rejoins the rest of Team White as they make their hairsbreadth escapeâ€¦

In the aftermath, Strucker fumes, his frustration at fever pitch and his power further diminished by the desertion of The Gorgon and Madame Hydra. He is not expecting his faithful subordinate Kraken to try to kill himâ€¦

Illustrated by Alessandro Vitti, ‘Rebirth’ offers an elucidatory flashback which clarifies the mechanics of the team’s lucky escape. Six months previously Fury had very publicly kicked junior sorcerer Sebastian Druid out, declaring him a liability.

It was another ruse and ‘There Is No Out’ reveals how the portly mage was subsequently hot-housed by cyborg SHIELD agent John Garrett whose draconian training program turned the sad sack into a lethally capable operative in complete control of his eldritch abilities.

As a graduation test Garrett had Druid assassinate one of the Leviathan leaders and make it appear as if Hydra was behind the killingâ€¦

The Beginning of The End commences with ‘Wheels Within Wheels Part One’ (art by David Marquez & Vitti) as another strand of Fury’s Byzantine scheme seemingly falls apart. A year ago and unknown to all, he had activated another, completely covert Caterpillar team of super-agents, led by his own son Mikel.

Now ‘I Did My Best’ reveals how that entire squad falls in battle against Hydra rebel Hive and a shell-shocked, heartbroken and utterly beaten Nick Fury surrenders himself to Kraken and his Hydra hostâ€¦

To Be Concludedâ€¦

This excellent exercise in tense suspense and Machiavellian manipulation also includes a stunning ‘Cover gallery’ by Jim Cheung and Paul Renaud to supplement the bleak, engagingly cynical, convoluted, over-the-top action and dazzling cloak-and-dagger conflicts: employing enough intrigue to bamboozle even the most ardent espionage aficionado, with the added bonus that far less knowledge of Marvel continuity is necessary to fully appreciate this particularly intense and engaging effort to the full.
Â© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

March 6, 2015March 5, 2015

Ofelia – A Love and Rockets Book

By Gilbert Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-806-9

Please pay attention: this book contains stories and images of an extremely adult nature, specifically designed for consumption by mature readers as well as the kind of coarse and vulgar language that most kids are fluent in by the age of ten.

If reading about such things will offend you, please stop now and go away. Tomorrow I’ll do something with violence and explosions, so come back then.

In addition to being part of the graphic literary revolution that is Love and Rockets (where his astonishingly compulsive tales of Palomar gained vast critical acclaim), Gilbert Hernandez has produced stand-alone tales such as Sloth, Grip and Girl Crazy, all marked by his bold, instinctive, simplified line artwork and a mature, sensitive use of the literary techniques of Magical Realist writers Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel GarcÃa MÃ¡rquez: techniques which he has added to and made his own.

Love and Rockets – by Gilbert and his brothers Jaime and Mario – was/is an anthology comics publication featuring slick, intriguing, sci-fi-ish larks, heart-warming, terrifying, gut-wrenching soap-opera fantasies, manic monster stories and bold experimental comic narratives that pretty much defy classification. To this day the synthesistic Hernandez boys continue to captivate with incredible stories that sample a thousand influences conceptual and actual – everything from Archie Comics and alternative music to German Expressionism and masked wrestlers.

Created for extended serial Heartbreak Soup, Palomar was a conceptual playground and cultural toybox; an impoverished Latin-American village with a vibrant, funny and fantastically quotidian cast. Everything from life, death, adultery, alien infiltration, magic making, hauntings, serial-killing and especially gossip happened in its meta-fictional environs as Gilbert plundered his own post-punk influences – comics, music, drugs, comics, strong women, gangs, sex, family and comics – in a style informed by everything from Tarzan strips to Saturday morning cartoons and The Lucy Show.

Beto, as he signs himself, returns to Palomar constantly, usually with tales involving the formidable matriarch Luba, who ran the village’s bath house and cinema, acted as Mayor and sometimes law enforcer – as well as adding regularly and copiously to the general population. Her children, brought up with no acknowledged fathers in sight, are Maricela, Guadalupe, Doralis, Casimira, Socorro, Joselito and Conchita.

Luba is a character who defies easy description and I don’t actually want to: As one of the most complex women in literature, let alone comics, she’s somebody you want to experience, not learn of second-hand. You will certainly notice that she has absolutely enormous breasts. Deal with it. These stories are casually, graphically, sexually explicit, and appalling violence is also never far from the players lives.

Luba’s story is about Life, and sex and death happen, constantly and often, usually to and with the wrong people at the wrong time. If harsh language and cartoon nudity (male and female) are an insurmountable problem for you, don’t read these tales; but it is genuinely your loss.

Throughout all those eventful years, normally always in the background and frequently sidelined, was Luba’s cousin Ofelia; babysitter, surrogate mum, confidante, family conscience and keen – if not so detached – observerâ€¦

After a run of spectacular stories (all of which have been collected in a variety of formats and editions which I really must get around to reviewing), the first incarnation of Love and Rockets ended. Luba and her extended family graduated to a succession of mini-series which concentrated on her moving to the USA and reuniting with her half-sisters Rosalba (â€œFritzâ€) and Petra Martinez. The tone and content ranged from surreal to sad to funny to thrilling. The entire world can be found in these pages.

