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Kick-Ass 3 – trade paperback edition


By Mark Millar, John Romita Jr., Tom Palmer & various (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78329-087-1

Once upon a time, perennial High School no-hoper Dave Lizewski – a pitifully ordinary and unhappy teenager who loved comicbooks – realised that he had no chance of being part of the school “in-crowd”. He just hung out with the other geeks, nerds and social lepers; talking TV, movies, funnybooks and wishing he could have a perfect life and trophy girlfriend.

Then one day he had his big inspiration – he was going to be a masked superhero. All he needed was a costume and a gimmick. Oh, and a codename too…

Clad in a wetsuit bought online and filled with hope, Dave started patrolling the streets and promptly got beaten into a coma by three kids tagging a wall…

After months in hospital and with three metal plates in his skull, Dave eventually returned to school, but the compulsion had only grown stronger. Soon he was prowling the city again. This time a chance encounter was recorded on witnesses’ camera-phones and uploaded to YouTube…

An overnight internet sensation and supremely now overconfident, Dave – or Kick-Ass – inspired a wave of copycats, attracted the extremely unwanted attention of Organised Crime and met the closest thing to real superheroes the world had ever seen…

Dave’s life went into deadly overdrive when he met diminutive Mindy McCready – AKA Hit-Girl – and her burly, brutish, utterly insane senior partner Big Daddy: cool, efficient ninjas of justice and everything he’d aspired to be but could never approach in a million years…

These armoured, gun-toting urban vigilantes were utter ciphers, stalking and destroying the operations of brutal Mafia boss Johnny Genovese with remorseless efficiency and in complete attention-shunning anonymity. Before long Dave was drawn into their war and met fellow adventurer Red Mist, who turned out to be Genovese’s abused, psychotic son Chris: a bastard maniac in his own right.

Things got really out of hand and lots of people died. Mostly scumbags, but some good people and a few innocent civilians too…

The mesmerising saga comes to a cataclysmic climax close as Kick-Ass 3 collects the final 8-part miniseries (originally published through Marvel’s Icon imprint) from Mark Millar, John Romita Jr, Tom Palmer and Dean White in a beguiling full-colour mass market paperback.

As seen previously, Red Mist had evolved into a truly psychotic and blood-drenched super-villain to counter the fannish tidal wave of costumed champions. In the aftermath of a bloody slaughter, superheroes were outlawed in New York, Dave and faithful masked pals Todd and Marty went undercover and the totally OTT Hit-Girl was arrested and sent to prison…

The saga resumes now with the lads reviewing a letter from the deadly tyke and planning to bust her out with the aid of a few costumed associates. However, life is not as clear cut as comicbooks and the scheme ignominiously fails.

Life goes on and the boys graduate High School, seeping into dead-end jobs whilst spending nights patrolling and training for their next attempt. Soon, though, tensions begin to rise as skeevy newcomer hero The Juicer takes over their once-communal lair – formerly Mindy’s old tricked-out HQ. The gloating sod even moves in his girlfriend…

Disgusted, undeterred and resolved not to spoil things, Dave gets back to the streets. When a posse of gangbangers attempt to mug Kick-Ass the battle goes badly wrong before he is rescued by witness – and nurse – Valerie.

Elsewhere, greater events are afoot. Brutally maimed Chris Genovese is stuck in prison hospital awaiting trial when his uncle Rocco pays a visit. With the established hierarchy of organised crime decimated by Hit-Girl, the aged Don has returned from exile in Sicily. He had been shipped off years ago when his deviant tastes and merciless depredations proved to be too much even for the Mafia.

Now he’s back and making a move to unite all the criminals in America under his rule – and he plans to make Chris his heir…

Self-proclaimed super-villain Chris is a changed boy and wants no part of it, but Rocco has the police force on his payroll. Nobody ever says no to the Don…

The boy’s mother has had enough too, but when she sneaks into his room determined to execute her crazy child she catches someone else with the same idea…

Dave meanwhile has organised another attempt to spring Hit-Girl but even as he preps his motley crew, the lass in question is facing down her latest psychiatrist.

The malevolent tyke has spent the intervening months terrorising and pacifying the entire prison around her, whilst psychologically breaking a long string of mental health professionals assigned to her, but Dr. Alex White is made of sterner stuff. The ruthless, remorseless headshrinker is determined to crush not cure the waif-like homicidal maniac, whatever it takes…

Dave is a man distracted. Although he has planned a raid on the mob as they fête the recently released Chris, his attention is mostly on Valerie. Thus the consequent attack is a disaster and the badly-scared mystery men barely get away with their lives…

In the cold light of day the heroes have a bitter falling-out at Justice Forever HQ and Dave adds The Juicer to his growing list of arch enemies. It’s hard to care, though, as he and Val are dating now and he’s having sex regularly…

The only thing he hasn’t given up on is Hit-Girl. He will get her out, somehow, someday…

He doesn’t know it, but Dave is on a clock. Rocco is firmly in the driving seat now and obsessed with the tiny titan too. He wants her out of jail so that he can smash his treasured golden ice-pick right into her brain…

As Dr. White plays the latest card in his duplicitous bag of brain-bending tricks, at Vic Gigante‘s place the bent cop – and Rocco’s most influential agent on the NYPD – has an interesting idea. With three trusted pals he’s devised a way to make even more dirty money in a foolproof manner.

Soon a quartet of “Robin Hood” masked heroes are brutally raiding all of Rocco’s places of business; killing mooks and confiscating cash. The Skull & Bones boys claim it’s all being passed on to the poor and naturally everybody believes them…

Lost in a lustful daze, not even a timely intervention by Todd can shake Dave up enough to get back in costume and on track, but the increasingly bold raids of the Skull & Bones gang is driving Rocco crazy. Only when the deviant Don declares war on every masked hero in the city and despatches hit squads to gun them down wherever they are does Dave finally rouse himself from a besotted haze and get back on the streets…

The psychological campaign against Hit-Girl is also beginning to work. The formerly indomitable Mindy is retreating into memories of training with her dad and sharing those episodes with the exultant White.

Unfortunately the cocky doctor overplays his hand and seems to lose everything, but before he can reassess the situation Rocco Genovese has his family’s nemesis abducted from the penitentiary so that he can slaughter her in style.

Ferrying her to a big party at his estate, the Don thinks he’s won but is utterly unprepared for betrayal from within, the incomprehensible inability of Kick-Ass to give up and the sheer determination and total, sociopathic verve which inspires Hit-Girl in her holy mission to eradicate criminal scum…

Building to a cataclysmic, graphically hyper-violent, ferociously cathartic conclusion, the saga of simple soul Dave and the atrociously foul-mouthed Hit-Girl wraps up in unforgettable manner with plenty of shocking twists and surprises in a blockbusting clash which answers all the questions in a fashion fitting, furious and final…

The blackly comedic and ultra-violent comedy quartet of tales which comprise the Kick-Ass saga are the ultimate extension of the modern trend for “realistic” superhero stories whilst simultaneously forming a brilliantly engaging and cynically hilarious examination of boyhood dreams and power fantasies, delivered with dazzling aplomb, studied self-deprecation and spellbinding style.

Here Millar’s mesmeric script skilfully dances on the very edge of possibility and credibility, whilst the stunning art collaboration of John Romita Jr., Tom Palmer and colourist Dean White afford a vision of New York life that ranges from Paradise to Hell on Earth.

Bracketed by a pithy Introduction from screen writer Geoff Wadlow and Afterword Acknowledgements from writer and artist, this majestically wide-screen extravaganza is a sharp, superb and stunning tale not just for comics fans but a genuine treasure for all followers of frantic fun and fantasy in any medium.

© 2013 and 2014 Millarworld Limited and John S. Romita. All rights reserved.

Kick-Ass 3 is scheduled for publication on February 27th

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Love and Rockets: New Stories volume 7


By The Hernandez Brothers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-770-3

Years pass like centuries when you’re waiting for a wonderful treat but at long last here’s the latest annual instalment of Love and Rockets: New Stories. So life is once more challengingly complete …

Now solidly in its fourth decade as a transcendent and transformative force shaking up the American comics industry, Love and Rockets was originally an anthology magazine featuring amongst other gems and joys the slick, intriguing, sci-fi-tinged hi-jinx of punky young things Maggie and Hopey – las Locas – and a series of heart-warming, gut-wrenching soap-opera epics set in a rural Central American paradise called Palomar.

The Hernandez Boys (three guys from Oxnard, California: Jaime, Gilberto and Mario), gifted synthesists all, captivated the comics cognoscenti with incredible stories sampling and referencing a host of influences – everything from comics, TV cartoons, masked wrestlers and the exotica of everything from American Hispanic pop culture to German Expressionism.

There was also a perpetual backdrop displaying the holy trinity of youth: Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll – also alternative music, hip hop and punk.