Although in an ideal world you would read that aforementioned older material first, there’s absolutely no need to. Reminiscence and memory are as much a part of this potent passion-play as family feeling, music, infidelity, survival, punk rock philosophy, and laughter – lots and lots of laughter.

Brilliantly illustrated, these are human tales as coarse and earthy any as any of Chaucer’s Pilgrims could tell, as varied and appetising as any of Boccaccio’s Decameron and as universally human as the best of that bloke Shakespeare.

This latest monochrome family album sees sidebar â€œsisterâ€ Ofelia notionally promoted to headliner, compiled from assorted material first seen in Luba #3-9, Luba’s Comics and Stories #2-5 and Measles #3 and, following a crucial pictorial reintroduction to ‘Luba’s Family’, the ever-unfolding saga resumes with ‘Remember Me’ as the youngest kids swap tales about the fathers they have never known.

After ‘Luba and the Little Ones’ finds the ferocious matron calming down her very excitable progeny, ‘Socorroâ€¦’ details that girl’s educational problems. Apparently she is too smart and the teachers want her transferred to a special schoolâ€¦

‘The Book of Ofelia Part One’ sees Luba and her mute, maimed and possibly ex-gangster husband Khamo reeling from the news that their faithful major domo is considering writing a book based on her cousin’s drama-drenched life. With friction mounting, the frustrated author and perennial babysitter casts her mind back to Palomar where she sacrificed her relationship with lover Rico (â€œcall me Ooliâ€) to raise a wild toddler called Luba.

Back in the now, wise-beyond-her-years Casimira knows her quiet guardian is in contact with an old flame on the internetâ€¦

‘The Book of Ofelia Part Two’ expands on the theme as the prospective writer recalls the years of fighting with her wilful almost elemental charge whilst pondering a too-long deferred decisionâ€¦

‘Spot Marks the Ex’ then exposes more family scandals as entrepreneur Pipo tries to get rid of her former husband Gato and deal with the ongoing problems caused by Luba’s daughter Doralis.

The teen-star of Pipo’s popular Spanish-language kid’s show plans to come out as a lesbian, much to the sponsors’ horror; someone at the studio is giving the newspapers salacious scandals for their holier-than-thou gossip pages and her beloved son Sergio Jimenez (a soccer superstar and celebrity bad boy) is having an affair with Fritz Martinez – the very woman Pipo cannot get out of her own oversexed mindâ€¦

Fritz is a terrifyingly complex creature, a psychiatrist, therapist, B-Movie actress, belly dancer, amorous drunk, gun-fetishist, sexually aggressive and a manipulative serial spouse. Beautiful, enticingly emotionally damaged, her â€œhigh soft lispâ€ more likely an affectation than genuine speech impediment, she sashays from crisis to triumph and back again, and almost everybody who wants hers can apparently have her – except increasingly impatient Pipoâ€¦

Moreover, as strident accountant Boots signs on to save Pipo’s company, the stressed and busy businesswoman begins to suspect Sergio and his stepfather Gato have some strange connection and are up to no goodâ€¦

‘El Show Super Duper Sensacional Fantastico de Doralis’ reveals the controversial gay star’s story of the irresistibly beguiling merfolk who live in secret amongst us, after which ‘Snail Trail’ introduces a well-meaning young man named Hector who rescues Socorro and Joselito after they steal and crash a car.

He sees and is instantly enchanted by their Tia (that’s Aunt in Spanish, hombre) Fritz in ‘Bromear’ and in ‘Meeting Cute, Fucking Cuter’ falls hopelessly for the sexual predator: so much so, in fact, that he agrees to her request to date her quirky, buff, bodybuilding older sister Petra, thus leaving Fritz free for a sordid secret affair with toyboy acquaintance Sergioâ€¦

Sadly, whipped Hector finds he has more in common with Petra’s little daughter Venus. They both love the same comicbooks, movies and music and she doesn’t make him do things he’d rather notâ€¦

A garden party bids ‘Buen Viaje, Socorro’ and sees the smart girl’s last family fun before heading off to smart kid boarding school, after which ‘Luba One’ finds the downhearted mum dragged to fetish party by Fritz and Pipo where she finds blonde sex god Fortunato: a man no woman can resist and a perfect lover who derives no joy from his amatory conquestsâ€¦

Boots, mindful of the merman legend, speculates on his origins in ‘The Fortunato Files’ after which ‘The Goddess and the Goof’ finds Hector finally capitulating to pressure and taking gloriously gorgeous, Amazonian Petra out only to discover she is every inch as bewitching and satisfying as her sister. Conflicted by a surfeit of physical riches he ponders a big decisionâ€¦

After a little dance madness in ‘El Biale’, Venus and Doralis share a moment with one of the fallen star’s fans in ‘The Glamorous Life’ whilst ‘Boots Takes the Case’ has the tenacious little accountant assume a larger role. With Gato exposed as the source of the leaks and sorrowfully reaping his reward in ‘And Soâ€¦’, Boots then proceeds to worm out more secrets in ‘Kisses for Pipo’; appraising key moments since the entrepreneur entered America as a teen, disclosing her past interactions with Sergio, Gato (and his current wife Guadalupe), Fortunato and Pipo’s latest fling Igorâ€¦

‘In Bed With Pipo’ targets her bizarrely twisted relationship with gun-obsessed Fritz, the men they occasionally share and a terrifying past experience when both were stranded in a country in the midst of an anti-Christian genocideâ€¦

Revelations include the horrific tale of how High-School junior Rosalba fell into an abusive relationship with a middle-aged cop, offering telling insights for her modern personasâ€¦

‘Luba Two’ delves deep into Khamo’s off-kilter arrangements with both cops and drug dealers whilst – after surreal sight-gag ‘Uno Dos Tres’ – ‘The New Adventures of Venus’ proves that the latest generation can be just as determined and violently forceful. When the little comics lover discovers her best friend is a potential romantic rival, Venus takes excessive punitive action on the soccer fieldâ€¦

With the entire world on tenterhooks as a colossal meteor heads towards Earth, Fritz’s exploitative ex-husband Scott gets up to his old tricks in ‘The Beloved and the Damned’. He couldn’t have expected the savage beating a mysterious stranger delivers after ripping off kickboxing Petra’s baby sister though.

Unfortunately the Avenger in question gets a taste for vigilantism and begins looking for other jerks in need of straightening outâ€¦

Khamo’s underworld connections then lead to a disquieting abduction and ‘Luba’s Science Lesson’ before ever-more conflicted Hector returns, still unable to choose between Petra and Fritz but currently distracted by his ex-girlfriend taking him to court as part of a whacko ploy to get him back in ‘And Justice for Some’.

That plan goes badly wrong when a stranger beats her to a pulp in the parking lot of the strip club she works atâ€¦

Boot’s ongoing investigations resurface as she explains ‘The Tao of Doralis’ before a very stoned ‘Hector‘ rescues non-English-speaking Luba from a bar, leading into flashbacks of ‘Khamo’ and her early days. That long, weird walk home also delivers more revelations about the enigmatic Fortunato before Luba and her taciturn husband at last reconcile in ‘Lovers and Hector’â€¦

Events then take a dark turn in ‘Sergio Rocks’ as the wild child is targeted by gangster gamblers even as belly-dancing novice ‘Guadalupe’ strives to escape the overwhelming influence of her charismatic Tia Fritzâ€¦

Receding Ofelia resurfaces in ‘Luba Again’ as the cousins bitterly and violently argue over the proposed warts-and-all book and, after visual aside ‘Click!’, the determined author visits Socorro in ‘La Luba’ whilst long ostracised Maricela has a rather one-sided chat with step-dad Khamo in ‘Burning for You’â€¦

‘Pipo’s Burden’ revisits her still-growing obsession with Fritz whilst ‘Of Two Minds’ highlights Hector’s suspicions when he attends one of Petra’s boxing bouts and Fortunato works his magic on schoolteacher Guadalupe and Ofelia in ‘But the Little Girls Understand’ after which ‘Luba Three’ ushers in the beginning of the end of this family’s affairsâ€¦

‘Fritz and Pipo, Sittin’ in a Tree’ finds Sergio growing aggressively intolerant of his mother’s dilemma whilst still making casual use of Fritz himself. Soon the still-active vigilante has hospitalised the entrepreneur, and more tragedy strikes when Ofelia has a heart attack in ‘God Willing’â€¦

Once the violence begins it seems impossible to stop and in ‘Luba Four’ the so-dysfunctional family splinters even further when an abduction and punishment beating goes too farâ€¦

I’m certainly more obtuse – just plain dense or blinkered – than most, but for years I thought this stuff was all about the force of Family Ties, but it’s not: at least not fundamentally. Palomar is about love. Not the sappy one-sided happy-ever-after stuff in chick-flicks, but LOVE, that mighty, hungry beast that makes you instinctively protect the child that betrays you, that has you look for a better partner whilst you’re in the arms of your one true love, and hate the place you wanted to live in all your life. The love of cars and hair-cuts and biscuits and paper-cuts and stray cats that bite you: selfish, self-sacrificing, dutiful, urgent, patient, uncomprehending, a feeling beyond words. A Love that can hurt and even killâ€¦

A bit like the love of a great comicâ€¦

Funny, deeply moving, compelling and deftly capable of delivering shock after breathtaking shock, Ofelia is remarkable and unmissable: no true fan of the medium can afford to forego this treat.
All contents Â© 2015 Gilbert Hernandez. This edition Â© 2015 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

March 5, 2015March 3, 2015

The Chronicles of Legion volume 1: Rise of the Vampires

By Fabien Nury, Mathieu Lauffray, Mario Alberti, Zhang Xiaoyu & Tirso , translated by Virgine Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-093-1

We’ve all been in love with vampires since the golden age of Victorian Gothic and it’s taken the undead in some extremely odd directions (I personally draw the line at sparkly, immortal kissy-face boy-toys, but to each his own)…

Thankfully our European cousins have a more sanguine view of such matters and innate respect for tradition even when they reinterpret the old classics. Prolific writer Fabien Nury (Stalin’s Death: A Real Soviet History, Once Upon a Time in France, The Master of Benson Gate, Necromancy as well as the epic Je Suis LÃ©gion with John Cassaday) began in 2011 a generational saga which put a new spin on the legend whilst keeping a steady eye on the tone of what has gone beforeâ€¦

Les Chroniques de Legion was illustrated by round-robin art-team Mathieu (Star Wars, Long John Silver) Lauffray, Mario (Nathan Never, Morgana, assorted DC covers) Alberti, the enigmatic Zhang Xiaoyu & Tirso Cons (Eye of the Devil, Le Manoir murmurs) and opens here (in good old English) in 1476 as barbaric warlord Vlad Tepes finally falls before the overwhelming armies of the invading Moslem horde.