The result was dynamite then and the guys have only got better with the passing years. Mario only officially contributed on rare occasions, but Jaime’s slick, enticing visual forays explored friendship and modern love by destroying stereotypes of feminine attraction through his fetching coterie of “Gals Gone Wild”, whilst bro Gilberto created a hyper-real and passionately poignant landscape and playground of wit and venality for his extended generational saga Heartbreak Soup: a quicksilver chimera of breadline Latin-American village life with a vibrant, funny and fantastically quotidian cast.

The shadows cast by Palomar still define and inform his latest tales both directly and as imaginative spurs for ostensibly unaffiliated stories.

Fully evolved into an annual omnibus compendium of wonders, Love and Rockets: New Stories features one-off vignettes supplementing a string of contiguous and continuing story strands, opening here with Beto’s ‘Killer in Palomar’.

After having apparently quitting her blossoming cinema career Doralis “Killer” Rivera headed back to Palomar to visit her distanced family. She was fleeing rumours of pregnancy and just wanted some peace and a normal life. At least that’s what she told herself…

Now she’s reeling from the horror of a deranged stalker-fan who murdered people in her name, but new friend Theo is more worried about her strange reaction to a copycat stripper/double appropriating her reputation to become a porn star. And to make things even more complicated Killer is chatting to dead Tia Doralís again…

Jaime then returns to his singularly aging signature characters as Maggie and Hopey ditch their significant others for a weekend to attend an Eighties-Friends reunion in ‘Do I Look at the Camera, Or Do I Look at Me?’

The devout pals and former lovers may have moved on, but there’s still some spark of the old wild couple in play – especially the constant bickering – and eventually the ladies at leisure settle on watching a movie Maggie’s boyfriend Ray recommended coincidentally  running at the Indie cinema that used to be the girls’ teenage hangout…

Metafiction and magical realism have always played a large part in the Hernandez Boy’s tales and as Maggie and Hopey settle in for a weird screen experience, elsewhere in time and space star of the film Maria Rodriguez is showing it to her baby daughter Fritz/Rosalba (for further details and family indiscretions best check out High Soft Lisp or Luba)…

Blending a bizarre B-movie fantasy with more telling insights into three generations of powerful and beautiful women, Gilberto’s story segues into Killer’s time as a toddler – and the mistakes all the women in her family seem condemned to repeat – before ‘Daughters and Mothers and Daughters’ flashes back to more revelations, inter-cut with her playing her own grandmother in scandalous biopic Maria M…

Jaime’s vignette ‘You and Hopey’ focuses on poor abandoned Ray and how he spends his time as a weekend-widower, after which the artist switches track to follow frustrated teen wrestling hopefuls in ‘Our Lady of the Assassinating Angels’ before returning to Ray for ‘The Cody Pendant’ and an evening alone, coincidentally watching the same movie as Maggie and Hopey…

Beto steps in for a fantastic slice of hokey fantasy as ‘Magic Voyage of Aladdin’ offers an incredible genre mash-up with the legendary boy adventurer and his astoundingly pneumatic patron Circe battling witches, monsters, aliens and bat-people in three anarchic cine-plays, beginning with ‘Chapter 1: the Electrical Brain’ moving on to ‘Chapter 2: the Cave of Bats’ and calamitously concluding with ‘Chapter 3: the Living Corpse’…

Jaime tags in to continue the travails of young Tonta Agajanian in ‘If It Ain’t Fixed, Don’t Break It!’ as the troublesome teen escapes her scandalous family (murdered step-father and her far-from-sane mother still prime suspect even after being cleared by DA’s office) for a comicbook party.

After another fine moment annoying the rich kids, Tonta and gullible associate Gomez suddenly find themselves pulled over by the cops…

The dirty doppelgangers poaching the reputation of Killer’s dynasty of sexy starlets make their unseemly entrances in Gilbert’s ‘Meet Fritz Jr.’ and unwittingly offer tantalising glimpses of unsuspected family connections, after which Jaime turns up the filmic fantasy dial with the hilariously scary sci fi classic ‘Princess Animus!’ wherein a beautiful cannibal gains the power to dominate the universe…

However when the film breaks at the best bit Maggie and Hopey are left at a loose end and unwisely head back to the motel early…

Beto closes down this annual affair (bracketing an untitled Jaime two-pager highlighting las Locas’ morning-after) with another outrageous grindhouse movie pastiche in ‘The Golem Suit Starring Killer’ before a painful day for Fritz and her copyright infringing facsimile meeting fans at a convention as ‘Talent’ wraps things up for another too-long wait until next time…

Warm-hearted, deceptively heart-wrenching, subtly shocking, challenging, charming and irresistibly addictive, Love and Rockets: New Stories is a grown up comics fan’s dream come true and remains as valid and groundbreaking as its earlier incarnations – the diamond point of the cutting edge of American graphic narrative.
© 2015 Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. This edition © 2015 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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Green Arrow volume 1: Hunter’s Moon


By Mike Grell, Ed Hannigan, Dick Giordano & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4326-5

First appearing in More Fun Comics #73 in 1941, Green Arrow is one of very few superheroes to be continuously published (more or less) since the Golden Age of American comic books. At first glance this combination of Batman and Robin Hood seems to have very little going for him but he has always managed to keep himself in vogue.

Probably his most telling of many makeovers came in 1987, when, hot on the heels of The Dark Knight Returns, auteur Mike Grell was given the green (Shameless, me!) light to make him the star of DC’s second “Prestige Format Mini-Series”.

Grell was counted a major creator at the time. Beginning his rise with a laudable run on Legion of Super-Heroes, he went on to draw the revived Green Lantern/Green Arrow and practically saved the company with his Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired fantasy series Warlord. He had also notched up a big fan following illustrating many Aquaman, Batman and Phantom Stranger stories before establishing his independent creator credentials at First Comics with Starslayer and Jon Sable, Freelance…

In the grim ‘n’ gritty late Eighties, it was certainly time for another overhaul of the Emerald Archer. Exploding arrows yes, maybe even net or rope arrows, but arrows with boxing gloves or paint brushes on them just don’t work. Thus, in an era of corrupt government, drug cartels and serial killers, the evergreen survivor adapted and thrived under the direction of a creator famed for the realism of his stories.

The Longbow Hunters focused on the super-hero’s mid-life crisis as he relocated to Seattle and struggled to come to terms with the fact that since his former sidekick Speedy was now a dad, Oliver Queen had technically become a grandfather. With long-time “significant other” Dinah Lance AKA Black Canary he began to simplify his life, but the drive to fight injustice never dimmed for either of them.

She went undercover to stamp out a drug ring, and he became engrossed in the hunt for a psycho-killer dubbed “The Seattle Slasher”. Ollie was also made aware of a second – cross-country – slayer who had been murdering people with arrows…

Eschewing his gaudy costume and gimmicks he reinvented himself as an urban hunter to stop such unglamorous everyday monsters, stumbling into a mystery that led back to World War II involving the Yakuza, CIA, corporate America and even the Viet Nam war…

The intricate plot, subtly blending three seemingly disparate stories that were in fact one, still delivers a shocking punch even now in its disturbingly explicit examination of torture, which won the series undeserved negative press when it was first published. Although possibly tame to most modern tastes, this was eye-opening stuff in the 1980’s, which is a shame, as it diverted attention from the real issue… and that was a massive surge in quality and maturity.

The sophisticated and intricate plot – weaving themes of age, diminishing potency, vengeance and family – were another turning point in American comics and led to an ongoing series specifically targeting “Mature Readers”. The treatment and tone heavily influenced and flavoured today’s TV adaptation Arrow and has led to the release of Grell’s nigh-forgotten urban predator tales in a new range of economical trade paperbacks.

This first full-colour paperback collection, scripted by Grell with superbly efficient and powerfully understated art from Ed Hannigan, Dick Giordano & Frank McLaughlin, re-presents Green Arrow volume 2, #1-6 (February to July 1988), offering grimly realistic yarns ripped from headlines that have as much impact and relevance today as they did nearly thirty years ago…

Sparse, Spartan and devastatingly compelling, the initial tales were all constructed as two-part dramas beginning here – sans any preamble – with ‘Hunter’s Moon’ as the hunter (the series was notable in that other than on the cover, the soubriquet “Green Arrow” was never, ever used) prowls his new home dealing harshly with thugs, gangbangers and muggers before heading home to his still-traumatised girlfriend.

Black Canary was tortured for days before Ollie found her and, although the physical wounds have faded, Dinah Lance is still suffering…

She’s not the only one. Police Lieutenant Jim Cameron has just heard that child-torturing sociopath Al Muncie has used his vast beer-dynasty inheritance to buy a retrial after 18 years in prison.