His stubborn Transylvania a crushed and broken province, the infamous leader had been dragged from the arms of his favourite concubine and beheaded by exultant general Selim Bey. Working for the invaders, Vlad’s despised and treacherous brother Radu knew that the story was not over yet…

As the victorious Turk ravished his despised enemy’s beloved, Dracula’s implacable sibling rival was too late to stop his brother’s malign blood invading the Moslem’s body and eating his devout mind. In an instant Selim Bey’s was gone, overwritten by the undying Impalerâ€¦

Nor could Radu not stop the horror escaping and after â€œSelimâ€ murdered the Sultan and vanished, the Transylvanian turncoat endured all the anger and hatred of the Ottomans. Of course since his blood was just as accursed as Vlad’s, Radu’s story didn’t end with his body’s death eitherâ€¦

In 1521 Vlad was on the move once more, inhabiting the body of Gabriella Del La Fuente. This recent orphan was travelling to the New World, contracted to marry the audacious conquistador Hernan Torres. A flower of the aristocracy, her perfect beauty was only marred by the strange red mark on the back of her neck – a blemish shared with her recently-departed father Victor and a long-dead Turk named Selim Beyâ€¦

She had no idea Radu had reached the Americas first and transformed them to a hell of his own devising. The other brother had sustained his own arcane life by equally esoteric means, only in his case the intellect was scattered and diminished by the swarm of rats who consumed him for the longest timeâ€¦

In Russia in 1812, an undying warrior sprit was wearing French Hussar Armand Malachie. As Napoleon’s broken armies fled before the vengeful Cossacks, he convinced his faithful subordinates Kholya, Stern, Hartmann and Feraud to desert with him. Detouring to the Wallachian Mountains they hunted for valuable loot Armand had heard about: the Lost Treasure of Vlad Dracula Tepesâ€¦

It was all a lie. The true reason for the diversion was that Dracula sensed far-distant Radu had allowed an unprecedented atrocity to be created and the time had come to end their infinitely extended vendetta foreverâ€¦

London, 1887: elderly lawyer Morris Webster contacts friendless, antisocial clerk and gambling addict Victor Douglas Thorpe with an offer that will forever liberate the morose wastrel and ne’er-do-well from the drudgery of his impoverished Whitechapel life.

For reasons inexplicable, Thorpe has been selected by immensely rich aristocratic recluse Lord Byron Cavendish to inherit all his lands and propertiesâ€¦ upon successful conclusion of a personal interview, of courseâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

Lavishly presented in an oversized (211 x 282mm) full-colour hardback, evocatively illustrated and told through contiguous strands in many concurrent times, this epic, intoxicatingly absorbing horror mosaic depicts a constant battle between two remorseless foes inextricably linked by blood to grip and delight lovers of all things dark and demonicâ€¦
The Chronicles of Legion and all contents Â© Ã‰ditions GlÃ©nat 2011. Translated edition Â© Titan Comics, 2014.

March 4, 2015March 3, 2015

Thor: Son of Asgard

By Akira Yoshida & Greg Tocchini & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1456-3

In the middle of 1962, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby launched their latest offbeat superhero creation in anthology monsters-and-mysteries title Journey into Mystery #83. The tale introduced crippled American doctor Donald Blake who took a vacation in Norway only to encounter the vanguard of an alien invasion fleet. Fleeing in terror, he was trapped in a cave wherein lay an old, gnarled walking stick. When, in helplessness and frustration, the puny human smashed the cane into the huge boulder obstructing his escape, Blake’s insignificant frame was transformed into the bold and brawny Norse God of Thunder, Thor!

The series grew from formulaic beginnings battling aliens, commies and cheap thugs into a vast, panoramic and breathtaking cosmic playground for Kirby’s burgeoning imagination. Anthological Journey into Mystery inevitably became Mighty Thor where, after years of bombastic adventuring, the inconsistencies of the Blake/Thor relationship were re-examined and finally clarified to explain how an immortal godling could also be locked within a frail short-lived mortal.

That startling saga took the immortal hero back to his long-distant youth and finally revealed that the mortal surgeon was no more than an Odinian construct designed to teach the Thunder God humility and compassionâ€¦

As decades passed the series underwent numerous reboots and re-imaginings to keep the wonders of fabled Asgard appealing to an increasingly jaded readership. An already exceedingly broad range of scenarios spawned even greater visual variety after the Thunderer’s introduction to the pantheon of cinematic Marvels with his ongoing triumphs making him a bona fide blockbuster movie star.

In this scintillating traditional fantasy yarn (collecting Thor: Son of Asgard #1-12, May 2004-March 2005) scripter Akira Yoshida and illustrator Greg Tocchini – with the initial inking assistance of Jay Leisten – expand on the largely unexplored childhood of the Prince of Asgard, with special attention paid to his closest companions; a bold, brave and imaginative lad named Balder and the only female student in Warrior School â€“ raven-haired tomboy Sifâ€¦

After a beguiling pictorial introduction to the Eternal Realm, the action opens in ‘The Warriors Teen’ as the heir of All-father Odin strives with increasing frustration to lift mystic hammer Mjolnir, an arcane artefact which can only be wielded by one who is worthyâ€¦

His latest failure is made worse by the gut-busting laughter of his best friends Balder and Sif who have seen this scene played out many times by the impetuous, impatient warrior in waiting. Also watching is the Prince’s foster-brother Loki. The malevolent child attends the sorcery school rather its martial cousin and everybody but Thor knows him to be mean-spirited, if not outright evilâ€¦

The hidden watcher quickly proves everybody right when he prankishly turns harmless bugs into ravening giant monsters, subsequently forcing the children to fight for their lives.

Drawn by the sounds of battle Odin arrives and, impressed with the carnage, deems it time to send the trio on a Warriors Quest. Without pausing to ask, Thor accepts the dangerous obligation and cannot understand why his friends are so angry with himâ€¦

Only after despatching the youngsters to gather four rare articles from the far corners of the Nine Realms to create a new magical weapon does the All-Father turn his attention to his other sonâ€¦

As the intrepid youths set out to collect the scale of a dragon, the feather of a snow-eagle, a mystic gem and water from an enchanted lake, no one in Asgard is aware that spiteful eyes are watching and planning further harmâ€¦

One of Marvel’s richest seams of pure imagination, the Nine Realms impacted by the mighty races of Asgard and its satellites have always offered stirring, expansive tales of a non-traditional nature to comicbook readers. The full range of those worlds of wonder are explored when the heroic trio enter the Hidden Hills only to be confronted by a monstrous dragon somehow warned of their coming and quite prepared to unleash ‘The Heat of Hakurei’.

Only by the most inspired teamwork do the heroes succeed before travelling on to the frozen wilds of Jotunheim to battle undying ice pixies before scaling ‘The Nest of Gnori’ and winning a feather from the mighty avian deity’s wing.

After such extremes the idyllic green jungles of their next destination are a welcome break. Luxuriating by a limpid pool the boys are placed in embarrassing straits when skulking Loki – who has secretly followed – orchestrates a scenario where oafish Thor accidentally stumbles upon Sif bathing.

However her rightful wrath soon turns to something gentler after she boxes her blushing friend’s ears, leaving Loki to agonise about what he must do to destroy the comrades’ regard for each otherâ€¦

The answer comes later as the trio traverse scorching sands to reach mystic mines and are all – even Loki – dragged down unto ‘The Jaws of Jennia’ by emotion-sucking imps. Once more cool, logical Balder saves the day where all Thor’s strength cannotâ€¦

As they make their way back to the surface and their final task, the trio do not realise that their invisible stalker Loki has been abducted by a truly inimical enemyâ€¦

The quest then takes a dramatic turn as the Prince of Mischief escapes the clutches of evil sorceress Karnilla and finds the wandering heroes en route to the final element at ‘The Lakes of Lilitha’.

Owning up to many attempts at sabotaging them, the trickster begs them to return him to Asgard as Karnilla is planning an imminent attack and the Realm must be warned. Thor, always more blind to his brother’s schemes than his friends, is in a quandary over how to proceed but ultimately decides Balder and Sif should return with his brother whilst he completes the final task alone.

After overcoming immense and outrageous ordeals the boy tastes nothing but frustration when he finally reaches the enchanted lake to discover it is nothing but a dried-up pit of sandâ€¦

Fuming with fury he rushes back to Asgard only to arrive as an army of giants and dragons breach the city’s walls. Joining the fray he helps repel the invading horde but is struck down by vengeful Karnilla at the moment of the Aesir’s triumphâ€¦

Suffering the vengeful fury of Odin, the sorceress is unable to see how Sif’s tears and the magic articles gathered in the quest bring the heroic prince back from the Land of the Dead in ‘The Trio Triumphant’. Nevertheless the witch makes one last defiant gesture by trying to kill Odin’s other son. With all Asgard stymied, once again cool Balder’s quick mind saves the dayâ€¦

Their grand adventure over, the young Asgardians return to their studies in the 3-part follow-up ‘The Enchanted’ but something has changed between Thor and his combat classmate Sif. As the city gradually rebuilds there is unseemly tension between the comrades and after the prince humiliates her in a practice duel Sif uncharacteristically storms off.