The cops couldn’t get him for murdering all those “missing” kids but one lucky ten year old, after days of appalling torment, escaped and testified so Muncie’s been locked up for aggravated assault ever since. Now the heartbroken cop has to tell that brave survivor she must do it all over again…

The victim grew up to become Dr. Annie Green and she’s working wonders treating Dinah, but the therapist’s own long-suppressed terrors come flooding back when Muncie – despite being in total lockdown in his palatial house on the family brewery estate – somehow hand-delivers a little souvenir of their time together…

On hand when Annie freaks out and flees in panic, Ollie gives chase and finds her once more calm and resigned. On hearing the full story he makes a house-call on the maniac but cannot “dissuade” him from paying Annie another visit that night…

The experienced manhunter is waiting as a masked assailant tries to break in to the doctor’s apartment, but when the intruder shrugs off a steel arrow to the chest Ollie realises something’s not right…

Part Two expands the mystery of how Muncie can get past police guards at will, but by the time the Arrow has convinced the cops to raid Muncie’s den with the solution to the obsessed sociopath’s disappearing act and apparent invulnerability, the killer has already made his move.

Once again however Muncie has underestimated Annie, and her defiance buys Ollie time to intercept the hellbent human beast. After a furious chase back to the brewery the killer meets his fate in a most ironic manner…

A broad change of pace follows as ‘The Champions’ sees Ollie abducted by government spooks and pressganged into competing for a deadly prize. A joint space venture with the Chinese has resulted in a deadly “DNA-programmable” virus being created and, following the sudden destruction of the satellite lab where it was propagated, the only surviving sample has crashed onto remote San Juan Island.

With political allies turned rivals for sole possession of a bio-agent which can be set to kill anything from wheat harvests to black or yellow or white people, overt warfare would only lead to catastrophic publicity, so the political superpowers have agreed to use a gladiatorial bout as the method of deciding ownership.

Ollie has his own reasons for accepting the job. For starters he doesn’t trust any government with the DNA-hunting bug, the agents who drafted him are Russian not American and, most urgently, he has no doubt that he’ll be killed if he refuses to compete…

Equipped with a tracking device, Ollie is dumped on the island as a colossal storm starts, meeting his arrogant opposite getting off the ferry. Former CIA operative Eddie Fyers is an old foe and one of the sneakiest killers on Earth. He convinces Ollie they should work together… before double-crossing and leaving him to bleed out in a blizzard.

The archer is rescued by an archaeologist who has inadvertently picked up the fallen bio-agent pod, but as Ollie argues with his saviour over the wisdom and morality of his mission, her cabin is peppered with gunfire…

Fyers has the upper hand but suffers a sudden change of attitude when a third team ambushes him and his prisoners. It seems neither the Russians or Chinese trusted their champions…

Again forced to team up, spy and vigilante despatch the hit squad but Ollie has the very last word after finding a way to deprive everybody of the bio-sample…

Determined to challenge all manners of social inequity, Grell’s final story in this collection confronted the rise in homosexual prejudice that manifested in the wake of the AIDs crisis.

It begins after two customers leaving Dinah’s flower shop are brutally attacked by kids ordered to “gay-bash” as part of their gang initiation. The horrific crime is further compounded when Ollie discovers that Dinah’s new assistant Colin is not only a bloody-handed perpetrator but also a victim…

The Warhogs are the most powerful gang in the city, but their new induction policy is one the Arrow cannot allow to exist any longer. Any kid refusing to join is mercilessly beaten by a ‘Gauntlet’ of thugs. Those who eagerly volunteer suffer the same treatment as their initiation. And once you’re accepted as a Warhog you still have to prove your loyalty by beating – and preferably killing – a “queer”…

In the shocking conclusion Ollie, having failed to make a dent through any of his usual tactics, goes straight to the top. Big boss Reggie Mandel has big plans for the Warhogs. He’s already made them a national force to be reckoned with, but when he arrives in Seattle to check on his regional deputy Kebo, the Machiavellian schemer is confronted by a nut with a bow challenging him in his own crib…

The Arrow is keen to point out that the strictly local Warhog policy of gay hate-crimes is not only bad for business but is serving someone else’s private agenda. Reggie actually agrees with the vigilante, but before he’s prepared to take appropriate action he expects his verdant petitioner to undergo the same gauntlet any Warhog must survive before being heard…

Terse, sparse scripts, economical and immensely effective illustration and an unfailing eye for engaging controversy make these epic yarns some of the most powerful comic tales American comics ever produced. Compiled here with a cover gallery by Grell (both fully painted and line art), Hannigan & Giordano, this compulsive retooling is an epic masked mystery saga no lover of the genre will want to miss.

© 1988, 2013 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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A Treasury of Victorian Murder Compendium II


By Rick Geary (NBM/ComicsLit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-907-6

Master cartoonist Rick Geary is a unique presence in both comics and true crime literature. His compelling dissections – in the form of graphic novel reconstructions – of some of the most infamous and groundbreaking murder mysteries since policing began never fail to beguile or entertain.

His unblinking eye has, of late, been examining the last hundred years or so in his Treasury of XXth Century Murder series, but Geary first began his graphic assignations with Mankind’s darker aspects in a delicious anthologised tome entitled A Treasury of Victorian Murder in 1987. That initial volume and three of the eight that succeeded it (Jack the Ripper, The Fatal Bullet and The Beast of Chicago) were re-issued in 2012 as a splendidly morbid monochrome deluxe hardback – because, after all, bloody murder is always a black and white affair…

At last, more of his most compelling past triumphs have been gathered into a second blockbusting 400 page black-&-white hardback to delight fans of the genre and, without a shadow of a doubt, make new converts out of the as yet unconvinced…

Combining a superlative talent for laconic prose, incisive observation and meticulously detailed pictorial extrapolation with his fascination with the ruthless propensities of humans throughout history, Geary’s forensic eye has scoured police blotters, newspaper archives and even history books to compile more irresistibly infectious social sins and felonious infractions.

Moreover, his unique cartooning style is the perfect medium to convey the starkly factual narratives in a memorable, mordant and undeniably enjoyable manner. Each epic endeavour is accompanied by an Introduction and scholarly Bibliography, with most adaptations also offering splendidly informative maps and diagrams to set the stories firmly in place.

Starting off this catalogue of crime is The Borden Tragedy, dissecting the wealth of details surrounding one of the most infamous – if not mythic – crimes ever perpetrated.

In Fall River, Massachusetts on August 4th 1892, prosperous self-made man Andrew Borden and his second wife Abby were found slain inside their own home. Death in both cases was caused by multiple axe blows.

Rather than his later neutral narrative stance, here Geary illustrates the “first-hand account” of an acquaintance of youngest daughter Lizzie Borden who, after much inept investigation and public speculation, was settled upon by the authorities as the likeliest suspect.

The various suppositions, theories, scandals and gossip-points are scrupulously examined as she stands trial for the crimes – a case muddled by a subsequent axe-murder whilst Lizzie was in custody – and follows her through the much-protracted case, past her acquittal to her eventual death in 1927…

The graphic re-enactment is accompanied by a copious photo and text section featuring a wealth of ‘Press Clippings of the Time’ as well as a reproduction of ‘Borden’s Indictment’ and The Boston Advertiser article on her eventual “Not Guilty” verdict. The Mystery of Mary Rogers concerns the assault and murder of a New York City cigar shop girl which mesmerised the citizenry in 1841. Such was the furore that author Edgar Allen Poe appropriated the events for his C. Auguste Lupin tale The Mystery of Marie Roget: a rather unwise move since he knew the deceased and opened himself up to loudly-voiced suspicions of complicity…

The facts are that on the 28th July 1841, a number of well-to do citizens left stifling Manhattan Island for the Jersey Shore and discovered the body of the “Segar Girl” floating in the Hudson; battered, strangled and with her hands tied across her chest.

A hasty autopsy and even quicker inquest, held under insultingly cavalier circumstances, produced no culprits or suspects but somehow managed to throw suspicion on everyone from the men who pulled her out of the water to her drunken suicidal fiancé and even her own mother…

A talking point for all and sundry from the highest society paragon to the lowliest street trash, her death produced ever-more scandalous revelations and groundless lewd rumours – all scrupulously explored by Geary – over the next few years but the case remains unsolved still…

The Saga of the Bloody Benders began in largely unsettled Kansas, in the period immediately following the American Civil War, after a family of German-speaking immigrants settled near the Osage Trail. There they built a General Store-&-Hotel equidistant between the nascent townships of Cherry Vale, Parsons and Thayer.

By the time they vanished four years later, provably ten but probably many, many more travellers and settlers had been robbed and murdered. Thereafter, the insalubrious Benders simply vanished from the sight of man…

Geary, with supreme style and dry wit, presents the facts and the best of the rumours in his inimitable cartoon style to create yet another unforgettable masterpiece of Gothic whimsy.

The Case of Madeleine Smith focused on the true and scandalous secret affair between Emile L’Anglier, a low-born French clerk, and prim, proper, eminently respectable Miss Madeleine Smith, daughter of a wealthy Scottish merchant.

The slow poisoning of the Gallic Romeo led to a notorious trial in the 19th century and the eventual verdict shocked everyone and satisfied nobody….