Elsewhere Loki – the only boy in the city’s School of Sorcery – is accosted by classmate Amora, whose precocious preoccupation is spells of seduction. She instinctively knows why Thor and Sif are fighting and wants Loki to help her captivate the beautiful prince before he realises that cause is mutual attractionâ€¦

The Trickster of course is only too happy to sow more discontentâ€¦

Sif’s misery grows when a new girl joins the war classes. Brunnhilda is a vibrant, glamorous blonde every inch Thor’s equal in might and beauty and all too soon the dark-haired student is convinced the newcomer will steal Thor’s heart awayâ€¦

The second chapter opens with a flashback revealing the vile prank perpetrated by Loki which made Sif the only dark-haired girl in Asgard (and an isolated, self-loathing outsider) before returning to the present where tensions boil over as she and Brunnhilda come to blows in class.

Repentant, angry and despondent, Sif is easy meat for the wily Loki who tricks her into stealing Odin’s magical Mirror of Mycha, with which she can enchant Thor into loving only her. Hating herself, the heartsick maiden liberates the looking glass but is ambushed by Loki’s confederate Amora who confiscates the stolen Mirror and uses it to make Thor her love-drunk slaveâ€¦

When Sif tries to beat a confession out of the Enchantress, it is besotted Thor who roughly defends his smug new paramour but supposed rival Brunnhilda who sees what has truly occurred. In a quiet moment she approaches Sif and plans are laid to save the prince and punish the scheming perpetratorsâ€¦

And with the status quo restored Sif and Thor finally find the perfect moment to speak their hearts and mindsâ€¦

The final 3-part arc is based on Tales of Asgard back-up ‘Death Comes to Thor!’ (from Journey into Mystery #102, March 1964); an early Lee/Kirby classic 5-pager which introduced noxious King Rugga, The Norns, Sif and Hela, Queen of the Dead whilst revealing how Thor first took up his magic mallet.

The expanded version begins with the heir again struggling to raise Mjolnir before settling upon the singular notion of asking the terrifying trio of witches known alternatively as the Fates or Norns exactly how to become ‘Worthy’â€¦

Their answer is appalling in its simplicity: he must face Death.

Returning to Asgard Thor finds his home again under attack by brutal giants and learns with horror that Sif has been abducted. As Odin and the adult warriors ride off in pursuit, the All-Father orders his son to remain, but the headstrong, lovesick youth – filled with fury and passion – instead grasps the impossibly heavy magic hammer and storms off for the castle of King Rugga, smashing his way through the venal ruler’s colossal army with a revelatory display of powerâ€¦

Decimating the villain’s Storm Giants, Thor learns that his beloved has been traded to Death Goddess Hela in return for immortality. Without pause he turns his attention to herâ€¦ This confrontation goes very differently and none of the hammer’s awesome capabilities have any effect on the gloating goddess.

Cheated of Thor once, her plan was to take him again, thus delivering to Odin the most heartbreaking blow she can, but against true love even the Queen of the Damned is powerlessâ€¦

Epic, rousing and astonishingly beguiling, this superb fantasy frolic also includes a full cover gallery by Adi Granov and Jo Chen, as well as Tocchini Sketchbook designs for Thor, Loki, Sif, Balder and Odin and a selection of inked story pages prior to the application of Guru eFX’s resplendent digital colours.

A little off the Thunderer’s regulation stamping grounds, Thor: Son of Asgard offers magic, mystery and coming-of-age drama to suit Fantastic Romantics of every type and persuasionâ€¦
Â© 2004, 2005, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

March 3, 2015March 2, 2015

King Conan volume 4: The Conqueror

During the 1970’s the American comic book industry opened up after more than fifteen years of cautious and calcified publishing practises that had come about as a reaction to the censorious oversight of the self-inflicted Comics Code Authority. This body was created to keep the publisher’s product wholesome after the industry suffered their very own McCarthy-style Witch-hunt during the 1950s.

One of the first genres revisited was Horror/Mystery comics and from that came the pulp icon Conan the Cimmerian, via a little tale called ‘The Sword and the Sorcerers’ in anthology Chamber of Darkness #4 (April 1970), whose hero Starr the Slayer bore no little thematic resemblance to the Barbarian. It was written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Barry Smith, a recent Marvel find, and one who was just breaking out of the company’s still-prevalent Kirby house-style.

Pulp-style Sword & Sorcery stories had been enjoying a prose revival in the paperback marketplace since the release of soft-cover editions of Lord of the Rings (first published in 1954) and by the 1960s a popular revival of the two-fisted fantasies of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline, Fritz Lieber and others were being supplemented by modern writers such as Michael Moorcock and Lin Carter who kick-started their careers with contemporary versions of man against mage. However, the undisputed grand master of the genre was Robert E. Howard.

Despite some early teething problems, including being cancelled and reinstated in the same month, the comicbook adventures of REH were as big a success as the prose yarns that led the global boom in fantasy and, latterly, the supernatural.

Conan became a huge hit; a monumental brand which saw new prose tales, movies, a TV series and cartoon show, a newspaper strip, games, toys and all the other paraphernalia of successâ€¦ and it all stemmed from the vast range of quality comics initiated by Thomas and Smith.

In Conan’s all-conquering wake Marvel developed comicbook interpretations of other Howard creations such as Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane and others. Undoubtedly the Silver and Bronze medals went to the fairly straight adaptation of King Kull of Atlantis and a rather more broadly reinterpreted Red Sonya of Rogatine.