The entrancing chronicle of carnage and venality concludes with the epic account of The Murder of Abraham Lincoln, covering the 62 days from 4th March to May 4th 1865 when actor John Wilkes Booth and a band of like-minded Confederate patriots schemed to murder the President (and other Northern politicians they held responsible for the destruction of the South), and how their wild plot came to startling, implausible fruition…

Following the Inauguration Ceremony for his second Term of Office, the normally fatalistic and security-disparaging President Lincoln was troubled by unease, disquiet and dreams of assassination, possible generated by the sack-full of death threats stored by his Secretary John Hay.

Elsewhere Secessionist sympathiser Booth was planning a blow for revenge and personal immortality but increasingly found his co-conspirators a disappointing bunch. Driven and desperate, he persevered for his cause…

All the many players are scrutinised in Geary’s careful examination and the peculiar circumstances which left Lincoln vulnerable are counterbalanced by insights and minutiae provided into his less-than-fanatical killers.

Only one of the many assassinations planned by the Secessionist cabal came to anything, and following the foul deed, grisly death-watch and post mortem, Geary’s depiction of the bold but inept manhunt which followed is capped by Booth’s satisfyingly dramatic end, leaving nothing but the artist’s masterful summing up to ask the questions nobody has answered yet and leave us all with the certain knowledge that this too is a murder still largely unsolved…

These compelling cold cases are a perfect example of how graphic narrative can be so much more than simplistic fantasy entertainment, and such merrily morbid murder masterpieces as these should be mandatory reading for every mystery addict and crime collector.

Such seductive storytelling, erudite argument and audacious drawing produce an irresistible dash and verve which makes for unforgettable reading: Geary is a unique talent in the comic industry, as much for his style as his subject matter and methodology in telling tales. Always presenting both facts and the theories – contemporary and modern – with chilling graphic precision, captivating clarity and devastating dry wit, he attacks criminology’s greatest mysteries with a force and power even Oliver Stone would envy.
© 1997-2007, 2015 Rick Geary.

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Black Widow: Kiss or Kill


By Duane Swierczynski, Joe Aherne, Manuel Garcia, Brian Ching, Lorenzo Ruggiero, Bit & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4701-5

The Black Widow started life as a svelte and sultry honey-trap Russian agent during Marvel’s early “Commie-busting” days. Natalia Romanova was subsequently redesigned as a super villain, falling for an assortment of Yankee superheroes – including Hawkeye and Daredevil – defecting and finally becoming an agent of SHIELD, freelance do-gooder and occasional leader of the Avengers.

Throughout her career she has been considered efficient, competent, deadly dangerous and somehow cursed to bring doom and disaster to her paramours. As her backstory evolved, it was revealed that she had undergone experimental Soviet procedures which had enhanced her physical capabilities and lengthened her lifespan, as well as assorted psychological processes which had messed up her mind and memories…

Always a fan favourite, the Widow only really hit the big time after featuring in the Iron Man, Captain America and Avengers movies, but for us unregenerate comics-addicts her print escapades have always offered a cool, sinister frisson of delight.

This particular caper compilation (reprinting Black Widow volume 4 #6-8 spanning November 2010 to January 2011) was the second and final story arc of a short-lived series and includes a riotous team up tale from the Iron Man: Kiss & Kill 1-shot (August 2010).

The espionage elitism opens with the eponymous 3-chapter ‘Kiss or Kill’ by writer Duane Swierczynski, illustrated by Manuel Garcia, Lorenzo Ruggiero, Bit and colourist Jim Charalapidis, as idealistic young journalist and recently bereaved son Nick Crane finds himself the target of two mega-hot, ultra lethal female super-spies in Houston’s club district.

Both of them say they want to save him but each seems far more intent on ending Nick’s life, and in between mercilessly fighting each other and hurtling across the city in a stampede of violent destruction both have demanded that he name his privileged source…

Nick is inclined to believe the blonde called Fatale. After all, he has a surveillance tape of the redhead – the Black Widow – with his father moments before he died…

After his senator dad was found with his brains all over a wall, Nick started digging and uncovered a pattern: a beautiful woman implicated in the deaths of numerous key political figures around the world…

After a staggering battle across the city Natalia is the notional victor but isn’t ready when Nick turns a gun on her. She still goes easy on him and he wakes up some time later in Roanoke, Virginia utterly baffled. She explains she’s on the trail of an organisation devoted to political assassination using a double of her to commit their high profile crimes but the angry young man clearly doesn’t believe her.

Further argument is curtailed by the sudden arrival of an extremely competent Rendition Team who remove them both to a secret US base in Poland. After a terrifying interval the Widow starts thinking that her extreme scheme to get the name out of Nick might be working but that all goes to hell when a third force blasts in and re-abducts them.

Realising that her government liaison is playing for more than one side, the Widow blasts her way out, dragging Nick with her, and soon they are on the run with only her rapidly dwindling and increasingly untrustworthy freelance contacts to protect them.

The escape has however almost convinced Nick to trust her with his source but that moment passes when the latest iteration of Crimson Dynamo and illusion-caster Fantasma derail the train they’re on…

Another explosive confrontation is suddenly cut short when Fatale arrives but rather than assassination she has an alliance in mind. The mysterious mastermind behind the killings and framing the Widow has stopped paying the killer blonde and thus needs to be taught a lesson about honouring commitments…

Now armed with Nick’s contact’s details they go after the enigmatic “Sadko” but the shady operator seems to be one step ahead of them as usual.

But only “seems”…

To Be Continued…

Rounding out this espionage extravaganza ‘Iron Widow’, written by Joe Aherne with art by Brian Ching and colourist Michael Atiyeh from Iron Man: Kiss & Kill, sees the Russian émigré give Avenging inventor Tony Stark a crash course in spycraft after a very special suit of Iron Man armour is stolen.

Fully schooled, the billionaire succeeds too well in locating his missing mech but falls into a terrifying trap set by sinister Sunset Bain and becomes a literal time-bomb pointed at the origin of The Avengers. Luckily Black Widow is on hand to prove skill, ingenuity and guts always trump mere overwhelming power…

A fast and furious, pell-mell, helter-skelter rollercoaster of high-octane intrigue and action, Kiss or Kill also includes a captivating collation of covers-&-variants by Daniel Acuña, J. Scott Campbell, Brian Stelfreeze, Ching & Chris Sotomayor and Stephane Perger, making this such a superb example of genre-blending Costumed Drama that you’d be thoroughly suspect and subject to scrutiny for neglecting it.
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Zorro – the Complete Classic Adventures volumes One & Two


By Alex Toth & anonymous (Eclipse Books)
ISBNs: 0-913035-41-6 and 0-913035-51-3

Alex Toth was a master of graphic communication who shaped two different art-forms and is largely unknown in both of them.

Born in New York in 1928, the son of Hungarian immigrants with a dynamic interest in the arts, Toth was something of a prodigy and after enrolling in the High School of Industrial Arts doggedly went about improving his skills as a cartoonist. His earliest dreams were of a quality newspaper strip like Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, but his uncompromising devotion to the highest standards soon soured him on newspaper strip work when he discovered how hidebound and innovation-resistant the family values-based industry had become whilst he was growing up.

Aged 15, he sold his first comicbook works to Heroic Comics and after graduating in 1947 worked for All American/National Periodical Publications (who would amalgamate and evolve into DC Comics) on Dr. Mid-Nite, All Star Comics, the Atom, Green Lantern, Johnny Thunder, Sierra Smith, Johnny Peril, Danger Trail and a host of other features. On the way he dabbled with newspaper strips (see Casey Ruggles: the Hard Times of Pancho and Pecos) but was disappointed o find nothing had changed…

Continually striving to improve his own work he never had time for fools or formula-hungry editors who wouldn’t take artistic risks. In 1952 Toth quit DC to work for “Thrilling” Pulps publisher Ned Pines who was retooling his prolific Better/Nedor/Pines comics companies (Thrilling Comics, Fighting Yank, Doc Strange, Black Terror and many more) into Standard Comics: a publishing house targeting older readers with sophisticated, genre-based titles.

Beside fellow graphic masters Nick Cardy, Mike Sekowsky, Art Saaf, John Celardo, George Tuska, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito and particularly favourite inker Mike Peppe, Toth set the bar high for a new kind of story-telling: wry, restrained and thoroughly mature; in short-lived titles dedicated to War, Crime, Horror, Science Fiction and especially Romance.

After Simon and Kirby invented love comics, Standard, through artists like Cardy and Toth and writers like the amazing and unsung Kim Aamodt, polished and honed the genre, turning out clever, witty, evocative and yet tasteful melodramas and heart-tuggers both men and women could enjoy.

Before going into the military, where he still found time to create a strip (Jon Fury for the US army’s Tokyo Quartermaster newspaper The Depot’s Diary) he illustrated 60 glorious tales for Standard; as well as a few pieces for EC and others.

On his return to a different industry – and one he didn’t much like – Toth resettled in California, splitting his time between Western/Dell/Gold Key, such as these Zorro tales and many other movie/TV adaptations, and National (assorted short pieces such as Hot Wheels and Eclipso): doing work he increasingly found uninspired, moribund and creatively cowardly. Eventually he moved primarily into TV animation, designing for shows such as Space Ghost, Herculoids, Birdman, Shazzan!, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? and Super Friends among many others.

He returned sporadically to comics, setting the style and tone for DC’s late 1960’s horror line in House of Mystery, House of Secrets and especially The Witching Hour, and illustrating more adult fare for Warren’s Creepy, Eerie and The Rook. He redesigned The Fox for Red Circle/Archie, produced stunning one-offs for Archie Goodwin’s Batman or war comics (whenever they offered him a “good script”) and contributed to landmark or anniversary projects such as Batman: Black and White.

His later, personal works included Torpedo for the European market and the magnificently audacious swashbuckler Bravo for Adventure!

Alex Toth died of a heart attack at his drawing board on May 27th 2006 but before that the kids he’d inspired (mostly comics professionals themselves) sought to redress his shameful anonymity with a number of retrospectives and comics compilations. One of the first and best was this Eclipse Books twin set, gathering his many tales for Dell featuring Disney’s TV iteration of the prototypical masked avenger.

In 2013, Hermes Press released a lavish complete volume in full colour but, to my mind, these black and white books (grey-toned, stripped down and redrawn by the master himself) are the definitive vision and the closest to what Toth originally intended, stripped of all the obfuscating quibbles and unnecessary pictorial fripperies imposed upon his dynamic vision by legions of writing committees, timid editors and Disney franchising flacks.

One the earliest masked heroes and still phenomenally popular throughout the world, “El Zorro, The Fox” was originally devised by jobbing writer Johnston McCulley in 1919 in a five part serial entitled ‘The Curse of Capistrano’. He debuted in the All-Story Weekly for August 6th and ran until 6th September. The part-work was subsequently published by Grossett & Dunlap in 1924 as The Mark of Zorro and further reissued in 1959 and 1998 by MacDonald & Co. and Tor respectively.

Famously, Hollywood royalty Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford read the ‘The Curse of Capistrano’ in All-Story Weekly on their honeymoon and immediately optioned the adventure to be the first film release from their new production company/studio United Artists.

The Mark of Zorro was a global movie sensation in 1920 and for years after, and New York-based McCulley subsequently re-tailored his creation to match the so-different filmic incarnation. This Caped Crusader aptly fitted the burgeoning genre that would soon be peopled by the likes of The Shadow, Doc Savage and the Spider.

Rouben Mamoulian‘s 1940 filmic remake of The Mark of Zorro further ingrained the Fox into the world’s psyche and, as the prose exploits continued in a variety of publications, Dell began a comicbook version in 1949.

When Walt Disney Studios began a hugely popular Zorro TV show in 1957 (resulting in 78 half-hour episodes and four 60 minute specials before cancellation in 1961) the ongoing comics series was swiftly redesigned to capitalise on it and the entertainment corporation began a decades-long strip incarnation of “their” version of the character in various quarters of the world.

This superb set reproduces the tales produced by Toth for Dell Comics; firstly as part of the monumental try-out series Four-Color (issues #882, 920, 933, 960, 976 & 1003), and thereafter as a proven commodity with his own title – of which the restless Toth only drew #12. Other artists on the series included Warren Tufts, Mel Keefer and John Ushler and the Dell series was subsequently relaunched in January 1966 under the Gold Key imprint, reprinting (primarily) the Toth drawn material in a 9-issue run than lasted until March 1968.

Zorro – the Complete Classic Adventures Volume One opens with an effusive and extremely moving ‘Introduction by Howard Chaykin’ before steaming straight into the timeless wonder, but I thought that perhaps a brief note on the scripts might be sensible here.

As part of Disney’s license the company compelled Dell to concentrate on adapting already-aired TV episodes complete with florid, overblown dialogue and stagy, talking head shots which Toth struggled mightily – and against increasingly heated resistance from writers and editors – to pare down and liven up. Under such circumstances it’s a miracle that the strips are even palatable, but they are in fact some of the best adventure comics of the practically superhero-free 1950s.

Sadly, all the covers were photo-shots of actor Guy Williams in character so even that graphic outlet was denied Toth – and us…

One bonus however is that the short, filler stories used to supplement the screen adaptations were clearly generated in-house with fewer restrictions, so here Toth’s brilliance shines through…

The origin and set-up for the series came with Four-Color #882 (February 1958) in ‘Presenting Señor Zorro’. Retelling the first episode of the TV show, it introduces dashing swordsman Don Diego De La Vega, returning from Spain in 1820 to his home in Pueblo De Los Angeles in answer to a letter telling of injustice, corruption and tyranny…

With mute servant Bernardo – who pretends to be also deaf and acts as his perfect spy amongst the oppressors – Diego determines to assume the role of a spoiled and cowardly fop whilst creating the masked identity of El Zorro “the Fox” to overthrow wicked military commander and de facto dictator Capitan Monastario.

Shrugging off the clear disappointment of his father Don Alejandro, Diego does nothing when their neighbour Ignacio “Nacho” Torres is arrested on charges of treason but that night a masked figure in black spectacularly liberates the political prisoner and conveys him to relative safety and legal sanctuary at the Mission of San Gabriel…

The second TV instalment became the closing chapter of that first comicbook as ‘Zorro’s Secret Passage’ finds Monastario suspicious that Zorro is a member of the De La Vega household and stakes the place out. When the Commandante then accuses another man of being the Fox, Diego uses the underground passages beneath his home to save the innocent victim and confound the dictator…

Four-Color #920 (June 1958) adapted the third and fourth TV episodes, beginning with “Zorro Rides to the Mission” which became ‘The Ghost of the Mission Part One’ as Monastario discovers where Nacho Torres is hiding and surrounds the Mission. Unable to convince his lancers to break the sacred bounds of Sanctuary, the tyrant settles in for a siege and ‘The Ghost of the Mission Part Two’ sees him fabricate an Indian uprising to force his way in. Sadly for the military martinet Diego has convinced his bumbling deputy Sergeant Demetrio Garcia that the Mission is haunted by a mad monk…

Despite appearing only quarterly, Zorro stories maintained the strict continuity dictated by the weekly TV show. “Garcia’s Secret Mission” became ‘Garcia’s Secret’ in Four-Color #933 (September 1958) and saw Monastario apparently throw his flunky out of the army in a cunning plot to capture the Fox. Once again the ruse was turned against the connivers and El Capitan was again humiliated.

The last half of the issue saw a major plot development, however, as TV instalment “The Fall of Monastario” became ‘The King’s Emissary’ wherein the Commandante tries to palm off ineffectual Diego as Zorro to impress the Viceroy of California only to find himself inexplicably exposed, deposed and arrested…

The rest of this initial outing comprises a quartet of short vignettes commencing with ‘A Bad Day for Bernardo’ (Four-Color #920) wherein the unlucky factotum endures a succession of mishaps as he and Zorro search for a missing señorita and almost scotch her plans to elope, whilst Four-Color #933 provided the tale of youngster Manuelo, who ran away to become ‘The Little Zorro’. Happily Diego is able to convince the lad that school trumps heroism… in this case…

In ‘The Visitor’ (Four-Color #960, December 1958) Diego and Bernardo find a baby on their doorstep and help the mother to free her husband from jail before the volume concludes with ‘A Double for Diego’ (Four-Color #976, March 1959) wherein Sgt. Garcia – now in temporary charge of Los Angeles – seeks Diego’s help to capture Zorro, necessitating the wily hero trying to be in two places at once…

Zorro Volume Two leads off with ‘A Foreword’s Look Back and Askance’ by Alex Toth, who self-deprecatingly recaps his life and explains his artistic philosophy, struggles with Dell’s editors and constant battle to turn the anodyne goggle-box crusader back into the dark and flamboyant swashbuckler of the Mamoulian movie…

Four-Color #960 (December 1958) has TV tales “The Eagle’s Brood” and “Zorro by Proxy” transformed into visual poetry when a would-be conqueror targets Los Angeles as part of a greater scheme to seize control of California. With new Capitan Toledano despatched to seek out a vast amount of stolen gunpowder, ‘The Eagle’s Brood’ infiltrate the town, sheltered by a traitor at the very heart of the town’s ruling elite…

Made aware of the seditious plot, Zorro moves carefully against the villains, foiling their first attempt to take over and learning the identity of an untouchable traitor…

The saga resumed and concluded in ‘Gypsy Warning’ (Four-Color #976, adapting “Quintana Makes a Choice” and “Zorro Lights a Fuse”) as Zorro foils a plot to murder pro tem leader Garcia and stumbles into the final stages of the invasion of Santa Barbara, San Diego, Capistrano and Los Angeles…

With The Eagle temporarily defeated, short back-up ‘The Enchanted Bell’ (Four-Color #1003, June 1959) sees Zorro prevent the local tax collector confiscating a prized bell beloved by the region’s Indians to prevent a possible uprising, after which the lead story from the same issue details how ‘The Marauders of Monterey’ (adapting “Welcome to Monterey” and “Zorro Rides Alone”) lure officials from many settlements with the promise of vitally needed supplies and commodities before robbing them.

Sadly for them, Los Angeles sent the astute but effete Don Diego to bid for the goods and he had his own solutions for fraud and banditry…

After more than a year away Toth returned for one last hurrah as ‘The Runaway Witness’ (Zorro #12, December 1960/February 1961) found the Fox chasing a frightened flower-girl all over the countryside. Justice rather than romance was on his mind as he sought to convince her to testify against a powerful man who had murdered his business partner… This stunning masterclass in comics excellence concludes with ‘Friend Indeed’ from the same issue wherein Zorro plays one of his most imaginative tricks on Garcia, allowing the hero to free a jail full of political prisoners…

Full-bodied, captivating and beautifully realised, these immortal adventures of a global icon are something no fan of adventure comics and thrilling stories should be without.
Zorro ® and © Zorro Productions. Stories and artwork © 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961Walt Disney Productions This edition © 1986 Zorro Productions, Inc.

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Hulk: Red Hulk volume 1


By Jeph Loeb, Ed McGuinness, Dexter Vines & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2882-3

Bruce Banner was a military scientist who was accidentally caught in a gamma bomb blast of his own devising. As a result stress or other factors would cause him to transform into a giant green monster of unstoppable strength and fury. As both occasional hero and mindless monster he rampaged across the Marvel Universe for decades, finally finding his size 700 feet and a format that worked, becoming one of young Marvel’s most beloved features.

A phenomenally popular character both in comics and more global accessible media like TV and movies, he has often undergone radical changes in scope and style to keep his stories fresh and his exploits explosively compelling…

In the early part of the 21st century the number of gamma-mutated monsters rampaging across the Marvel landscape proliferated to inconceivable proportions and the days of Bruce Banner getting mean and going green are long gone, so anybody taking their cues from the small or big screen incarnations would be wise to assume a level of unavoidable bewilderment.

There are a few other assorted ancillary atomic berserkers roaming the planet, so be prepared to experience a little confusion if you’re coming to this particular character cold. Nevertheless these always-epic stories are generally worth the effort so persist if you can.

At the time of this collection – gathering the contents of Hulk volume 2 #1-6 from March-August 2008, plus a gamma-tinged bonus tale from Wolverine volume 3 #50 (and March 2007) – the Banner iteration of the Jade Giant is presumed dead and a smattering of new gamma gargantua are only just beginning to appear…

This will be eventually revealed as the first public phase of an extended plot by the world’s wickedest brain trust to conquer everything (as would be later seen in the epic Fall of the Hulks) but here action and enigma take precedence in the form of a bizarre murder mystery as She-Hulk, gamma-augmented psychologist Leonard “Doc” Samson, veteran Hulk-Buster General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, SHIELD agent Maria Hill and her new boss/Director Tony “Iron Man” Stark work a crime scene in Dimitri, Russia.

The assembled experts are standing over the corpse of Emil Blonsky – formerly the vicious indestructible monster known as the Abomination. He was beaten near to death by something which can only have been the dearly-departed Hulk but finished off with a gun of implausibly large calibre and power…

The assembled experts are baffled and suspicious. Since when has the Hulk ever been calm enough to use a gun? Other things don’t add up either – most notably the Hulk-sized footprints which were somehow so hot that they turned the ground to glass…

Before they get too far into their CSI task, however, Russia’s metahuman unit The Winter Guard show up and claim jurisdiction in a manner which can only lead to a fight and international incident…

The still-unexplained gamma-assassination took out an entire village as collateral damage and the battle between the American intruders and People’s Patriots Dark Star, Ursa Major, Crimson Dynamo and Red Guardian looks set to do even more harm until a shellshocked little girl shambles from the wreckage, muttering one word over and over. The chastened warriors stop and Darkstar translates. The broken waif is saying “red”…

Sometime later in Alaska, Banner’s greatest friend Rick Jones wakes up amidst a scene of devastation only a Hulk could have made, whilst in Gamma Base, Nevada, Samson and Ross enter a top secret dungeon to ask a prisoner ‘Who Is The Hulk?’

Just like the rest of the American investigators, they both know Blonsky’s killer can’t be Banner. The world at large may believe he’s dead but all the Hulk experts know he’s still alive and well, locked in the inescapable cell where they shoved him…

The mystery of the new Hulk resumes in ‘The Smoking Gun’ as aboard SHIELD Director Stark’s new Helicarrier, Hill reveals the gun used to kill Abomination was stolen from their own armoury deep within the flying super-fortress. She has no chance to expound further as She-Hulk is savagely attacked and beaten – by a colossal crimson monster that resembles the Hulk – so swiftly that even battle-seasoned Iron Man cannot react in time…

With the monumental vessel crippled and about to smash into New York City, the heroes’ attentions are divided between hunting the monster and preventing an appalling disaster, leaving Red Hulk to pick off the champions at his leisure…

In Nevada, hitchhiking Rick Jones has reached the supposedly decommissioned Gamma Base, only to be attacked by a massive scarlet horror. The assault triggers a strange change and the young man suddenly transforms into a huge and hideous blue abomination calling itself A-Bomb…

With more than one gamma suspect at large, ‘Creatures on the Loose’ opens in the smouldering remains of the downed Helicarrier as Stark reviews security footage from Gamma Base and realises that the captive Banner has had unmonitored conversations with Ross and Samson. Suspicions aroused, he takes the recordings to an expert even as at the Nevada site Red Hulk and A-Bomb engage in a furious no-holds barred battle.

So cataclysmic is the clash that it shatters the mile of ground above Banner’s cell and triggers the San Andreas Fault…

With a fight this ferociously apocalyptic, the impassive alien observer known as The Watcher naturally materialises to record the event but even he is not immune to the Crimson Barbarian’s unrelenting fury. However the beast’s attempted celestia-cide is interrupted by the resurgent return of the original Jade Juggernaut in ‘Red Light, Green Light’.

It is clearly what the devious scarlet newcomer has been wanting all along and their hyper-destructive duel carries them all the way to San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge…

With catastrophe imminent ‘Rolling Thunder’ introduces another recently resurrected champion as Asgardian storm lord Thor dives headlong into the fray seconds after the Red Hulk seemingly drowns his viridian counterpart. As their subsequent staggering struggle takes the combatants from Earth to the Moon, A-Bomb and green Hulk struggle out of the choppy waters in time to join a band of heroes (Iron Man, She-Hulk, Human Torch, The Thing, Sub-Mariner and Ares, God of War) in preventing the roiling San Andreas Fault tipping the city and a good part of the Golden State into the Pacific Ocean…

The semi-mindless Green Goliath soon falls into fighting with his allies and hurtles away – somehow able to track to his scarlet-skinned alternate – and arrives as the beast returns to Earth after trouncing the Thunderer. Loathing each other on sight they clash again with the ‘Blood Red’ barbarian finally falling before the pounding fists of the unstoppable original Hulk. As the weary victor wanders away, however, the mastermind behind the Red Hulk finally reveals himself…

To Be Continued…

Also included in this collection is a collation of cartoon comedy vignettes (‘Hulk Art Class’, ‘Hulk Splash’ and ‘Hulk Zoo’) by Audrey Loeb & Chris Giarrusso) and a brief but visually bombastic retelling of the Jade Juggernaut’s first clash with manic mutant mainstay Wolverine in ‘Puny Little Man’ by Jeph Loeb, McGuinness & Vines from Wolverine volume 3 #50, and an assortment of covers and variants by McGuinness, Vines & Jason Keith, Michael Turner, Dale Keown, Daniel Acuña, Marko Djurdjevic, David Finch, Olivier Coipel and Arthur Adams.

If staggering, blockbusting Fights ‘n’ Tights turmoil is your fancy, a Hulk of any colour is always going to be at the top of every punch-drunk thrill-seeker’s hit list…
© 2008, 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Physics of Super Heroes – Spectacular Second Edition


By James Kakalios (Duckworth Overlook)
ISBN: 978-0-71563-911-5

I grew up in the 1960s reading a lot of comics – as well as books, papers, bubble gum cards, magazines, cereal packs and sweet wrappers. With so few other distractions, the printed word – with or without attendant illustrations – held a magic no other medium could match, no matter how much my oversized nostalgia glands tell me I still need Space Patrol, Twizzle or Champion the Wonder Horse in my rapidly decelerating life…

One thing my parents and the nuns at primary school noticed – apart from ink-stained fingers – was that I always seemed to have a fount of scientific snippets at my beck and call. That’s clearly the same experience physics professor and author James Kakalios recalls – except perhaps the nuns and Twizzle parts.

As explained in his Foreword and Preface, Silver Age comicbooks – especially those published by National/DC – were honeycombed with scientific and historical features and anecdotes whilst the stories, mostly written by jobbing pulp science fiction writers like John Broome, Gardner Fox, Alfred Bester, Edmond Hamilton, Otto Binder and others, all emphasised a world of physical rationalism – albeit one loaded with aliens, mutants, monsters and flying guys in capes and perpetually suspended disbelief…

Thus our topic for today is the splendid second edition of his oddly captivating text using extracts from comicbooks to highlight and explain the basic principles of how reality works. Sadly he also tells us where – and exactly why – superpowers and Fights ‘n’ Tights shenanigans are strictly hot air, wishful thinking and pure Balonium…

Working from a genuinely funny script (remember when teachers were allowed to be funny in class?) and utilising forthright and not at all forced comparisons, examples and illustrations, Kakalios translates his copious knowledge of comics continuity to detail everything you – and most importantly your kids – need to know. It begins, following a Foreword by Lawrence M. Krauss and brace of Prefaces (to the First and Second Editions), with Introduction: Secret Origins: How Science Saved Superhero Comic Books recounting the most important facts of all: how comics were created and evolved…

After that it’s a spectacularly engaging tumble through the discipline (each with an appropriate – and suitably summarised – comics event whether your background and major is primarily Science or Costumed Drama) beginning with Section 1 and all you need to understand about Mechanics…

Subsection 1. Up, Up and Away: Forces and Motion features Superman, whilst 2. Deconstructing Krypton: Newton’s Law of Gravity moves off-planet to glean the truth about his vaporised home before 3. The Day Gwen Stacy Died: Impulse and Momentum at last explains Spider-Man’s big mistake on that tragic night.

Running up walls and across water gets a thumbs-up in 4. Flash Facts: Friction, Drag and Sound, Ant-Man‘s shrinking comes under a microscope in 5. If This Be My Density: Properties of Matter and 6. So He Talks to Fishes. Want to Make Something of It?: Fluid Mechanics considers Aquaman and Sub-Mariner‘s surprisingly difficult trick of breathing underwater as well the pressures of the job…

Although he makes it look easy, 7. Can He Swing from a Thread?: Centripetal Acceleration examines the forces in play when Spidey goes web-wandering whilst 8. Can Ant-Man Punch his way Out of a Paper Bag?: Torque and Rotation handles the problems of sustained strength and diminished height as well as how Spidey can jump so far whereas 9. The Human Top Goes Out for a Spin: Angular Momentum reveals why Whirlwind and the Top should be the most powerful bad guys in town…

10. Is Ant-Man Deaf, Dumb and Blind?: Simple Harmonic Motion covers how a host of shrinking super-folk could communicate with the larger world after which 11. Like a Flash of Lightning: Special Relativity wraps up the easy stuff with a round-up of the Scarlet Speedsters top tricks…

Section 2 – Energy – Heat and Light concentrates on scalar physical quantities (look at me showing off!) with 12. The Central City Diet Plan: Conservation of Energy as the sources of Flash’s vivid vitality are divined, whilst Ant-Man and the Atom are thoroughly quizzed on 13. The Case of the Missing Work: The Three Laws of Thermodynamics before Iceman and Storm are drafted in to discuss 14. Mutant Meteorology: Conduction and Convection.

15. How the Monstrous Menace of the Mysterious Melter Makes Dinner Preparation a Breeze: Phase Transitions is a quick briefing on how materials can be made to change states, after which the most visually iconic powers in comics are called up for 16. Electro’s Clinging Way’s: Electrostatics, 17. Superman Schools Spider-Man: Electrical Currents, 18. How Electro becomes Magneto when he Runs: Ampere’s Law, 19. How Magneto becomes Electro when he Runs: Magnetism and Faraday’s Law and 20. Electro and Magneto do the Wave: Electromagnetism and Light

The lesson endeth by bringing us cosmologically up-to-date with Section 3 РModern Physics and the inevitable team-up of Doctor Doom and Max Planck for 21. Journey into the Microverse: Atomic Physics, whilst Erwin Schr̦dinger does or does not lend his weight to theories of parallel Earths and time travel in 22. Not a Dream! Not a Hoax! Not an Imaginary Tale!: Quantum Mechanics, before Kitty Pride and the Golden Age Flash go through a helpful phase in 23. Through a Wall Lightly: Tunneling Phenomena.

It only remains to take a look at the stuff we build – and build with – in 24. Sock it to Shellhead: Solid-State Physics and 25. The Costumes are Super, Too: Materials Science to bring this foundation course in physically measurable existence to a satisfactory conclusion…

Nonetheless education never ends and Section 4 – What Have We Learned? brings us what we’ve all really been waiting for in 26. Me Am Bizarro!: Superhero Bloopers. This is where you can find out if the things you think of as the daftest in comics can be compared to what an accredited thinkologist can prove, and I’m personally pleased to find that two of my all-time “yeah, buts…” and “oh, come ons…” have at last been countersigned by an expert. Of course there were a whole bunch more that I missed…

Kakalios winningly wraps up his delicious brain-expanding exercise with the Afterword: Lo, There Shall Be An Ending! but can’t resist giving further opportunities to get smarter and more rounded with Recommended Reading – happily that’s a list of great comics as well as key texts – and, just like hair product commercials there’s even a genuine “science bit” as Key Equations list the fundamental magic formulas you need to conquer the world or pass a test. There’s even a section of Notes, Acknowledgements and an Index to make this seem more like a proper book but they can’t diminish the glee and wonderment one iota…

Filled with penetrating insights and explanations of how this universe really works with illustrations from a pantheon of America’s greatest comics-makers (yes, there is a little bit of maths – but not enough to trouble even a bright 7-year old) this a brilliantly accessible tome no comics-loving kid should be without. Tell them teacher said so.
© 2009 James Kakalios. All rights reserved.

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Fantastic Four: the Beginning of the End


By Dwayne McDuffie, Karl Kesel, Paul Pelletier, Tom Grummett & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2554-9

The Fantastic Four has long been considered the most pivotal series in modern comicbook history, introducing both a new style of storytelling and a decidedly different manner of engaging the readers’ impassioned attentions.

More family than team, the roster has changed many times over the years but always eventually returns to the original configuration of Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch and the Thing, who have together formed the vanguard of modern four-colour heroic history.

The quartet are actually maverick genius Reed Richards, his wife Sue, their trusty college friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s obnoxious and impetuous younger brother Johnny Storm; survivors of an independent space-shot which went horribly wrong once ferociously mutative Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding.

When they crashed back to Earth, the foursome found that they had all been hideously changed into outlandish freaks.

Richards’ body became elastic, Sue gained the power to turn invisible and form force-fields, Johnny could turn into self-perpetuating living flame, and poor, tormented Ben was transformed into a horrifying brute who, unlike his comrades, could not return to a semblance of normality on command.

The sheer simplicity of four archetypes – mercurial boffin, self-effacing distaff, solid everyman and hot-headed youth, uniting to triumph over accident and adversity – shone under Stan Lee’s irreverent humanity coupled to Jack Kirby’s rampant imagination and emphatic sense of adventure.

Decades of erratic quality and floundering plotlines followed the original creators’ departures, but from the beginning of the 21st century Marvel’s First Family experienced a steady climb in quality which culminated in their own blockbuster film franchise.

A key factor in the series success was an incredible roster of unforgettable villains and this slim compilation – re-presenting Fantastic Four #525-526 and #551-553 – features a brace of the very best at their very worst…

By this time the FF had achieved the comfortably universal status of being defined mostly by their current creators (like a Brannagh or Olivier Hamlet, Rathbone or Cumberbatch Sherlock Holmes or Stan Lee vs. Frank Miller Daredevil) and this beguilingly mismatched collection gathers two story-oddments which wouldn’t comfortably fit in the themed compilations that surround it, but nonetheless offer some splendidly entertaining Fights ‘n’ Tights action from the “World’s Greatest Comics Magazine” for fans and aficionados to enjoy…

The drama anachronistically kicks of with a 3-part ‘Epilogue’ from Fantastic Four #551-553 (January-March 2008) which followed the return of the original quartet after a period when the universe had been championed by a substitute team (see Fantastic Four: the New Fantastic Four)…

‘The Beginning of the End’ by scripter Dwayne McDuffie, illustrated by Paul Pelletier & Rick Magyar, opens 75 years after the great superhero Civil War. Reed Richards has triggered a global revolution in humanity, but he spends his days as warden of a high security facility with only six incorrigible reprobates pent within.

When that number is suddenly reduced by one the science hero isn’t too bothered: after all, he remembers it happening decades ago…

Back at Now, the in-their-prime FF are astonished to find Doctor Doom accompanied by elderly incarnations of Sub-Mariner and recent team-mate Black Panther sitting on their couch. After the usual violent preamble the visitors explain they have come from the future to stop Richards from making the greatest mistake in human history…

Reed has a secret room in the Baxter Building where he brainstorms his “100 Ideas” to create a utopia, but Doom and his fellow time-travellers are determined to stop the super genius from instigating Idea 101 – the concept which made the future a living hell.

To prove his point the Iron Dictator reveals the shocking fate of his wife and comrades in years to come. In response Reed picks up a gun and murders one of his “guests”…

The shocking saga continues with ‘The Middle of the End’ as Reed proceeds to expose the time-tossed terror’s true intent, but as combat climaxes his comrades – so recently sundered by the Civil War and still trying to regain trust in each – other cannot shake the dread that there’s a kernel of truth in what Doom predicts …

The suspense then roars into overdrive when the Fantastic Four of Doom’s distant era materialise, determined to recapture the fugitive and prevent catastrophic time-branching no matter who has to pay the price in ‘The End’…

After a stunning all-out battle, a measure of equilibrium is restored before this cunning chronicle harks back to Fantastic Four #525-526 (June-July 2005) for ‘Dream Fever parts I and 2’, written by Karl Kesel with art by Tom Grummett, Larry Stucker & Norm Rapmund.

A less conflicted First Family have just returned from a peril-packed jaunt to the Micro-verse when alarms alert them that arcane immortal alchemist Diablo is attacking a bank, but this time he’s not looking for loot or even a fight…

Revealing his origins in 9th century Spain the mage wants the FF’s time machine so that he can return to his birth era and crush the sadistic Inquisition before it can torture and murder millions – and he’s prepared to raze New York to get his way…

After failing to capture the mystic maniac the heroes return home but are plagued by shared horrendous dreams which increasingly set the family at each other’s throats. Reed’s researches, however, soon prove Diablo is not the cause but only another victim of what seems to be a globally debilitating epidemic of nightmares…

Frantically racing against time the pliable genius traces the true cause of the contagion but to save the world the quarrelsome quartet might well have to strike that deal with the devil…

Supplemented with a cover gallery by Michael Turner and Jim Cheung plus a selection of pre-inked pencil pages from issues #551 and 553, The Beginning of the End is a fast-paced, action packed and tension-soaked chronicle of fantastic fragments that provides all the thrills and chills a devoted Costumed Drama lover could ever want.
© 2005, 2007 and 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Valerian and Laureline book 8: Heroes of the Equinox


By Méziéres & Christin, with colours by E. Tranlé; translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-213-3

Valérian and Laureline is the most influential science fiction comics series ever created; an innovation-packed, Big-Ideas bonanza stuffed with wry observation, knowing humour, intoxicating action and underpinned throughout by sardonic sideswipes at contemporary mores and prejudices.

Val̩rian: Spatio-Temporal Agent debuted in weekly Pilote #420 (November 9th 1967) and was an instant hit. It swiftly evolved into its current designation as his feisty, fire-headed female sidekick developed into the equal partner Рand eventually scene-stealing star Рof light-hearted, fantastically imaginative, visually stunning, time-travelling, space-warping fantasies.

Nevertheless the so-sophisticated series always found room to propound a satirical, humanist ideology and agenda, launching telling fusillades of political commentary and social satire to underpin the astounding imagination of the space opera.

At first the tough, bluff, taciturn affably, capable – if unimaginative – by-the-book space cop just did his job: tasked with protecting official universal chronology (at least as per Terran Empire standards) by intercepting or counteracting paradoxes caused by incautious time-travellers.

When Valérian landed in 11th century France during debut tale ‘Les Mauvais Rêves (‘Bad Dreams’ and infuriatingly still not translated into English), he was rescued from doom by a capable young woman named Laureline. He brought her back to the 28th century super-citadel and administrative capital, Galaxity, where the indomitable firebrand took a crash course in spatiotemporal operations and began accompanying him on his missions.

Heroes of the Equinox was originally serialised in the monthly Pilote (issues #M47 to M50 from 21st March to June 27th 1978) before being collected later that year as eighth album Les héros de l’équinoxe: a sparkling, over-the-top spoof of superheroes and political ideologies which also found time and space to take a good-natured, gentle poke at the eternal battle of the sexes.

Spectacularly visual and imaginatively designed, the story starts as a quartet of vastly disparate planetary champions depart for the distant and distressed world of Simlane, where an ancient and cultivated civilisation is experiencing a uniquely tragic crisis…

The heroes comprise three dedicated – almost fanatical – supermen whilst Galaxity – far more concerned with courting public opinion than actually helping – have packed off a handy and presently unoccupied Spatio-Temporal agent named Valerian, just to show willing…

With Laureline mocking him for the entire trip, Earth’s Prime Champion touches down on Simlane to be greeted by a crowd of effusive oldsters from a glorious city of once magnificent but now crumbling edifices with an incredible story to tell.

The inhabitants of the derelict tourist trap are uniformly old and sterile and desperately need a new generation of children to repopulate the world, but their manner of achieving their goal is unique. For the lifetime of their civilisation, every hundred equinoxes the best and bravest males of Simlane venture to isolated Filine, Island of Children in a fierce and often deadly competition. The winner then somehow spawns a whole new generation who sail back on little boats to re-people the world.

That didn’t go entirely according to plan last time so the planetary leaders have invited four prime specimens from other worlds to do the necessary this time – much to the anger and dismay of a creaky host of crotchety, doddering indigenous old would-be sire-heroes…

At the packed but painfully weathered Great Theatre the assembled geriatrics are treated to a destructive floor show as the brazen alien warriors display their prowess. Bombastic Irmgaal of Krahan is a godlike superman wielding a flaming sword whilst proletarian technological wonder Ortzog of worker’s paradise Boorny reveals the power of a united people through his blazing, flailing chains. Mystic nature boy Blimflim of elysian, arcadian Malamum calmly displays the gentle irresistibility of the spirit harnessed to willpower. Each couldn’t be more different yet the result of each display is catastrophic destruction.

When eager eyes turn to Galaxity’s representative, Valerian simply shoots a chip off a distant stone cornice with his blaster… to tumultuous disinterest…

Dwarfed by the Herculean alien supermen, he shambles off to prepare for the great contest and dawn finds him with his fellow contestants ready to brave the stormy skies for the grand prize and glory…

This is one of the most visually extravagant and exuberant of all the albums, with a huge proportion of the book dedicated to the fantastic foursome overcoming their particular challenges and monstrous foes in astounding demonstrations of bravura puissance and awesome might… well, three of them anyway. The earthman’s travails are generally nasty, dirty smelly and ingloriously dangerous…

Eventually however all the warriors prove themselves a credit to their particular lineage and system before facing one final test. It’s in the form of a simple question: “If you sired the next generation how do you envision their future?”

Each strange visitor propounds a glorious agenda of expansion according to the customs and principles of his own culture but it’s the rather diffident and lacklustre vision of the Terran slacker that wins the approval of the incredible being who is the eternal mother of Simlane’s repopulation…

When the trio of failed supermen wash up on the shores of the city, the people realise who has fathered their soon-to-arrive new sons and daughters and patiently wait for the equinox tide to bring them over.

Laureline, horrified to discover that each successful father is never seen again, quickly sails to the Island of Children and navigates the trials which so tested the wonder men with comparative ease. She arrives at the misty citadel atop Filine in time to see an army of disturbingly familiar-looking toddlers tumble into little sailboats…

Broaching the idyllic paradise further she finally meets the Great Mother and sees what the breeding process has made of her reprehensible, sleazy, typically male partner…

Reaching an accommodation with the gargantuan progenitor, Laureline negotiates the release of her partner and they are soon winging home to Terra, with him having to listen to just what she thinks of him whilst praying Galaxity’s medical experts can make him again the man he so recently was…

Sharp, witty and deliciously over-the-top, this tale is a wry delight, spoofing with equanimity human drives, notions of heroism and political and philosophical trendiness with devastating effect. Whether super-heroic fascism, totalitarian socialism or even the woolly mis-educated, miscomprehendings of new age eco-fundamentalists who think aromatherapy cures broken legs or that their kids are too precious to be vaccinated and too special to share herd immunity, no sacred cow is left soundly unkicked…

However, no matter how trenchant, barbed, culturally aware and ethically crusading, Valerian and Laureline stories never allow message to overshadow fun and wonder and Heroes of the Equinox is one of the most entertaining sagas Méziéres & Christin ever concocted, complete with a superb sting in the tale…

Between 1981 and 1985, Dargaud-Canada and Dargaud-USA published a number of selected albums in English (with a limited UK imprint from Hodder-Dargaud) under the umbrella title Valerian: Spatiotemporal Agent and this was the fourth, translated then by L. Mitchell.

Although this modern Cinebook release boasts far better print and colour values plus a more fluid translation, total completists might also be interested in tracking down the 1983 edition too…
© Dargaud Paris, 1978 Christin, Méziéres & Tran-Lệ. All rights reserved. English translation © 2014 Cinebook Ltd.