Roy Thomas was a huge fan of the prose source material and took great pains to adapt the novels and short stories into the graphic canon, but he was also one of the top writers in his field and much of the franchise’s success devolves from his visceral grasp of the characters, which makes this particular graphic novel of particular interest.

Eventually, however, fashions changed and Marvel – having tried increasingly deviant and unsuccessful reboots of the sword-slinger – surrendered or lost the rights to the barbarian blockbuster.

The franchise was picked up by â€œIntellectual Propertiesâ€ specialists Dark Horse who eagerly took up the Howard mantle, reinvigorating the hero and his satellites with fresh adaptations of the source material crafted by a host of talented creators who could cut loose, utterly unhampered by the censorship of the Comics Code Authority which had afflicted the Marvel incarnationâ€¦

This fourth Dark Horse volume collects issues #1-6 of King Conan The Conqueror (originally published as a comicbook miniseries from February to July 2014), expanding and reinterpreting Howard’s epic Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon and opening with the warrior-emperor in his dotage relating to dutiful scribe and historian Pramis the events of the greatest crisis of his troubled reignâ€¦

What Had Gone Before: After decades of adventure-filled wandering, the Cimmerian’s travels eventually led him to the throne of the vast and prosperous kingdom of Aquilonia, but the outsider’s dream of founding a dynasty had soon stumbled as an alliance of disgruntled hereditary nobles and satellite kings plotted his downfall. To secure their ends the plotters resurrected an ancient wizard from demon-haunted Acheron through the arcane agency of a mystic gem known as The Heart of Ahriman.

With the sorcerous interventions of eldritch revenant Xaltotun, Conan was toppled and given over to his treacherous enemies. He subsequently escaped thanks to the actions of harem slave Zenobia and, on the advice of enigmatic witch Zelata that only the Heart can defeat Xaltotun, the fugitive pursued its current owner across the seas to the port of Messantia.

The saga resumes as Conan relentlessly tracks Beloso – who thinks himself the greatest thief in the world. The deposed king is constantly distracted by thoughts of Zenobia whom he had to abandon, and tragically unaware that a band of Khitan warrior-priests (like super-ninjas) hired by Aquilonian puppet-ruler Valerius are tracking him in turnâ€¦

Amongst his many careers prior to kingship, Conan had once led the most savage pirates of the age as the merciless Amra and now he inflicts himself upon former fence-turned-upstanding merchant Publio to help him find Beloso and the Heart.

Far from willing but with too much to lose, the businessman reluctantly assists his â€œguestâ€ but the effort is too little too late. By the time Conan finds his prey the thief is dead at the hands of Stygian priests (another faction with a long grudge against the barbarian) and the gem gone.

Whilst still reeling in shock and disappointment Publio’s thugs jump the Cimmerian and leave him for dead, but the betrayer fares no better after the Khitans show up looking for Conanâ€¦

The King was always exceedingly hard to kill and has merely escaped out to sea only to be captured by trading ship Venturer: a vessel which can always find room for one more galley-slave. It’s the last mistake the captain ever makes, however, as the barbarian goes berserk, sowing slaughter all about him and freeing the captives at the oars, many of whom recognise the white maniac as their former pirate lord Amraâ€¦

Before long Venturer has new masters and the liberated Black Corsairs have ferried Amra to the Stygian capital Khemi. Refusing further aid Conan infiltrates the temple city of vile snake worshippers in search of the Heart, making his way with a minimum of mayhem and penetrating the inner sanctum of arch-priest Thutothmes.

Unfortunately his furtive progress attracts the attention of seductive vampire princess Akivasha who hasn’t had a real man – in any sense – for centuriesâ€¦

Conan’s narrow escape from her clutches precipitates him into a clash with Thutothmes – who has by now secured the Heart of Ahriman – but everything is suddenly thrown into chaos when the infallible Khitans burst into the tombs determined to claim the deposed king no matter who stands in their wayâ€¦

After watching the mystic factions eviscerate each other Conan ends the last priest standing and, thanks to the efforts of a most tractable zombie who leads him out of the labyrinthine temple, makes off with the Heart. Before long the Corsairs have brought him back to his stolen kingdom and the exile is recruiting an army from his oppressed Aquilonian subjects, who have been chafing under the brutal depredations of Valeriusâ€¦

Soon the entire nation is ablaze and the plotters are sore-pressed in their own unquiet kingdoms too. Desperate, they plan to betray and sacrifice their mystic secret weapon Xaltotun, only to realise far too late that the servant has been their master for some timeâ€¦

The crisis comes to a head when the mage attempts to destroy Conan’s liberating army during a pivotal clash of implacable foes. Seeking to fuel his magics with Zenobia’s blood, Xaltotun is totally unprepared for the determination of enraged and enslaved mortals acting in concert, the eldritch opposition of the Heart and the carefully calculated vengeance of the wily Cimmerianâ€¦

Apocalyptic, bombastic and cataclysmically compelling, this is a splendid retelling of a pulp fantasy classic augmented by an insightful Afterword by adaptor Timothy Truman and a Bonus Gallery of pencil art by illustrator TomÃ¡s Giorello

This collection is a superb slice of savage escapism that any red-blooded, action-starved armchair adventurer would kill for, a superb way to enjoy some of American popular fiction’ most influential – and enjoyable – moments. They certainly deserve a prized place on your bookshelf.
Â©2014, 2015 Conan Properties International, LLC. All rights reserved.

March 2, 2015

Deadpool Corps volume 1: Pool-Pocalypse Now

By Victor Gischler, Rob Liefeld, Marat Mychaels & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4825-8

Stylish killers and mercenaries craving something more than money have long made popular fictional protagonists, and light-hearted, exuberant bloodbath comics will always find an appreciative audienceâ€¦

Deadpool is Wade Wilson (yes, a thinly disguised knockoff of Slade Wilson AKA Deathstroke the Terminator; get over it – DC did): an inveterate, unrepentant hired killer who survived cancer and genetics experiments that left him a grotesque bundle of scabs, scars and physical abnormalities but also practically immortal, invulnerable and capable of regenerating from any wound.

He is also a certifiable loonâ€¦

The wisecracking high-tech â€œMerc with a Mouthâ€ was created by Rob Liefeld & Fabian Nicieza, debuting in New Mutants #97, another product of the â€œWeapon Xâ€ project which created Wolverine and so many other mutant/cyborg super-doers. He got his first shot at solo stardom with a couple of miniseries in 1993 (Deadpool: the Circle Chase & Sins of the Past) but it wasn’t until 1997 that he finally won his own title, which blended fourth-wall-busting absurdist humour (a la Ambush Bug and Warner Brothers cartoons) into the mix and secured his place in Marvel’s top rank.

Since then he has become one of Marvel’s iconic, nigh-inescapable characters, perennially undergoing radical rethinks, identity changes, reboots and more before always â€“ inevitably – reverting to irascible, irreverent, intoxicating type in the endâ€¦

Here, following events too ludicrous to mention, Wilson has linked up with a quartet of alternate Deadpools from very different alternate Earths and formed the strangest team in Marvel’s history (and yes, that includes the Pet Avengers).

Collecting Deadpool Corps #1-6 (June-November 2010) the manic mayhem begins with the 5-part ‘Disrespect Your Elders’ (by Victor Gischler, penciller Liefeld and inker Adelso Corona) as the new comrades – Wilson, the strikingly female Lady Deadpool, killer bad boy and errant pre-teen Kidpool, a floating masked cranium from the Marvel Zombiverse dubbed Headpool and a costumed mutt who answers to Dogpool – are hired by the Elder of the Universe known as The Contemplator to expunge a horrific threat to creationâ€¦

From a universe preceding The Big Bang an unstoppable force has manifested which absorbs intelligence. Thousands if not millions of planets have succumbed to the power of The Awareness, their sentience and independence subsumed into a slavish nullity. Protected as they are by their own innate, intrinsic imbecility, Contemplator wants the Deadpools to go kill itâ€¦

In a bit of a dudgeon over their selection is another Elder calling himself The Champion. The mightiest physical specimen in existence feels the honour of saving universal intellect should be his, but although he’s no big brain either he just isn’t in the Wilson squad’s leagueâ€¦

Whizzing across the cosmos in the super ship â€œBea Arthurâ€ – with plenty of pit-stops in the skeeviest bars, cantinas and dives for information and violent recreation – the team soon confront and readily outwit their brawny rivalâ€¦

Forced to take a different tack, Champion teams up with fellow Elder The Gardener to remove his insufferable rivals but is utterly astounded by their response. Somehow elected their leader, â€œChampionpoolâ€ readies himself for glorious combat before again finding himself humiliatingly outsmarted by the Terran morons and stranded on a dead-end world whilst they fly off to reap all the gloryâ€¦

Tracking the menace involves going undercover, drinking, beating up lots of aliens, shopping and even colluding and cohabiting with legendary star smuggler The Broken Blade, but eventually they near the end of their questâ€¦

More a superb succession of gags than a plot, the adventure follows the Crazy Corps as they bumble and smart-mouth their way across the universe until finally they confront The Awareness and despite – or rather because of – their uniquely skewed mentalities, triumph in the strangest way possibleâ€¦

Rewarded with wishing rings by the exultant Contemplator, the Silly Squad stay in space where this initial compilation concludes with the bombastic ballad of ‘The Blue Buccaneer’ (illustrated by Marat Mychaels & Jaime Mendoza).

Trading on their intergalactic reputation as badasses-for-hire, the Deadpool Corps accept a commission to wipe out a pirate band preying on interstellar commerce, necessitating Lady Deadpool going undercover in the most shocking – to her at least – of disguises, uncovering the most unexpected of old acquaintances leading the perilous privateersâ€¦

Surreal, wickedly irreverent and excessively violent in the grand Bugs Bunny/Road Runner tradition, Deadpool Corps is frat boy foolish and frequently laugh-out-loud funny: a wonderfully antidote to the cosmic angst and emotional Sturm und Drang of most contemporary Fights ‘n’ Tights comics but pays lip service to being a notionally normal Marvel milestone by also offering a full covers-&-variants gallery by Liefeld and sketch variant by Ed McGuinnessâ€¦
Â© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: