Now Read This!

July 2, 2014July 6, 2014

Barnaby volume 2

By Crockett Johnson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-709-3

This is one of those rare books worthy of two reviews. So, if you’re in a hurryâ€¦

Buy Barnaby volume 2 now – it’s one of the five best comic strips of all time and this superb hardcover compilation has lots of fascinating extras. If you harbour any yearnings for the lost joys of childish wonder and the suspicious glee in catching out adults trying to pull a fast one, you would be crazy to miss this bookâ€¦

However, if you’re still here and need a little more time to decideâ€¦

Today’s newspapers have precious few continuity drama or adventure strips. Indeed, if a paper has any strips – as opposed to single panel editorial cartoons – chances are they will be of the episodic variety typified by Jim Davis’ Garfield or Scott Adams’ Dilbert.

You might describe these as single-idea pieces with a set-up, delivery and punch-line, all rendered in a sparse, pared-down-to-basics drawing style. In that they’re nothing new and there’s nothing wrong any of that ilk on their own terms.

Narrative impetus comes from the unchanging characters themselves, and a building of gag-upon-gag in extended themes. The advantage to the newspaper is obvious. If you like a strip it encourages you to buy the paper. If you miss a day or two, you can return fresh at any time having, in real terms, missed nothing.

Such was not always the case, especially in America. Once upon a time the daily â€œfunnyâ€ – comedic or otherwise – was a crucial circulation builder and preserver, with lush, lavish and magnificently rendered fantasies or romances rubbing shoulders with thrilling, moody masterpieces of crime, war, sci-fi and everyday melodrama. Even the legion of humour strips actively strived to maintain an avid, devoted following.

And eventually there was Barnaby, which in so many ways bridged the gap between then and now.

On April 20^th 1942, with America at war for the second time in 25 years, the liberal New York tabloid PM began running a new, sweet little kid’s strip which was also the most whimsically addicting, socially seditious and ferociously smart satire since the creation of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner – another utter innocent left to the mercy of scurrilous worldly influencesâ€¦

The outlandish 4-panel daily, by Crockett Johnson, was the product of a perfectionist who didn’t particularly care for comics, but who – according to celebrated strip historian Ron Goulart – just wanted steady employmentâ€¦

David Johnson Leisk (October 20^th 1906-July 11^th 1975) was an ardent socialist, passionate anti-fascist, gifted artisan and brilliant designer who had spent much of his working life as a commercial artist, Editor and Art Director.

Born in New York City and raised in the outer wilds of Queens when it was still semi-rural – very near the slag heaps which would eventually house two New York World’s Fairs in Flushing Meadows – â€œDaveâ€ studied art at Cooper Union (for the Advancement of Science and Art) and New York University before leaving early to support his widowed mother. This entailed embarking upon a hand-to-mouth career drawing and constructing department-store advertising.

He supplemented his income with occasional cartoons to magazines such as Collier’s before becoming an Art Editor at magazine publisher McGraw-Hill. He also began producing a moderately successful, â€œsilentâ€ strip called The Little Man with the Eyes.

Johnson had divorced his first wife in 1939 and moved out of the city to Connecticut, sharing an ocean-side home with student (and eventual bride) Ruth Krauss, always looking to create that steady something when, almost by accident, he devised a masterpiece of comics narrativeâ€¦

However, if his friend Charles Martin hadn’t seen a prototype Barnaby half-page lying around the house, the series might never have existed. Happily Martin hijacked the sample and parlayed it into a regular feature in prestigious highbrow leftist tabloid PM simply by showing the scrap to the paper’s Comics Editor Hannah Baker.

Among her other finds was a strip by a cartoonist dubbed Dr. Seuss which would run contiguously in the same publication. Despite Johnson’s initial reticence, within a year Barnaby had become the new darling of the intelligentsiaâ€¦

Soon there were book collections, talk of a Radio show (in 1946 it was adapted as a stage play), a quarterly magazine and rave reviews in Time, Newsweek and Life. The small but rabid fan-base ranged from politicians and the smart set such as President and First Lady Roosevelt, Vice-President Henry Wallace, Rockwell Kent, William Rose Benet and Lois Untermeyer to cool celebrities such as Duke Ellington, Dorothy Parker, W. C. Fields and even legendary New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

Of course the last two might only have checking the paper because the undisputed, unsavoury star of the strip was a scurrilous if fanciful amalgam of them bothâ€¦

Not since George Herriman’s Krazy Kat had a piece of popular culture so infiltrated the halls of the mighty, whilst largely passing way over the heads of the masses and without troubling the Funnies sections of big circulation papers.

Over its 10-year run (April 1942 to February 1952), Barnaby was only syndicated to 64 papers nationally, with a combined circulation of just over five and a half million, but it kept Crockett (a childhood nickname) and Ruth in relative comfort whilst America’s Great and Good constantly agitated on the kid’s behalf.

What more do you need to know?

One dark night a little boy wished for a Fairy Godmother and something strange and disreputable fell in through his windowâ€¦

Barnaby Baxter is a smart, ingenuous and scrupulously honest pre-schooler (four years old to you) and his ardent wish was to be an Air Raid Warden like his dad. Instead he was â€œadoptedâ€ by a short, portly, pompous, mildly unsavoury and wholly discreditable windbag with pink pixie wings.

Jackeen J. O’Malley, card carrying-member of the Elves, Gnomes, Leprechauns and Little Men’s Chowder and Marching Society – although he hadn’t paid his dues in years – unceremoniously installed himself as the lad’s Fairy Godfather. A lazier, more self-aggrandizing, mooching old glutton and probable soak (he certainly frequented taverns but only ever raided the Baxter’s icebox, pantry and humidor, never their drinks cabinetâ€¦) could not be found anywhere.

Due more to intransigence than evidence – there’s always plenty of physical proof, debris and fallout whenever O’Malley has been around – Barnaby’s mum and dad adamantly refuse to believe in the ungainly, insalubrious sprite, whose continued presence hopelessly complicated the sweet boy’s life.

The poor parents’ greatest abiding fear was that Barnaby was cursed with Too Much Imaginationâ€¦

At the end of the previous volume O’Malley became implausibly – and almost overnight – an unseen and reclusive public Man of the Hour, preposterously translating that cachet into a political career by accidentally becoming a patsy for a corrupt political machine. In even more unlikely circumstances O’Malley was elected to Congressâ€¦

This strand gave staunchly socialist cynic Johnson ample opportunity to ferociously lampoon the electoral system, the pundits and even the public. As usual Barnaby’s parents had to perpetually put down their boy: assertively assuring him that the O’Malley the grown-ups had elected was not a fat little man with pink wingsâ€¦

Despite looking like a fraud – he’s almost never seen using his magic and always has one of Dad’s stolen panatela cigars as a substitute wand – J. J. O’Malley is the real deal: he’s just incredibly lazy, greedy, arrogant and inept. He does sort of grant Barnaby’s wishes thoughâ€¦ but never in ways that might be wished forâ€¦

Once O’Malley had got his foot in the door – or rather through the bedroom window – a succession of bizarre characters began to regularly turn up to baffle and bewilder Barnaby and Jane Shultz, the sensible little girl next door.

Even the boy’ new dog Gorgon was an oddity. The pooch could talk – but never when adults were around, and only then with such overwhelming dullness that everybody listening wished him as mute as every other muttâ€¦

The mythical oddballs and irregulars included timid ghost Gus, Atlas the Giant (a two foot tall, pint sized colossus who was not that impressive until he got out his slide-rule to demonstrate that he was, in truth, a mental Giant) and Launcelot McSnoyd, an invisible Leprechaun who was O’Malley’s personal gadfly: always offering harsh, ribald counterpoints and home truths to the Godfather’s self-laudatory pronouncementsâ€¦

Johnson continually expanded his gently bizarre cast of gremlins, ogres, ghosts, policemen, Bankers, crooks, financiers and stranger personages – all of whom could see O’Malley – but the unyieldingly faithful little lad’s parents were always too busy and too certain that the Fairy Godfather and all his ilk were unhealthy, unwanted, juvenile fabrications.

This second stupendous collection opens with a hearty appreciation from Jules Feiffer in the Foreword before cartoonist, biographer and historian R. C. Harvey provides a critical appraisal in ‘Appreciating Barnaby and the Power of Imagination’ after which the captivating yarn-spinning takes us from January 1^st 1944 to December 31^st 1945.

There’s even more elucidatory content at the back after all those magic-filled pictures too, as education scholar and Professor of English Philip Nel provides another fact-filled, scene-setting, picture-packed ‘Afterword: O’Malley Takes Flight’ and Max Lerner’s 1943 PM feature ‘Barnaby’s Progress’ is reprinted in full.

Nel also supplies strip-by-strip commentary and background in ‘The Elves, Leprechauns, Gnomes, and Little Men’s Chowder & Marching Society: a Handy Pocket Guide’â€¦

However what we all love is comics so let’s jump right in as the obese elf gets caught up in exhibiting his miniscule expertise in ‘The Manly Art of Self-Defense’ (which ran from 28^th December 1943 to 19^th January 1944), and follows Mr. Baxter’s purchase of a few items of exercise equipment.

Always with an eye to a fast buck, O’Malley organises a prize fight between poor gentle Gus and the obstreperous Brooklyn Leprechaun, all whilst delaying his long overdue return to the Capitol.

The godfather is expert in delay and obfuscation but eventually, in a concatenation of curious circumstances, the Congressman buckles under pressure from both his human and fairy-folk constituents to push through a new hydroelectric project â€“ in actuality two vastly different ones – and wings off to begin the process of funding ‘The O’Malley Dam’ (20^th January – 22^nd April)â€¦

As the political bandwagon gets rolling, further hindered by Mr. Baxter and Barnaby visiting the Congressman’s never-occupied office in Washington DC, the flighty, easily distracted O’Malley takes it upon himself to enscribe the natural history of his people in ‘Pixie Anthropology’ (24^th April-18^th May), even as back home the Big Fight gets nearer and poor Gus continues to flap under his punishing training regimenâ€¦

‘Mr. O’Malley, Efficiency Expert’, which ran from 19^th May to 8^th June, then saw the Fairy Fool step in when overwork and worry laid Mr. Baxter low. The factory manager was pilloried by concerns over production targets, but whilst he was remanded to his sickbed, the flying figment was busy â€œfixingâ€ the crisis for himâ€¦

During that riotous sequence another oddball was introduced in the diminutive form of Gridley the Salamander: a â€œFire Pixeyâ€ who couldn’t raise a spark even if supplied with matches and gasolineâ€¦

The under-worked winged windbag was a master of manipulation and ‘O’Malley and the Buried Treasure’ (9^th June – 7^th September) saw the airborne oaf inveigle invitations for the Baxters to the beachside cottage owned by Jane’s aunt. Once there it wasn’t long before avaricious imagination and a couple of old coins spawned a rabid gold rush amongst the adults who really should have known better.

The extended vacation also saw the first appearance of moisture-averse sovereign of the seas Davy Jonesâ€¦

Whilst the Congressman was busily avoiding work, his seat vanished during boundary reorganisation, but ever-undaunted the pixilated political animal soldiered on, outrageously campaigning in the then-ongoing Presidential Election throughout the cruelly hilarious ‘O’Malley for Dewey’ (8^th September – 8^th November 1944)â€¦

Newspaper strips always celebrated seasonal events and, after the wry satire of the race for power, whacky whimsy was highlighted with the advent of ‘Cousin Myles O’Malley’ (9^th– 24^th November). The puny Puritan pixie had come over on the Mayflower and was still trying to catch a turkey for his very first Thanksgiving Dinner.

Naturally his take-charge, thoroughly modern relative was a huge (dis)advantage to his ongoing questâ€¦

With Christmas fast approaching, an injudicious expression from Ma Baxter regarding a fur wrap sets Barnaby and his Fairy guardian on the trail of the fabled and fabulous, ferocious ermine beast and sees the introduction of ‘The O’Malley Fur Trading Post’ (25^th November 1944 to 27^th January 1945).

Although legendary and mythical gnomish huntsman J. P. Orion fails to deliver, an unlucky band of fur thieves fall into the hunters’ traps and soon find their latest haul missing. Before long poor Mr. Baxter is looking at the chilling prospect of jail time for receiving stolen propertyâ€¦

With the global conflict clearly drawing to a close, Johnson threw himself into the debate of what the post-War world would be like in a swingeing attack on the financial system and the greedy gullibility of professional money men. Barnaby and most especially his conniving godfather almost shatter the American commercial world in a cunning fable entitled ‘J.J. O’Malley, Wizard of Wall Street’ (29^th January – 26^th May)â€¦

With America still reeling, the ever-unfolding hilarity took an arcane turn and saw Mr. Baxter suffer more than the usual degree of personal humiliation and confusion when he took Barnaby, Gorgon and Jane for a short walk and lost them in the littlest woods in America.

They had of course been led astray by O’Malley who accidentally dumped them on ‘Emmylou Schwartz, Licensed Witchcraft Practitioner’ (28^th May – 3^rd July). She had been in a bad mood since the Salem Witch Trialsâ€¦

As a result of this latest unhappy encounter and a shameful incident with a black cat, the dogmatic dog was hexed and became ‘Tongue-Tied Gorgon’ (4^th– 10^th July)â€¦ not that most people could tellâ€¦

When Barnaby’s Aunt Minerva wrote a bestseller, O’Malley felt constrained to guide her budding career in ‘Belles Lettres’ (11^th July – 17^th August). The obnoxious elf was a little less keen when he discovered it was only a cookbook, but perked up when it led to Minerva being offered a newspaper column.

Being an expert in this field too, O’Malley continued his behind-the-scenes support amidst ‘The Fourth Estate’ (18^th August-8^th September), renewing his old acquaintance with an impishly literal Printers Devil named Shrdluâ€¦

Despite O’Malley’s best efforts Minerva remained a success and was soon looking for her own place. In ‘Real Estate’ (10^th September – 10^th October), Barnaby was helpless to prevent poor Gus being used by the godfather as a ghostly goad to convince a spiritualist-obsessed landlady to let to his aunt rather than a brace of conmenâ€¦

A perfect indication of the wry humour that peppered the feature can be seen in ‘Party Invitations’ which ran from 11^th – 20^th October as O’Malley attempts to supersede the usual turkey-and-fixin’s feast with a fashionable venison banquet – even though he can’t catch a deer and won’t be cooking it once it’s been butcheredâ€¦

Congruent with that was the introduction of erudite aborigine ‘Howard the Sigahstaw Indian‘ (22^nd October-23^rd November) – who was just as inept in the hunting traditions of his forefathers – after which the festive preparations continued with ‘O’Malley’s Christmas List’ (24^th November-15^th December) wherein the always-generous godfather discovers the miracle of store credit and goes shopping for presents for everybody.

Never one to concentrate for long, he is briefly distracted by a guessing competition in ‘Bean-Counting’ (8^th– 15^th December) – the prize of a home movie camera being the ideal gift for young Barnaby – and this parade of monochrome cartoon marvels concludes with the dryly hilarious saga of ‘The Hangue Dogfood Telephone Quiz Program’ (17^th December 1945-1^st January 1946) wherein Gorgon’s reluctant answers to an advertising promotion again threaten to hurl the entire American business world into chaosâ€¦

Intellectually raucous, riotous, sublimely surreal and adorably absurd, the untrammelled, razor-sharp whimsy of the strip is always instantly captivating, and the laconic charm of the writing is well-nigh irresistible, but the lasting legacy of this ground-breaking strip is the clean sparse line-work that reduces images to almost technical drawings, unwavering line-weights and solid swathes of black that define space and depth by practically eliminating it, without ever obscuring the fluid warmth and humanity of the characters.

Almost every modern strip cartoon follows the principles laid down here by a man who purportedly disliked the mediumâ€¦

The major difference between then and now should also be noted, however.

Johnson despised doing shoddy work, or short-changing his audience. On average each of his daily encounters – always self-contained – built on the previous episode without needing to re-reference it, and contained three to four times as much text as its contemporaries. It’s a sign of the author’s ability that the extra wordage was never unnecessary, and often uniquely readable, blending storybook clarity, the snappy pace of â€œScrewballâ€ comedy films and the contemporary rhythms and idiom of authors such as Damon Runyan and Dashiel Hammett.

He managed this miracle by type-setting the dialogue and pasting up the strips himself – primarily in Futura Medium Italic but with effective forays into other fonts for dramatic and comedic effect.

No sticky-beaked educational vigilante could claim Barnaby harmed children’s reading abilities by confusing the tykes with non-standard letter-forms (a charge levelled at comics as late as the turn of this century), and the device also allowed him to maintain an easy, elegant, effective balance of black and white which makes the deliciously diagrammatic art light, airy and implausibly fresh and accessible.

During 1946-1947, Johnson surrendered the strip to friends as he pursued a career illustrating children’s book such as Constance J. Foster’s This Rich World: The Story of Money, but eventually he returned, crafting more magic until he retired Barnaby in 1952 to concentrate on books.

When Ruth graduated she became a successful children’s writer and they collaborated on four tomes, The Carrot Seed (1945), How to Make an Earthquake, Is This You? and The Happy Egg, but these days Crockett Johnson is best known for his seven â€œHaroldâ€ books which began in 1955 with the captivating Harold and the Purple Crayon.

During a global war with heroes and villains aplenty, where no comic page could top the daily headlines for thrills, drama and heartbreak, Barnaby was an absolute panacea to the horrors without ever ignoring or escaping them.

The entire glorious confection that is Barnaby is all about our relationship with imagination. This is not a strip about childhood fantasy. The theme here, beloved by both parents and children alike, is that grown-ups don’t listen to kids enough, and that they certainly don’t know everything.

For far too long Barnaby was a lost masterpiece. It is influential, ground-breaking and a shining classic of the form. You are all the poorer for not knowing it, and should move mountains to change that situation. I’m not kidding.

Liberally illustrated throughout with sketches, roughs, photos and advertising materials as well as Credits, Thank Yous and a brief biography of Johnson, this big hardback book of joy is a long-overdue and very welcome addition to 21st century bookshelves – most especially yoursâ€¦

July 1, 2014July 6, 2014

The Weirding Willows volume 1: What the Wild Things Are

By Dave Elliott, Barnaby Bagenda, Sami Basri & various (Atomeka/Titan Comics)
ISBN: 987-1-78276-035-1

Phillip Jose Farmer’s Tarzan Alive (1972) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973) are probably the earliest modern examples of our current fascination with concatenating assorted literary icons and fictive childhood companions into heroic associations and fantasy brotherhoods, but as fantasy consumers we’ve always wanted our idols to clash or team up.

So many comics from Scarlet in Gaslight (Sherlock Holmes and Dracula) to Planetary (pulp vigilantes and other companies’ superheroes cheekily retooled) to the magnificent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (everybody you’ve ever heard of and some you haven’t) and an uncountable number of TV shows, books and movies have mined this boundless seam of entertainment gold.

The Weirding Willows by Dave Elliott, Barnaby Bagenda, Sami Basri and an army of colourists continues that topical trend; recombining the innocent headliners of many a beloved British children’s book into a slick, harsh, creepily adult reconfigurationâ€¦

One cautionary note: as with every entry into this amalgamating sub-genre, if you are a literary purist you are going to hate this – or indeed any – contemporarily-toned, edgily in-your-face interpretation. Nothing I can say will change your mind, so don’t bother.

There are plenty of other graphic novels and albums around that will better suit your temperament. Please try one of thoseâ€¦

The series launched in the latest iteration of anthology title A1 and this collection of first story-arc What the Wild Things Are also includes a whole new chapter exclusive to this lush and beguiling hardback compilation.

Rural, bucolic Willow Weir is a quintessentially English hamlet with a big secret. The riverside association of houses and farms intersects a number of portals to numerous other Realms and Dimensions, and things strange and uncanny are often seen – if not discussed. The human folk who abide there are not so simple and frequently as odd as the creatures that roam the wild woods and harmless-seeming riverbanksâ€¦

Following author Elliott’s Introduction a handy map offers the geographical lowdown on the green and pleasantly deceptive land before the tale unfolds with ‘A Wicked Witch This Way Comes’ wherein we meet worldly wise teen totty Alice Moreau, a girl greatly at odds with her father’s scientific preoccupations.

Dad and daughter reside in the house abandoned by Professor Donald H. Lambert when he rode his time machine into the future, and the abrasive single parent soon filled the vacant dwelling with an assortment of animals for his experiments.

This particular morning he is dickering with Dr. Henry Jekyll who has provided formal introduction for a green-bedecked dowager temptress named Margareete Marche; a traveller from a distant land who wishes to commission the radical surgeon to construct for her an army of winged monkeysâ€¦

Insolent Alice isn’t impressed: she’s far more concerned that sheep are going missing from nasty Farmer McGregor‘s spread. Naturally darling Daddy is the prime suspect. There’s no love lost between father and daughter, ever since she followed a rabbit through a portal to Wonderland and told her father all about it. He didn’t believe a word and has mocked her ever sinceâ€¦

The unpleasant confrontation with McGregor is cut short when a trio of talking rabbits summon her away to deal with another crisis. She doesn’t get far, though, as Montgomery Doolittle arrives with a barge full of fresh beasts for the operating tableâ€¦

The cargo has also drawn a new player to the dell of domesticity. This black-maned wild child is desperate to rescue his beloved companions Baloo and Bagheera from the clutches of the obnoxious white man who can talk to animalsâ€¦

‘If You Go Down to the Woods Todayâ€¦’ sees Alice finally follow her bunny buddies as enraged Mowgli tries – and fails – to free his wild brothers: becoming instead more prospective raw material for Doctor Moreau. As Alice slips away no one pays any attention to a bizarrely grinning cat named Cheshire, and her own attentions are soon fully occupied by the rampages of an extremely angry example of the surgical efforts of an earlier modern Prometheusâ€¦

‘The Prisoner of Doctor Moreau’ finds Mowgli imprisoned with an exotic young woman named Kamaria, as across the river Alice brokers a peace between the rabbit race and Frankenstein’s Monster. As usual he has been gravely misunderstood: his frantic acts were merely the result of extreme concern for a lost companion.

Rosalind had gone missing and he has tracked her through a portal from Pellucidar – the world at the Earth’s Core – and is quite concerned. So is everybody else when they learn that Rosalind is a dinosaurâ€¦

‘What Lies Beneath Badger’s House’ introduces badger Victor Stoker, toad Dudley Cook, mole Morris Moore & ratty Terry James as well as a sinister hidden city deep down under Badger’s house, whilst in Moreau’s cellar laboratory the Cheshire Cat gives Mowgli some dangerous advice.

Meanwhile, the multi-species search party have found Rosalind on McGregor’s Farm, ferociously guarding a clutch of recently laid eggsâ€¦

That discovery only leads to tragedy as the obnoxious smallholder shoots Rosalind and claims the eggs for himself in ‘Here There Be Dragons!’ Thankfully Alice quickly deals with the farmer before monstrous Damon can get his second-hand hands on himâ€¦

Things take an even stranger turn when Victor, Morris, Dudley and Terry turn up. The Badger seems to know an awful lot about the experiments of the long-dead Dr. Frankensteinâ€¦

Night comes on and, in Moreau’s cellar as the full moon shines down on Kamaria, she begins to change and howlâ€¦

At a loss, Alice brings the whole menagerie back to her place in ‘What the Wild Things Are!’, much to the angry astonishment of her father, and at least has the satisfaction of proving that her â€œchildish ramblingsâ€ were all true, all alongâ€¦

However, when the rampant Kamaria werewolf tumultuously breaks out, strange alliances are quickly formed before the whole lethally helter-skelter hurly-burly is unconventionally settled in the low-key conclusion ‘Worlds Within Worlds’.

In the aftermath Alice at last finds time to renew an old acquaintanceship with a four-armed green man from another worldâ€¦

Each chapter is concluded with an excerpt from The Weirding Willows Field Guide, detailing pertinent facts and shameful secrets about Alice, Philippe Moreau, Monty Doolittle, Damon Frankenstein, Victor Stoker, Dudley Cook, Morris Moore & Terry James, Margareete Marche, Dr. Henry Jekyll & Edward Hyde, Mowgli, The Worriers Three (talking rabbits Benjamin Buckle, Peter Pipp & Hoetoe Darwin), Professor Donald H. Lambert and enigmatic, formidable bunny-with-a-secret Norman Pipp, and the tome terminates with the author’s afterword ‘Inspirations’ and some informative creator ‘Biographies’.

Magnificently, mesmerisingly illustrated, this is a visual feast no fan of fantastic fantasy mash-ups will want to missâ€¦

June 30, 2014June 29, 2014

Essential Punisher volume 1

By Gerry Conway, Archie Goodwin, Len Wein, Mike W. Barr, Marv Wolfman, Dennis O’Neil, Roger McKenzie, Frank Miller, Bill Mantlo, Stephen Grant, Jo Duffy, Ross Andru, Tony DeZuniga, Frank Springer, Keith Pollard, Al Milgrom, Greg LaRocque, Mike Zeck, Mike Vosburg& variousÂ (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-8571-2375-0

Although one of the industry’s biggest hits from the late 1980s onwards, the compulsive vengeance-taker known as The Punisher was always an unlikely and uncomfortable star for comicbooks.

His methods are always excessively violent and usually permanent. It’s intriguing to note that unlike most heroes who debuted as villains (Black Widow or Wolverine come to mind) the Punisher actually became more immoral, anti-social and murderous, not less: the buying public simply shifted its communal perspective; The Punisher never toned down or cleaned up his actâ€¦

He was created by Gerry Conway, John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru; a necessarily toned down, muted response to such increasingly popular prose anti-heroes as Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan: the Executioner and a bloody tide of fictive returning Viet Nam vets who all turned their training and talents to wiping out organised crime in the early 1970s.

The story goes that Marvel’s bosses were reluctant to give The Punisher a starring vehicle in their standard colour comic-book line, feeling the character’s very nature made him a bad guy and not a good one. Other than the two magazine stories and the miniseries which closes the volume, Frank Castle was not supposed to be the star or even particularly admirable to the impressionable readership.

Therefore these early appearances might disappoint die-hard fans even though they are the formative tales of his success. Perhaps it’s best to remember and accept that when not actually the villain in the tales he was at best a worrisome guestâ€¦

Boy, how times do changeâ€¦

He was first seen as a villain and patsy in Amazing Spider-Man #129, repeatedly returning thereafter before getting his shot at the big time – and then not in newsstand publications but in the company’s black and white, mature magazine lineâ€¦

This initial Essential compilation gathers all those tentative stabs and guest-shots from February 1974 through to the breakthrough 1986 miniseries which really got the ball rolling: specifically Amazing Spider-Man #129, 134-135, 162-163, 174-175, 201-202; Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15; Giant-Size Spider-Man #4; Marvel Preview #2; Marvel Super-Action #1; Captain America #241; Daredevil #182-184; Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #81-83 and The Punisher #1-5, and many die-hard fans might be a little disappointed in the relative lack of brutality, carnage and even face time contained herein.

Just keep in mind that for the greater part of these early appearances the Skull-shirted slayer was at best a visiting partner and usually the villain du jourâ€¦

The first case in this mammoth monochrome war journal comes from Amazing Spider-Man #129, introducing not only the renegade gunslinger but also nefarious manic mastermind The Jackal in ‘The Punisher Strikes Twice!’ by Conway, Andru, Frank Giacoia & Dave Hunt wherein the Man with the Guns was duped by manipulative Professor Miles Warren into hunting Spider-Man. The unhappy Wallcrawler was currently a suspect in the death of Norman Osborn and subsequently set up by the Jackal for the murder of the Punisher’s gunmakerâ€¦

The much-misunderstood champions of the oppressed crossed paths again in Amazing Spider-Man #134-135 when a South American bandit intended to be his oppressive regime’s Captain America attempted to pillage a Manhattan tour boat in ‘Danger is a Man Namedâ€¦ Tarantula!’ Once again unwilling allies, the duo dutifully dismantled the villains schemes after a ‘Shoot-Out in Central Park!’

The Punisher played a more pivotal role in Giant-Size Spider-Man #4 (April 1975) when the Webslinger forced himself into one of the Lone Gunman’s cases in ‘To Sow the Seeds of Death’s Day!’ Ruthless arms dealer Moses Magnum had perfected a lethal chemical weapon and begun testing it on randomly kidnapped victims. Tracking down the vile monster in ‘Attack of the War Machine!’, the pair found themselves infiltrating his ‘Death-Camp at the Edge of the World!’ before summary justice was dispensed as much by fate as the heroesâ€¦

John Romita senior’s original concept pencil sketch of The Punisher from 1973 is followed by the vigilante’s first solo role – in black-&-white magazine Marvel Preview #2 (August 1975) – where Conway & Tony DeZuniga pronounced a ‘Death Sentence’ on some of Castle’s old army buddies who had been tricked into becoming assassins by a millionaire madman who wanted to take over America. The gritty yarn also at last revealed the tragic reasons for the Punisher’s unending mission of vengeance.

Highly decorated Marine Castle saw his wife and children gunned down in Central Park after the carefree picnickers stumbled into a mob hit. When the killers turned the guns on the witnesses, only Castle survived. Recovering in hospital the bereft warrior dedicated his life to eradicating criminals everywhereâ€¦

Following a stunning Punisher and Dominic Fortune pin-up by Howard Chaykin, ‘Accounts Settledâ€¦ Accounts Due!’ by Archie Goodwin, DeZuniga & Rico Rival from Marvel Super Action #1 (January 1976) follows the matured-themed plot to a close as Castle at last tracks down the gunsels who carried out the shooting and the Dons who ordered it, only to find that his bloody vengeance hasn’t eased his heart or dulled his thirst for personal justiceâ€¦

Castle was reduced to a bit-player in Amazing Spider-Man #162-163 (October and November 1976, by Len Wein Andru & Esposito, as the newly reconstituted X-Men were sales-boosted by a guest-clash with the Wallcrawler in ‘â€¦And the Nightcrawler Came Prowling, Prowling’, wherein the Arachnid jumps to wrong conclusion after a sniper shoots a reveller at Coney Island.

By the time Nightcrawler has explained himself – in the tried-and-true Marvel manner of fighting the webspinner to a standstill – old skull-shirt has turned up to take them both on before mutual foe Jigsaw is exposed as the real assassin in the concluding episode ‘Let the Punisher Fit the Crime!’

Amazing Spider-Man #174 from November 1977 declared ‘The Hitman’s Back in Town!’ (inks by DeZuniga & Jim Mooney) and saw Castle hunting a costumed assassin hired to remove J. Jonah Jameson but experiencing an unusual reticence since the killer was a old army pal who had saved his life in Vietnam. Nevertheless the tale ended with a fatality in the ‘Big Apple Battleground!’ in #175.

Captain America #241 (January 1980, by Mike W. Barr, Frank Springer & Pablo Marcos) was very much a fill in which benefited from the Frank Miller effect – he drew the cover – as ‘Fear Grows in Brooklyn’ as the Sentinel of Liberty got in the way of a mission and refused to allow the Punisher to go free.

He couldn’t however, stop him from escaping police custody and Amazing Spider-Man #201-202 –‘Man-Hunt!’ and ‘One For Those Long Gone!’ (February and March 1980, by Marv Wolfman, Keith Pollard & Mooney) – reveal how The Punisher almost uncovers Peter Parker‘s big secret whilst relentlessly stalking a mob boss responsible for the death of a kid who had saved Castle’s lifeâ€¦

Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15 (1981 by Dennis O’Neil, Frank Miller & Klaus Janson) is putatively the genesis of the antihero in his true form. ‘Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?’ sees maniac fugitive Frank Castle back in the Big Apple and embroiled in a deadly scheme by Doctor Octopus to poison five million New Yorkers.

It’s not long before both Peter Parker and his colourful alter-ego are caught in the middle of a terrifying battle of ruthless wills in a tense and clever suspense thriller, which perfectly recaptures the moody mastery of Steve Ditko’s heydays.

The Miller connection continued in three unforgettable issues of Daredevil (#182-184 from May-July 1982) which perfectly encapsulated everything that made the Punisher run such a momentous, unmissable, â€œmust-readâ€ characterâ€¦

Beginning with only a pertinent untitled excerpt by Miller & Janson from ‘She’s Alive’ wherein a reeling Matt Murdock is trying to cope with the murder of his first love Elektra whilst elsewhere Castle is clandestinely removed from prison by a government spook to stop a shipment of drugs the authorities can’t touch. Once he’s killed the gangsters, however, The Punisher refuses to go back to jailâ€¦

The story proper begins in ‘Child’s Play’ – with Roger McKenzie lending a scripting hand – and deals with school kids using drugs. It was originally begun by McKenzie & Miller but shelved for a year, before being reworked into a stunningly powerful and unsettling tale once Miller & Janson assumed the full creative chores on the title.

When Matt visits a High School he is a helpless witness when a little girl goes berserk, attacking staff and pupils before throwing herself out of a third floor window.

She was high on â€œAngel Dustâ€ and as the appalled hero vows to track down the dealers he first encounters her bereaved and distraught younger brother Billy, determined to exact his own vengeance and later the coldly calculating Castle who has the same idea and far more experienceâ€¦

The hunt leads inexorably to a certain street pusher and DD, Billy and the Punisher all find their target at the same time. After a spectacular battle the thoroughly beaten Daredevil has only a bullet-ridden corpse and Billy with a smoking gunâ€¦

The kid is innocent – and so, this time at least, is Castle – and after Murdock proves it in court, the investigation resumes with the focus falling on the pusher’s boss Hogman. When DD’s super-hearing confirms the gangster’s claims of innocence his alter-ego Murdock then successfully defends the vile dealer, only to have the exonerated slime-ball gloatingly admit to having committed the murder after allâ€¦

Horrified, shocked, betrayed and determined to enforce justice, DD finds a connection to a highly-placed member of the school faculty deeply involved with Hogman in the concluding ‘Good Guys Wear Red’ but it’s far too late: Castle and Billy have both decided the end the matter Hogman’s wayâ€¦

Scripted by Bill , Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #81-83 (August to October 1983) opens with ‘Stalkers in the Shadows’, illustrated by Al Milgrom & Mooney, and sees an increasingly crazy Punisher going after misdemeanour malefactors with the same murderous zeal he previously reserved for killers and worse. Spider-Man meanwhile has his hands full with teen vigilantes Cloak and Dagger who have graduated from tackling street drug pushers to go after Wilson Fisk, Kingpin of crime.

‘Crime & Punishment!’ sees Castle applying lethal force indiscriminately all over town, culminating in his own crazed attack on Fiskâ€¦ who beats him to a pulp.

The saga ends with ‘Delusions’ by Mantlo, Greg LaRoque & Mooney wherein the Punisher goes on trial and is found to have been dosed with psychosis-inducing drugsâ€¦

At last Marvel gave way to the inevitable and commissioned a Punisher miniseries, although writer Steven Grant and penciller Mike Zeck apparently had an uphill struggle convincing editors to let the grim, gun-crazed maniac loose in that shiny world where little kids might fixate on a dangerous role model – and their parents might get all over-protective, litigious and (skull) shirtyâ€¦

In 1985 they finally got the green-light and the 5-issue miniseries – running from January to May – turned the industry on its head. There was indeed plenty of controversy to go around, especially as the tale featured a â€œheroâ€ who had lots of illicit sex and killed his enemies in cold blood. Also causing problems for censorious eyes were the suicide of one of the major characters and the murder of innocent children. Doesn’t it make you proud to realise how far we’ve since comeâ€¦?

The company mitigated the potential fall-out with the most lacklustre PR campaign in history, but not telling anybody about The Punisher didn’t stop the series from becoming a runaway, barnstorming success. The rest is historyâ€¦

Two years later as the graphic novel market was finally getting established and with Frank Castle one of the biggest draws in comics (sorry, I’m such a child sometimes), that contentious series was released as a complete book and it remains one of the very best of all his many exploits.

Here, rendered even more stark and uncompromising in gritty moody monochrome, the action begins in ‘Circle of Blood’ as Castle is locked in Ryker’s Island prison where every inmate is queuing up to kill him. Within hours though he has turned the tables and terrified the General Population, but knows that both old foe Jigsaw and the last of the great mob â€œGodfathersâ€ have special plans for himâ€¦

When a mass breakout frees all the cons, Castle brutally steps in. For this he is allowed to escape by the warden, who casually offers him membership in The Trust, an organisation of â€œRight-minded, law-abiding citizensâ€ who approve of his crusade against crime. Castle also discovers he’s being stalked by Tony Massera, a good man who thought he had escaped the influences of his bad familyâ€¦

Tony wants to kill Castle to avenge his father, one of Punisher’s many gory successes – but only after the streets have been swept clean of scum like his own familyâ€¦

‘Back to the War’ finds the Punisher on the streets again, hunting scum, armed and supplied by the Trust but still not a part of their organisation.

After an abortive attempt to blow up The Kingpin, Castle is saved by the mysterious Angel, and begins a loveless liaison with her. With everybody mistakenly believing the master of New York’s underworld dead, a bloody gang-war erupts with greedy sub-bosses all trying to claim the top spot, but by the events of ‘Slaughterday’ Castle realises that too many innocents are getting caught in the crossfires.

He also discovers in ‘Final Solution’ that the Trust have their own national agenda as hit men and brainwashed criminals dressed in his costume surreptitiously hit the streets, executing mobsters and fanning the flamesâ€¦

All the Trust’s plans for this â€œPunishment Squadâ€ and the country are uncovered in the blockbusting conclusion ‘Final Solution Part 2’ as all the pieces fall into place and the surviving players reveal their true allegiances. In a classy final chapter mysteriously completed by the highly underrated Jo Duffy and Mike Vosburg, from Grant’s original plot, The Punisher takes charge in his inimitable manner, leaving God and the cops to sort out the paperworkâ€¦.

We can only speculate as to why the originators fell away at the last hurdle, but I’m pretty sure those same reluctant editors played some part in it allâ€¦

This economical Essential edition comes with a plethora of pin-ups and concludes with a comprehensive information dossier culled from the ever-informative Marvel Universe Handbook, and these superbly gritty, morally ambiguous if not actually ethically challenging dramas never cease to thrill and amaze, and have been reprinted a number of times.

Whichever version suits your inclinations and wallet, if you love action, cherish costumed comics adventure and crave the occasional dose of gratuitous personal justice this one should be at the top of your â€œMost Wantedâ€ list.

June 29, 2014July 6, 2014

The Extinction Parade

By Max Brooks & Raulo Caceres (Avatar Press/Titan Comics)
ISBN: 987-1-59291-234-6

I’ve never been the keenest consumer of zombie stories but occasionally something really intriguing and different crops up and I’m compelled to re-think my position. Somehow, that usually only occurs when Max Brooks is involved.

Brooks is a successful actor and screenwriter (most notably part of the team scripting Saturday Night Live) and cartoon fans might recognize his name from the voice credits of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Batman Beyond and Justice League. You probably laughed at a lot of his dad’s movies: High Anxiety, Young Frankenstein and the first version of the Producers amongst others.

The guy also loves to play around with the conventions of horror. His previous books include The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z and the graphic novel The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks.

Now he’s come up with what seems a brilliant â€œno-brainerâ€ concept that somebody should have had decades ago (and probably did in some old EC horror or DC story, as some veteran fright fan is sure to comment somewhere)â€¦

In his latest charnel confection – a comicbook series from cutting (bleeding?) edge adult publisher Avatar Press – he’s also finally and thankfully returned vampires to their proper place as cold, relentless, loveless apex predators; discarding dubious modern notions of Nosferatu as chaste touchy-feely dreamboats for adolescents or pulchritudinous, perpetually priapic passion pets for hot and horny humans.

Brook’s vampires just kill and kill and kill – as much for fun as for sustenanceâ€¦

The initial five issue arc of The Extinction Parade introduces us to two such bloodsuckers: haughty, disdainful, distant and aristocratically discrete female night-hunters who have dined on the best, brightest and most dangerous examples of humanity – â€œsolbreedersâ€ – for untold ages.

As such they have often encountered outbreaks of the slow, shambling, stupidly voracious plague-zombies which have periodically broken out amongst the human populations. They always watched with haughty amusement as the brain-dead â€œSubdeadâ€ mindlessly attacked until they’d exhausted their frightened food supply or some king or band of warriors wiped them out. Then the vampires usually hunted the victorious human heroes, assured at least of some thrilling sportâ€¦

The saga is set in the exotic technopolises of modern Malay peninsula where the queens of the damned look on and laugh from on high at human inefficiency as Singapore, Sumatra and Sarawak, Thailand, Cambodia and Burma and all points East are ravaged and reduced by a gory tide of unthinking mobile contagion carriers, killing and consuming everyone in their shuddering pathâ€¦

Blithe and oblivious, the immortal killers carry on their sybaritic bloodletting, glorying in the carnage and delighted that to the ever-expanding wave of subdead biting beasts they are utterly invisible and undetectable. Even these monsters they can destroy with ease and no hint of fear or retaliationâ€¦

As city after city, nation after nation, continent after continent succumbs to the plague, all the vampire girls can think of is the opportunity to abandon caution and restraint, indulging in wanton public slaughter: â€œnights of gloryâ€ spent preying on the rapidly declining humans before the stupid but relentless subdead canâ€¦

And then with fire and death everywhere an impossible new notion finally sinks into minds stupefied by blood, euphoria and centuries of untouchable, blasÃ© privilegeâ€¦

With all parts of Earth accessible as never before, with the subdead multiplying with every bite and no sense of preservation or the future, what will vampires eat when there are no humans left?

To be fair, their daylight caretaker Willem tried to tell them repeatedly that this time something was different, but when have vampires ever listened to servants or humans?Â The first inkling the spoiled bloodsuckers have of a real problem is the night their major domo is not there when they awake from their red-spattered reposeâ€¦

The pitifully few undead elite gather to watch an inexorable tide wipe out what might be the last vestiges of humanity in the city, and rage and frustration and perhaps fear grip the shell-shocked dowagers of doom. Without thinking they explode into action, tearing apart the unthinking oblivious subdead shamblers.

Tirelessly, methodically they dismember and destroy the Zombie pack. It is a turning point in the history of the undead. The vampires will war with the unthinking eaters for the right to consume mortals.

However, the battle has highlighted a disturbing fact: vampires are not completely immune to the taint that drives zombies to mindless endless hungerâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

Narrated in an effective first person narrative with bleak deadpan delivery, this is also a visceral, visual gorefest from illustrator Raulo Caceres that no lover of shock-horror could resist. This luxurious full colour paperback compilation also includes a seventeen page covers-&-variants gallery plus a scarlet-spattered eleven page preview of forthcoming volume The Extinction Parade: War.

June 28, 2014July 6, 2014

World War One: 1914-1918

By Alan Cowsill, Lalit Kumar Sharma, Jagdish Kumar & various (Campfire)
ISBN: 978-93-80741-86-4

In 1914 following thirty years of empire building and politicking by wealthy nations, Europe was a tinderbox sitting atop a powder-keg. On June 28^th in the city of Sarajevo a bomb was thrown, shots were fired and a spark set everything offâ€¦

There have been many graphic novels set in and about the Great War, but very few that have been brave enough to offer a comprehensive overview of the entire conflict. This compelling primer by writer Alan Cowsill and illustrators Lalit Kumar Sharma & Jagdish Kumar pulls off the neat trick of bullet-pointing the key events whilst simultaneously personalising the conflict through the unfolding fortunes of a number of ordinary â€œTommiesâ€ who enlisted at the very startâ€¦

The account begins on The Somme in 1916 where George Smith and his brother Joe prepare to go â€œOver the Topâ€. As the attack commences he recalls how they all got there, beginning with a review of the initially botched assassination by a dying Serbian Nationalist in an inconspicuous little town in Bosnia-Herzegovina – and how German military ambition and Austro-Hungarian indignation slowly, inexorably kindled the flames of conflict on a continent enmeshed in a convoluted web of complex alliances…

The tale then switches to idyllic England where anti-German sentiment was the backdrop to the introduction of the Smith boys. Older brother Joe was part of the first wave – the British Expeditionary Force – dispatched to France in August 1914 for the hellish wake-up call that was the Battle of Monsâ€¦

Back home underage George and his pal Fred Cowsill had little problem enlisting and were soon coping with basic training as focus shifts to the Central Powers where German plans were explored and the appalling rate of attrition meant younger and younger soldiers were being ferried to the frontâ€¦

And so it continues: the Smith’s experience of mud, mayhem and crippling tedium interspersed with incisive examinations and overviews of the military and political forces at play,

Whilst the boys slogged through mud, dug trenches and dodged bullets and gas, the narrative explores the role of other advantage-seeking countries such Japan, naval engagements and the supremacy of submarine combat, the war in Africa, Germany’s role in the Russian Revolution and the foolish mistakes which led America to surrender its neutrality and join the Allied Powersâ€¦

Also touched upon are the achievements of T.E. Lawrence (â€œâ€¦of Arabiaâ€), Wilfred Owen, the Christmas Day football match, the creation of Tanks and development of aerial combat, the disproportionate and astounding contributions of the Australian and New Zealand contingents, the bombing of Britain, the vile executions of deserters and psychologically scarred â€œshellshockâ€ victims and how, but for political intransigence, the war might have ended in 1916â€¦

Quite understandably for a book from an Indian publisher, some long-delayed attention is paid to the crucial contributions of the Empire’s Asian soldiery, such as Sepoy Khudadad Khan Minhas (first soldier of the Indian Army to win the Victoria Cross) whom Joe meets in a field hospital, and there are some damning views of the folks at home, smugly doling out white feathers to any men they consider shirkers or cowardsâ€¦

Peppered with significant factual titbits and landmarks, the report continues, following the disastrous campaigns, the technological advancements, the battles, the global involvement and implications and how, even after the Armistice, the killing continued, whilst George and his comrades fall one by one by oneâ€¦

Superbly prÃ©cising the entire conflict, smartly mixing factual overview with eyewitness perspective at home and abroad and never straying far from action and bloodletting, this is a captivating introduction to the â€œWar to End All Warsâ€ (although I might quibble on the art side and wish for a little more diligent use of photo reference in certain places) and is ably augmented by fact-features such as ‘Was it Really a World War?’ and a truly heartbreaking illustrated essay on ‘Silent Soldiers’: the astounding animals who were awarded incredible honours for their incomprehensibly valiant deeds in the human Armageddonâ€¦

June 27, 2014July 6, 2014

Snowpiecer: The Escape

By Jacques Lob & Jean-Marc Rochette translated by Virginie Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-143-3

All science fiction is social commentary and, no matter when, where or how set, holds up a mirror to the concerns of the time of its creation. Many stories – in whatever medium – can go on to reshape the culture that spawned them.

There’s a reason why the Soviets proscribed many types of popular writing but actively encouraged (certain flavours of) science fiction. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Metropolis, 1984, Solaris, Star Trek, Alien and so many others escaped the ghetto of mere genre to change the cognitive landscape of the world, and hundreds more such groundbreaking and worthy efforts would do the same if we could get enough people to read or see them.

And most importantly, when done well and with honesty, such stories are also incredibly entertaining.

All over the world comics have always looked to the stars and voyaged to the future. Europe especially has long been producing spectacularly gripping and enthralling â€œWorlds of Ifâ€¦â€ and Franco-Belgian graphic storytelling in particular abounds with undiscovered treasures.

For every Blake & Mortimer or Barbarella, ValÃ©rian & Laureline, Airtight Garage, Chimpanzee Complex or Gods in Chaos there is an impossible hidden wealth of others, all perched tantalisingly out of reach for everybody unable or unwilling to read nothing but English.

To coincide with the release of spectacular summer blockbuster movie Snowpiercer, Titan Comics have released an economical paperback edition of another long-overlooked masterpiece. The book – a stunning example of bleak Cold War paranoid fantasy – is also electronically accessible to iPhone, iPad, Web, Android and Kindle consumers.

The original mesmerising monochrome adventure, written by Jacques Lob (TÃ©nÃ©brax, Submerman, Superdupont) and rendered by painter/illustrator Jean-Marc Rochette (Le DÃ©poteur de ChrysanthÃ¨mes, Les Aventures Psychotiques de NapolÃ©on et Bonaparte), was first serialised in 1982 in Ã€ Suivre and collected two years later as Le Transperceneige, and like most landmark yarns has a driving central conceit which is simple, brilliant and awesome.

In the future life is harsh, oppressive and ferociously claustrophobic. When eternal winter descended upon the Earth, fugitive remnants of humanity boarded a vast vacation super-train and began an eternal circumambulation of the iceball planet on railway tracks originally designed to offer the idle rich the ultimate pleasure cruise.

Thanks to lax security, as the locomotive started its unceasing circuit of the globe, gangs of destitutes boarded the vehicle, but were forced by the military contingent into the last of the 1001 cars pulled by the modern miracle of engineering.

Now decades later, the self-contained and self-sustaining Engine hurtles through unending polar gloom in a perpetual loop, carrying within a raw, fragmented and declining microcosm of the society that was lost to the new ice ageâ€¦

All contact with the Tail-enders of the â€œThird Classâ€ has been suspended ever since they tried to break through to the better conditions of the middle and front carriages. Their â€œWild Rushâ€ was repelled by armed guards and the survivors – who recall the terrifying event as â€œthe Massacreâ€ – were kicked back to their rolling slums and sealed in to dieâ€¦

The story proper begins as Lieutenant Zayim is called to an incident in a toilet. Somehow an individual has survived the -30 degree chill and monstrous acceleration, climbing along the outside of the train to smash his way into a centre carriage.

Normally the importunate refugee would be killed and ejected but the stunned officer receives instruction from his Colonel that the indigent – named Proloff – is to be interviewed by the leaders up in First Class.

Before that, however, the invader must be quarantined as the carriage doctor has no idea what contagions must proliferate in the squalor of the rear. But whilst Proloff is isolated, idealistic young activist Adeline Belleau forces her way into the carriage.

She is with a humanitarian Aid Group agitating to integrate the abandoned Tail-enders with the rest of the train, but is unceremoniously confined with the intruder and suffers the same appalling indignities as her unfortunate clientâ€¦

After a â€œnightâ€ in custody Proloff and Adeline are escorted by Sergeant Briscard and his squad through the strange and terrifying semi-autonomous carriages: each a disparate region of the ever-rolling city, contributing something to the survival of all.

Travelling through each car during their slow walk, Proloff observes how humanity has uniquely adapted on the journey to nowhere, but that each tiny kingdom is filled with people scared, damaged and increasingly dangerous.

In one car they are even attacked by banditsâ€¦

The invader also begins to glean certain facts: a religion has grown that worships the unlimited life-bestowing power of Saint Loco, rumours that the train is inexorably slowing down, reports that a plague has begun in the carriage he broke into. Even Adeline has picked up a cold from somewhereâ€¦

As they slowly approach the front, Proloff and Adeline grow closer, uniting against the antipathy of the incrementally better off passengers who all want the Powers-That-Be to jettison the dragging, superfluous end carriages packed with filthy Tail-endersâ€¦

When they at last reach the luxurious â€œGolden Carsâ€ the outcasts are interviewed by military Top Brass and the President himself.

He confirms that the train is indeed losing speed and that the furthest carriages will be ditched, but asks Proloff to act as an emissary, facilitating the dispersal of the human dregs throughout the rest of the train.

Billeted with Al, the timidly innocuous Train Archivist, Historian and Librarian, Proloff quickly confirms his suspicion that he is being played. Whilst deftly avoiding the grilling regarding conditions at the train’s tail, he swaps some theories about how the ice age really began and just how coincidentally lucky it was that this prototype vacation super-train was set up, ready and waiting to save the rich and powerfulâ€¦ and only accidentally and unwillingly a selection of the rest of humanityâ€¦

Stoically taking in the decadent debauchery of the First Class cars, Proloff is ready to die before going back, and when word of plague and revolution provokes an attack by the paranoid autocrats, he and Adeline decide to move even further forward, to see the mighty Engine before they die.

What they find there changes everything for everyone, foreverâ€¦

This incisive exploration of a delicately balanced ostensibly stable society in crisis is a sparkling allegory and punishing metaphor, playing Hell and poverty at the bottom against wealth in Heaven at the top, all seen through the eyes of a rebel who rejects both options in favour of a personal destiny, and is long overdue for the kind of recognition bestowed on that hallowed list of SF greats cited above.

Dark, brooding, manic and compulsive, Snowpiercer is a must-see masterpiece no fantasy fan can afford to miss.

June 26, 2014July 6, 2014

Moomin: the Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip volume 2

By Tove Jansson (Drawn & Quarterly)
ISBN: 978-1-897299-19-7

Tove Jansson was one of the greatest literary innovators and narrative pioneers of the 20^th century: equally adept at shaping words and images to create worlds of wonder. She was especially expressive in pen and ink, manipulating slim economical lines and patterns to realise sublime realms of fascination, whilst her dexterity made simple forms into incredibly expressive and potent symbols.

Tove Marika Jansson was born into an artistic, intellectual and practically bohemian Swedish family in Helsinki, Finland on August 9^th 1914. Her father Viktor was a sculptor, her mother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson a successful illustrator, graphic designer and commercial artist. Tove’s brothers Lars and Per Olov became a cartoonist/writer and photographer respectively. The family and its close intellectual, eccentric circle of friends seems to have been cast rather than born, with a witty play or challenging sitcom as the piece they were all destined to act in.

After intensive study from 1930-1938 (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, the Graphic School of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and L’Ecole d’Adrien Holy and L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris) Tove became a successful exhibiting artist through the troubled period of the Second World War.

Intensely creative in many fields, she published the first fantastic Moomins adventure in 1945: SmÃ¥trollen och den stora Ã¶versvÃ¤mningen (The Little Trolls and the Great Flood or latterly and more euphoniously The Moomins and the Great Flood), a whimsical epic of gentle, inclusive, accepting, understanding, bohemian, misfit trolls and their strange friendsâ€¦

A young over-achiever, from 1930-1953 Tove worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for the Swedish satirical magazine Garm, and achieved some measure of notoriety with an infamous political sketch of Hitler in nappies that lampooned the Appeasement policies of Chamberlain and other European leaders in the build-up to World War II. She was also an in-demand illustrator for many magazines and children’s books. She had also started selling comic strips as early as 1929.

Moomintroll was her signature character. Literally.

The lumpy, gently adventurous big-eyed romantic goof began life as a spindly sigil next to her name in her political works. She called him â€œSnorkâ€ and claimed she had designed him in a fit of pique as a child – the ugliest thing a precocious little girl could imagine – as a response to losing an argument about Immanuel Kant with her brother.

The term â€œMoominâ€ came from her maternal uncle Einar Hammarsten who attempted to stop her pilfering food when she visited by warning her that a Moomintroll guarded the kitchen, creeping up on trespassers and breathing cold air down their necks. Snork/Moomin filled out, became timidly nicer – if a little clingy and insecure – acting as a placid therapy-tool to counteract the grimness of the post-war world.

The Moomins and the Great Flood was relatively unsuccessful but Jansson persisted, probably as much for her own edification as any other reason, and in 1946 the second book Kometjakten (Comet in Moominland) was published. Many commentators have reckoned the terrifying tale a skilfully compelling allegory of Nuclear destruction.

When it and her third illustrated novel Trollkarlens hatt (1948, Finn Family Moomintroll or occasionally The Happy Moomins) were translated into English in 1952 to great acclaim, it prompted British publishing giant Associated Press to commission a newspaper strip about her seductively sweet and sensibly surreal creations.

Jansson had no misgivings or prejudices about strip cartoons and had already adapted Comet in Moominland for Swedish/Finnish paper Ny Tid.

Mumintrollet och jordens undergÃ¤ng – Moomintrolls and the End of the World – was a popular feature so Jansson readily accepted the chance to extend her eclectic family across the world.

In 1953 The London Evening News began the first of 21 Moomin strip sagas which promptly captivated readers of all ages. Tove’s involvement in the cartoon feature ended in 1959, a casualty of its own success and a punishing publication schedule. So great was the strain that towards the end she had recruited her brother Lars to help. He took over, continuing the feature until its end in 1975.

Free of the strip Tove returned to painting, writing and her other creative pursuits, generating plays, murals, public art, stage designs, costumes for dramas and ballets, a Moomin opera and another nine Moomin-related picture-books and novels, as well as thirteen books and short-story collections strictly for grown-ups.

Her awards are too numerous to mention but consider this: how many modern artists – let alone comics creators – get their faces on the national currency? She died on June 27^th 2001.

Her Moomin comic strip has been collected in seven Scandinavian volumes and the discerning folk at Drawn & Quarterly have translated these into English for your – and especially my – sheer delight and delectation.

This second oversized (312 x 222mm) monochrome hardback compilation commences with ‘Moomin’s Winter Follies’ as the rotund, gracious and deeply considerate young troll has an accident on ice which prompts the family to begin their preparations for the winter’s hibernation.

However after those efforts lead to nothing but petty disaster, boldly unconventional Moomin Pappa decides that tradition isn’t everything and decrees that they shall all stay awake for the icy months aheadâ€¦

The family and their many friends however are soon bedevilled by the obnoxiously enthusiastic Mr. Brisk who cajoles the easygoing Moomins to indulge in his abiding passion for winter sports. The results are painful and far from impressive, but the ruggedly athletic Brisk does turn the head of the overly romantic and lonely Mymbleâ€¦

As usual, the object of her affections is blithely oblivious, caring only for the upcoming Winter Games, but when the beauteous Snorkmaiden also begins to succumb to Brisk’s physical charms Moomin is compelled to take up ski-jumping to win back her attention.

When that goes poorly he is tempted into contemplating murder until cooler heads, his own gentle nature and the onset of spring produces a gentler solutionâ€¦

Moomins are easygoing free spirits, bohemians untroubled by hidebound domestic mores and societal pressures. Mamma is warm and capable but overly concerned with propriety and appearances whilst Pappa spends most of his time trying to rekindle his adventurous youth or dreaming of fantastic journeys.

However when prideful snobbish Mrs. Fillyjonk moves in next door, her snooty attitudes unfavourably affect the entire family, resulting in the hiring of ‘Moomin Mamma’s Maid’.

The search for a suitable servant results in disruption and discontent before the dour, distressed and doom-obsessed Misabel – along with her direly depressed dog Pimple – begin to further blight the formerly happy household.

Misabel suffers from secrets and a persecution complex and when Fillyjonk goes missing a detective starts hanging around, adding to the general aura of anxiety until Moomin Mamma shakes herself out of her status-induced funk and starts a campaign to cheer up and change the latest additions to her wildly imaginative, but oddly welcoming homeâ€¦

‘Moomin Builds a House’ sees Mymble’s eccentrically forgetful but fruitful mother come to visit, inflicting her latest batch of wild and wilful youngsters – seventeen, or thereabouts – on the normally compassionate and understanding trolls.

The children are, to put it mildly, little monsters: destructive, practical joking arsonistic hellions who would put the Belles of St. Trinians to shame and to routâ€¦

Soon, impressionable Moomin is driven out of his home and, egged on by the worst of the brood Little My, attempts to build his own house in the woods.

Possessing none of Moomin Pappa’s artisan or craft skills, the lad’s efforts are far from satisfactory but nonetheless his flighty paramour Snorkmaiden soon joins him, intent on making the shaky edifice their romantic hideaway. Sadly, with Little My still around, their best laid plans soon come unstuckâ€¦

This utterly incomparable and heartwarming box of graphic delights concludes with a brilliantly satitical salutary romp as ‘Moomin Begins a New Life’, wherein an itinerant thinker enters the valley sharing his secret recipe for â€œHow to be Happyâ€.

The Prophet is remarkably convincing and, seeing how his pronouncements and suggestions have changed the lives of all their friends and neighbours, the graciously impressionable Moomins try to adjust their behaviour to maximise their joy, unaware that they are already as happy and content as anyone can beâ€¦

With the entire community blissed out, the well-intentioned Prophet then convinces the constable to release all the folk in jail, allowing mischievous trickster and scofflaw Stinky to resume his prankish shenanigansâ€¦

After convincing Moomin Pappa to set up an illicit still producing hard liquor – which incites Snorkmaiden to run off with another young man – Stinky then convinces heartbroken, abandoned Moomin to turn to the dark side by becoming a glamorous highwayman and jewel thief to win her back.

Having spread malice and disorder Stinky’s next stunt is badly misjudged as he invites a puritan, fire-and-brimstone rival philosopher dubbed the Black Prophet to come and save all the sinnersâ€¦

Thankfully, as the rival Prophets’ war of words escalates Moomin Mamma at last reaches the end of her patience and intervenesâ€¦

Wrapping up the Wild Things wonderment is the short essay ‘Tove Jansson: To Live in Peace, Plant Potatoes, and Dream’: a comprehensive biography and commentary by Alisia Grace Chase PhD which celebrates the incredible achievements of this genteel giant of literature.

These are truly magical tales for the young laced with the devastating observation and razor sharp mature wit which enhances and elevates only the greatest kid’s stories into classics of literature. These volumes are an international treasure and no fan of the medium – or biped with even a hint of heart and soul – can afford to be without them.

June 25, 2014June 24, 2014

Superior Spider-Man: Goblin Nation

By Dan Slott, Christos N. Gage, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Humberto Ramos, John Dell & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-602-1

Amazing Spider-Man #700 began one of the most impressive reboots of the wondrous Webslinger’s mythology and was certainly the most striking and compelling character shake-up of all the MarvelNOW! relaunches.

In that issue, all that was Peter Parker apparently died when Doctor Otto Octavius took over his body. The hero’s mind had been trapped in the super-villain’s expiring body where, despite his every effort, at the last Peter perished with and within that decrepit frame.

Permanently installed in a strong and vital body, the coldly calculating Octopus began living Peter’s life, albeit with some minor necessary alterations, upgrades and improvements: arguably becoming a wholly Superior Spider-Manâ€¦

At first the situation did not seem completely hopeless. At the moment of the monster’s greatest triumph Peter inflicted his full unvarnished memories on the psychic invader, forcing Octavius to experience every ghastly moment of tragedy and sacrifice which combined to make Spider-Man the compulsive do-gooder that he was.

From that enforced emotional turmoil came a bitter understanding. Otto had a change of heart and swore to live the rest of his stolen life in tribute to his greatest enemy; earnestly endeavouring to carry on Spider-Man’s self-imposed mission and inescapably guided by Peter’s abiding principle: â€œwith great power comes great responsibilityâ€â€¦

However Octavius’ monomania proved hard to suppress and the overwritten webspinner constantly toiled to prove himself a better man: augmenting Parker’s paltry gadgets and methodology with millions of spying â€œSpiderbotsâ€ to patrol the entire city at once, always adding advanced tech and new weaponry to his uniform and, most importantly, acting pre-emptively rather than merely reacting to crises as the original hadâ€¦

Otto went back to college because he refused to live life without a doctorate and even briefly tried to rekindle his new body’s old relationship with Mary Jane Watson.

The new, ultra-efficient Spider-Man became New York’s darling and even Mayor J. Jonah Jameson embraced the hero; all but adopting the Arachnid as his deputy – to the utter incredulity of an imperceptible psychic shard of Peter which still screamed in frustration within the deepest recesses of the hero’s overwritten consciousnessâ€¦

The helpless ghost was an unwilling passenger, unsuspected by Octavius yet increasingly privy to the villain’s own barely-suppressed memories. Moreover, many of Parker’s oldest friends and allies began to suspect something amissâ€¦

Police CSI and ex-girlfriend Carlie Cooper knew Peter’s secret identity and recalled the last time Spidey fought Doc Ock, when the killer broke her arm. He had claimed then that it was an accident: that he was Peter trapped in the villain’s bodyâ€¦

The public seemed happy with the changed Spider-Man. Not only was he more efficient, but far more brutal too: crippling bad guys like Boomerang, Vulture and Scorpion. This hard-line attitude actually increased the wallcrawler’s approval rating and, after a hostage siege, his status peaked when he executed the psychotic perpetrator Massacreâ€¦

Eventually Octavius realised there was a noble passenger in his head and eradicated the last vestiges of his insidious enemy’s presence – at the cost of many of Parker’s later memories. However, now utterly liberated, Otto ambitiously extended his campaign of modernised crime-fighting.

After helping Jameson when the Spider-Slayer and other super-felons broke loose on The Raft penitentiary, Spider-Man blackmailed the Mayor into giving him the now-empty island edifice for a base. The Superior Wallcrawler designed a new costume, built giant war-tanks and even hired henchmen to be his â€œSpiderlingsâ€, helping him clean up the city for decent, law-abiding citizens.

â€œParker’sâ€ personal life was all but over. Finally achieving a doctorate, he opened his own tech start-up company and entered into a romance with brilliant college companion Anna Maria Marconi whilst his arachnid alter ego monitored the metropolis through the electronic eyes of the tiny but universal spiderbots from his transformed citadel on the now-renamed Spider Island IIâ€¦

There’s still plenty that he doesn’t see though: resurgent criminal mastermind Goblin King (former Green Goblin Norman Osborn) had taken over the underworld through his Goblin Army Cult.

To that end he transformed young Phil Urich – latest iteration of The Hobgoblin – into his devilishly Strong Right Arm: a Goblin Knight to lead his armies to inevitable victoryâ€¦

Carlie had shared her suspicions about Otto possessing Spider-Man with her friend Police Captain Yuri Watanabe (who secretly moonlights as costumed vigilante The Wraith). Together they gathered proof of their suspicions regarding the Ock and the Wallcrawler; but the mission went cold when Cooper suddenly vanishedâ€¦

Elsewhere disgraced psychopathic genius Ty Stone joined Osborn’s daughter-in-law Liz Allen-Osborn as director at her new conglomerate Alchemax. He was cautiously building his own powerbase, unaware that his new assistant Michael O’Mara was in truth Miguel O’Hara, (Spider-Man 2099) trapped in our era following a chronal crisisâ€¦

Otto/Peter was trying to repair his relationship with Aunt May and her wealthy husband (J. Jonah’s dad Jay Jameson), helplessly re-experiencing the lad’s abiding affection for the gracious old lady. However after seeing Spider-Man at work torturing a captured foe, May wanted her family to have nothing to do with the Arachnid, even though Peter’s company was officially the creator of all the Superior Spider-Man’s gadgets and crime-fighting improvementsâ€¦

As Yuri searched for Carlie, she came to the understandable but erroneous conclusion that Spider-Man was responsible for her abrupt disappearance, whilst Ock’s Spiderlings continually scanned the city for signs of the Goblin cult, neither side able to glean that deep in a subterranean lair Carlie was suffering at the hands of the Goblin King.

The villain was hungry to learn all she knew about Spider-Man (information the mentally unstable Osborn had himself forgotten), but only got what he was after once he’d dosed her with the madness-inducing mutagenic goblin formula which had originally transformed him from business mogul to costumed maniacâ€¦

The bid to transform her into one of his faithful acolytes worked perfectly, and artificially crazed new acolyte Monster seemed delighted to join his vile viridian familyâ€¦

In the Mayor’s office Jonah Jameson, fed up with Spider-Man’s exploitative extortion, commissioned Stone and Alchemax to build a new generation of Spider-Slayer robots. The unscrupulous technologist was happy to turn the project over to his new protÃ©gÃ©â€¦

In other news: Green Goblin had declared war on his rival (and cheap knock-off) Roderick Kingsley who had been franchising super-villain gigs and poaching capers as the Hobgoblin, preparatory to making his big move on the city.

Parker’s Avenger ally Iron Man finally secured concrete proof that the Superior Spider-Man had been playing fast and loose with the truth from the very startâ€¦

Worst of all, after being briefly possessed by the Venom Symbiote Otto had awaked the aggravating ghost of the real Peter Parker in the recesses of their co-owned headâ€¦

To Be Concludedâ€¦

Scripted by Dan Slott with Christos N. Gage, Goblin Nation brings the saga of the brilliant bodysnatcher to a spectacular close, collecting issues #26-31 of the Superior Spider-Man as well as the second Annual (encompassing November 2013- April 2014), delivering a stunning conclusion to the story of Otto Octavius in advance of the Amazing return of the one true Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Manâ€¦

‘Goblin Nation Prelude: Goblin Wars’ illustrated by Humberto Ramos, Javier Rodriguez, Marcos Martin, Victor Olazaba & Alvaro Lopez, opens as Goblin Nation soldiers and Hobgoblin’s crew clash one last time, whilst across town the Superior Spider-Man’s battle with AIM is interrupted by an indignant pack of Avengers demanding some honest answersâ€¦

Deep in Octavius’ mindscape, everything that remains of Peter Parker reviews again the 31 key memories left after Ock performed psychic surgery to excise his young foe’s thoughts and influence. They aren’t much, but they are the very quintessence of what made the boy a heroâ€¦

In the outer world Goblin King kills Hobgoblin, subsequently recruiting his victim’s men to the cause. Suspicious and fearful, his Goblin Knight Phil Urich wisely conceals from Osborn the fact that the corpse is not Kingsley but only a brainwashed proxy, whilst at Avengers Tower, the interview with the Webslinger goes badly and â€œSpider-Manâ€ quits the World’s Mightiest Heroesâ€¦

‘Goblin Nation’ resumes 31 days later with New York City devastated and all but conquered by Osborn’s ghoulish forces. Spider-Man is reeling at his impossible fall from grace. The invaders have combined ruthless force with subversive computer programming to decimate the city’s defences and defendersâ€¦

As Otto questions how it could all have happened he accesses one of Parker’s remaining memories just as the ghost in his mindscape remembers the same event. Curiosity piqued, Peter finds a memory starring Octavius and enters Otto’s representation only to find himself trapped and reliving the villain’s life – every cruel, brutally sad moment of itâ€¦

In the physical world, crushed Otto-in-Peter labours to create a technical solution to the Goblin invasion, whilst his concerned girlfriend Anna Maria Marconi looks on helplessly. Suitably equipped he then invades Osborn’s underworld for a showdown but is appalled when the madman announces that he knows he’s talking to Doctor Octopus not Peter Parkerâ€¦

Goblin King offers Otto a subordinate role in his new empire and, when the monomaniac Arachnid refuses and escapes, Osborn sends a battalion of his creepy minions to raze Spider Island and everything on itâ€¦

With Giuseppe Camuncoli & John Dell assuming the art chores the story continues with only Otto getting away: sneaking off like a whipped dog thanks to his robot slave â€œThe Living Brainâ€, whilst deep in his head, the real hero struggles to retain his own identity whilst experiencing every frustration and defeat that made Octavius who he is.

On TV Mayor Jameson has denounced Spider-Man and announced his own solution to the crisis: a â€œSlayer Patrolâ€ army of super-robots designed to take back the streets. Watching the broadcast, Mary Jane and boyfriend Pedro Olivera are suddenly attacked by a detachment of Goblins. Fighting them off, MJ realises that all Spider-Man’s friends and family must be targets and moves to warn and save themâ€¦ if she canâ€¦

At Parker Industries, The Wraith attacks â€œPeterâ€ believing he has kidnapped Carlie only to have the battle interrupted by Monster. Recognising the missing girl has been mutated by Goblin-serum, Parker and his colleague Sajani Jaffrey capture the raving acolyte and attempt to reverse the processâ€¦

Mary Jane has narrowly moved May and Jay before the Goblins could find them, but is not able to save Anna Maria from capture and as the next chapter opens the Goblin Underground is in control of New York. With Otto/Peter frantically working on curing Carlie Osborn celebrates his triumph by blowing up all the landmarks and repositories of Octavius’ past successes, prompting the Superior Spider-Man to rashly come after him. The final straw is the Goblin’s boast that he has all his friends. Unable to reach Anna Maria the Wallcrawler tackles Goblin King head-on and one of the Emerald sociopath’s hostages pays the final priceâ€¦

Deep in the Mindscape Peter has been subsumed by Otto’s memories and is gone just as the memory lane reaches the point where Arachnid and Octopus began their lethal rivalry, whilst in the real world Spider-Man’s rage and torment are momentarily forgotten when Jameson’s Spider-Slayer robots attack him.

Luckily Spider-Man 2099 is there to disable them but even he is taken by surprise when Osborn hacks their programming, turning the mechanoids into another terror weapon to destroy the city and its heroesâ€¦

The epic takes a necessary detour as Superior Spider-Man Annual #2 offers a brace of tales scripted by Gage as intersecting sidebars to the unfolding calamity, beginning with ‘Blood Ties’.

Illustrated by Javier Rodriguez & Alvaro Lopez, the downbeat yarn chronicles Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich‘s desperate attempts to save his nephew Phil from the curse of the Green Goblin and his own weak nature whilst ‘Chasing Ghosts’ (art by Philipe Briones) reveals how Sajani and the Wraith begin administering their highly experimental cure on Carlie and discover the secret of how Osborn has been subverting the City and Spider-Man’s electronic security systemsâ€¦

Back in Superior Spider-Man #30, Otto’s battle against Osborn has reached a critical stage, just as in the Mindscape helpless passenger Parker reaches the point where Ock took over his body. Galvanised by shock the hero returns to full mental control of himself but not, crucially, the body Otto still commands.

The usurper is in dire straits: frozen by indecision as Osborn threatens to kill another hostage. The occluded sight of the frail female form has paralysed the Superior Spider-Man, but not Parker who forces the faux hero to actâ€¦

The victim is not Anna Maria and in a final example of excoriating self-examination Otto realises he cannot save her. Thus he willingly surrenders his consciousness allowing Peter Parker to reclaim forever their body.

It might not be an act of kindness. Even though the Amazing Spider-Man is back Osborn has never been stronger or more likely to triumph or take the world to destruction with himâ€¦

This truly titanic terminal tome includes a covers-&-variants gallery by Ryan Stegman, Ramos, Camuncoli, Mark Brooks, Jennifer Parks, David Marquez, J. Scott Campbell, Jorge Molina, Kevin Maguire and Tim Sale and comes fully augmented with AR icon sections – Marvel Augmented Reality App pages which provide access to story bonuses and content on your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

Spectacular, sensational and breathtakingly satisfying, the all-action conclusion offers a stunning climax to the catastrophic carnage with the original Wallcrawler utterly transcendent as he resumes his rightful position in the world, but even with the Superior Saga ended the aftermath has stacked up a huge number of changes, problems and perils for Parker to deal with in the days to come.

To Be Continuedâ€¦
â„¢ & Â© 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

June 24, 2014September 3, 2017

Valerian and Laureline book 6: Ambassador of the Shadows

By MÃ©ziÃ©res & Christin, with colours by E. TranlÃ© and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-178-5Â Â (Dargaud edition) 2-205-06949-7

ValÃ©rian and Laureline is the most influential science fiction comics series ever drawn, an innovation-packed big ideas drama stuffed with wry comment and sardonic sideswipes at contemporary mores and prejudices.

Although to a large extent those venerable strips defined and later re-defined the medium itself, anybody who has seen a Star Wars movie or that franchise’s numerous homages, pastiches and rip-offs has been exposed to many doses of Jean-Claude MÃ©ziÃ©res & Pierre Christin’s brilliant imaginings uniquely innovative, grungy, lived-in authentic futurism and light-hearted swashbuckling rollercoaster romps of MÃ©ziÃ©res & Christin than any other cartoon spacer.

ValÃ©rian: Spatio-Temporal Agent debuted in Pilote #420 (November 9^th 1967) and was an instant hit. It gradually evolved into ValÃ©rian and Laureline as the feisty sidekick developed into the equal partner – if not scene stealing star – in a light-hearted, fantastically imaginative time-travelling, space-warping fantasy stuffed with wry, satirical, humanist action and political commentary.

At first Valerian was an affable, capable but unimaginative by-the-book space cop tasked with protecting the official universal chronology by counteracting paradoxes caused by incautious time-travellers.

When ValÃ©rian travelled to 11^th century France in debut tale ‘Les Mauvais RÃªves (‘Bad Dreams’ and still not translated into English yet), he was rescued from doom by a fiery, capable young woman named Laureline. He brought her back to the 28^th century super-citadel and administrative capital of the Terran Empire, Galaxity. The indomitable female firebrand trained as a Spatiotemporal operative and began accompanying him on all his missions.

Ambassador of the Shadows originally ran in Pilote from July to October 1975 and finds the wide-ranging Spatiotemporal agents assigned to an arrogant and obnoxious Terran diplomat transferring to the cosmically cosmopolitan space edifice known as Point Central.

Over the eons many races and species have converged there for commerce and social intercourse by the simple expedient of bolting their own prefabricated constructed segment to the colossal, continually expanding hodge-podge wholeâ€¦

With no central authority, different species take turns presiding over the amassed multitudes via the immense Hall of Screens. However, no decent species would ever leave its own tailor-made environmentâ€¦

And now it is Earth’s turn to take the lead but, as they vector in for landing, the pompous martinet they are escorting informs Valerian and Laureline of a slight modification in their orders. They are still to the Ambassador’s bodyguards but must stay extra vigilant as Earth is going to uses its term in office to bring â€œorder and disciplineâ€ to the lackadaisical way the universe is run.

The assembled races will be invited to join a federation run – and policed – by Earth. â€¦And just to make sure, there’s a Terran space fleet of 10, 000 warships manoeuvring just out of Point Central’sÂ sensor rangeâ€¦

Laureline is outraged but like Valerian can do nothing except acquiesce. For her pains she is put in charge of the mission’s funds – a Grumpy Transmuter from Bluxte – which can mass-excrete any currency or object of trade or barter swallowed by its always scowling other endâ€¦

All kitted-out, the trio and the living cash-machine spacewalk to Point Central but before the mission can begin an alien ambush occurs. Mystery warriors using Xoxos cocoon guns inundate the attending officers and dignitaries and only Valerian escapes plastic entombment.

As the raiders make off with the Ambassador, the Spatiotemporal Agent gives chase but is easily captured and dragged off tooâ€¦

By the time Laureline breaks loose they are long gone and she is left to pick up the pieces with stiff-necked human bureaucrat Colonel Diol, Under Chief of Protocol.

Determined but with little to go on, she is cautiously optimistic when a trio of aliens come knocking. Ignoring Diol’s protest at the shocking impropriety she invites the scurrilous Shingouz into the Earth Segment. They are mercenary information brokers and claim to have been invited by the Ambassador before his abductionâ€¦

From them – and thanks to the pained efforts of the Grumpy Transmuter – she purchases a few hints and allegations as well as a map of Point Central which might lead to Earth’s secret allies in the cosmopolisâ€¦

With the constantly bleating Diol reluctantly in tow, Laureline begins a quest through the underbelly of the station, seeing for the first time the mute but ubiquitous Zools: a much ignored under-race which has been maintaining Point Central for millennia.

The Earthlings’ perambulations take them to the centaur-like Kamuniks: barbaric feudal mercenaries allied to Galaxity and appreciative of humanity’s martial prowess, and over a lavish feast – liberally augmented by another painfully exotic payment courtesy of the overworked Transmuter – the warriors steer Laureline towards potential suspects the Bagulins: low grade muscle-for-hire who frequent the tawdry red-light sector run by The Suffussâ€¦

Despite Diol’s nigh-apoplexy the adamant and inquisitive Laureline follows the trail to the sin segment where she experiences the particular talents of the hosts: amorphous shapeshifters who can make any carnal dream come literally true.

Well into overtime now, the exhausted Grumpy buys the help of one Suffuss who smuggles the junior Spatiotemporal operative into a Bagulin party and the next link in the chainâ€¦

And so it goes as, with occasional prodding from the Shingouz, Laureline gets ever-closer to the enigmatic beings truly pulling all the strings on Point Central whilst elsewhere Valerian frees the Ambassador from a bizarre and ethereal captivity only to find the doctrinaire war-maker is undergoing a strange change of heart.

Seemingly landing their deserted ship on a paradisiacal â€œworld with no nameâ€ they bask in an idyllic paradise and converse with noble primitives who have an uncanny aura of great power.

These beings built the first section of Point Central and ruled the universe before withdrawing from mundane material affairs, but they still maintain a watch over their creation from the shadows and won’t let any race or species to dominate or conquer their pan-galactic melting pot of spaceâ€¦

In a more physical portion of reality Laureline follows her final clues and reaches the strange central area where Val and the Ambassador lie dazed and confused. By the time they all return to the Earth Segment a few major changes have taken place in the governance of the immense star station but, oddly, the Ambassador doesn’t seem to mindâ€¦

Ambassador of the Shadows was the first Valerian tale to make it into English, appearing as a serial in the American Heavy Metal magazine from January to April 1984 (volume 4, #10 to Volume 5, #1).

Socially aware and ethically crusading, this is one of the smartest, most beguilingly cynical comics tales to catch the 1970s wave of political awareness and still ranks amongst the very best to explore the social aspects and iniquities of colonialism.

And of course there’s the usual glorious blend of astounding action, imaginative imagery and fantastic creatures to leaven the morality play with space-operatic fun-filled, visually breathtaking and stunningly ingenious wide-eyed wondermentâ€¦

Between 1981 and 1985, Dargaud-Canada and Dargaud-USA published a quartet of these albums in English (with a limited UK imprint from Hodder-Dargaud) under the umbrella title Valerian: Spatiotemporal Agent and this tale was the fourth release, 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 20^th century edition too as it boasts a foreword by comics god Will Eisner, full creator biographies and a fascinating, insightful illustrated overview by French science fiction author and editor Daniel Richeâ€¦

June 23, 2014

Savage Wolverine: Wrath

By Phil Jimenez, Scott Lope, Richard J. Isanove & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-605-2

Company kick-start initiative Marvel NOW! having reinvigorated the entire continuity, assorted X-stars began life anew and Savage Wolverine was launched to spotlight tales outside the usual helter-skelter, non-stop progression of Marvel Universe continuity.

This grimly dark and moody collection – gathering issues #12-17 (published between February and June 2014) – captures two of the feral fury’s most brutal sagas in a bloody volume reaffirming the character’s charnel-house underpinnings.

Ever since his early glory days in the All-New, All Different X-Men, the mutant berserker known variously as Wolverine, Logan, Patch and latterly James Howlett has been a character who appealed to the suppressed, put-upon, catharsis-craving comic fan by perpetually promising to cut loose and give bad guys the kind of final punishment we all know they truly deserve.

Always skirting the line between and blurring the definitions of indomitable hero and maniac murderer, Wolverine soldiered on: a tragic, brutal, misunderstood champion cloaked in mysteries and contradictions. Then society changed and, as with ethically-challenged colleague the Punisher, final sanction and quick dispatch became acceptable and even preferred options for costumed crusadersâ€¦

Debuting as a throwaway foe for The Incredible Hulk in a tantalising teaser-glimpse at the end of issue #180 (October 1974) before indulging in a full-on scrap with the Green Goliath in the next issue, the semi-feral Canadian mutant with fearsome claws and killer attitude rode – and maybe even caused – the meteoric rise of the rebooted X-Men before gaining his own series, super-star status and silver screen immortality.

He hasn’t looked back since, although over the years many untold tales of the aged agent (since the miniseries Wolverine:Origins revealed the hero had been born at the end of the 19^th century) have explored his missing exploits in ever-increasing intensity and torturous detail.

Thus Wolverine’s secret origin(s) and increasingly revelatory disclosures regarding his extended, conveniently much-brainwashed life have gradually seeped out. Cursed with recurring and periodic bouts of amnesia and mind-wiped ad nauseum by sinister or even well-meaning friends and foes, the Chaotic Canucklehead has packed loads of adventurous living into his centuries of existence – but until relatively recently hasn’t remembered most of it.

This infinitely unploughed field has conveniently resulted in a crop of dramatically mysterious, undisclosed back-histories, and ‘Come Conquer the Beasts Part 1: Claws and Teeth’ by Phil Jimenez (with additional input from Scott Lope) reveals the undying Wild Rover’s ancient connection with Africa and particularly a tribe of elephants with whom Logan has a semi-mystical relationshipâ€¦

Now that beloved tribe is dying out: another callous casualty of the man-made extinction event caused by Asian and Arabian hunger for ornamental ivory and animal parts for the moronic, misconceived Chinese Medicine tradeâ€¦

On one of his visits Wolverine encounters the stomach-churning results of organised poaching and is compelled by rage and disgust to do something about it. Following the bloody trail back to a staging post in rogue state Madripoor he is shocked to find one of his most trusted human friends neck-deep in the gory, indefensible businessâ€¦

‘Come Conquer the Beasts Part 2: Death in Its Eyes’ further explores the crisis caused by human superstition and greed as Wolverine calls in the X-Men to help stop one pitifully small operation whilst being ultimately helpless to affect the ghastly global ongoing atrocityâ€¦

This is a tale filled with tragedy, hopelessness, small moments of vicarious indulgence and even gallows humour, but the message is what’s really important. Uncompromising, stark, breathtakingly brutal and packed with enough facts to appal any rational, clear-thinking individual, this is comics propaganda of the very best kind: horrifying, impassioned and strident, a true call to arms for all decent people to make self-serving governments act now…

Just as dark but remaining faithfully locked into ferocious fiction, the eponymous 4-part ‘Wrath’ by Richard Isanove takes us back to 1933 to reveal Logan’s own trip down the Road to Perdition, beginning when he was a rum-runner smuggling booze from Canada into Minnesota.

His contact is storekeeper Elias, a fellow survivor of the Great War just trying to keep his four kids safe and well fed in the depths of the Great Depression. Sadly, selling illegal hooch is a dangerous game for independent little guys and, when representatives of the Chicago mob arrive demanding a cut, things very quickly get out of handâ€¦

In the bloody melee, Elias dies and both kids and gangsters discover that Logan is nothing like an ordinary little manâ€¦

With Elias dead Logan is honour-bound to take his kids to their aunt in Sterling, Colorado, but psychotic button men Pierre-Anselme AKA â€œFrenchyâ€ and Sergio (don’t call me â€œMarionâ€) are deadly opponents and despite being maimed by the feral Canuck, manage to escape with pretty Matti – a valuable prospect for the mob’s cathousesâ€¦

Recovering from the assorted Tommy-gun and grenade wounds, Logan drags the kids –Sofia, Peter, and poor consumptive Vicky – in pursuit and soon rescues Matti – but only after another incomprehensible bloodbath.

However Logan makes a critical error in leaving Marion and Frenchy alive and the vengeance-crazed thugs relentlessly follow, using all their Chicago connections to turn the venal and corruptible local law-enforcement officers against the fugitivesâ€¦

Doggedly moving on the party makes friends with â€œOkiesâ€ and other Dust-Bowl economic fugitives but the mobsters are equally determined and remorseless in their pursuit, leaving a trail of bodies and ultimately taking an unimaginable, unforgivable toll on the children, their tragedy-soaked family and the man called Wolverineâ€¦

Short, feisty and indomitable, Logan has always threatened and promised an explosion of visceral, vicarious ultra-violence and grim, gritty justice at every moment and in this slim, savage collection the fact has never been more impressively realised.

With covers-&-variants by Jimenez, Isanove, Chris Samnee, J. G. Jones and John Cassaday, Wrath returns the mutant megastar to realms and milieus largely ignored in recent mainstream appearances, living up to its named promise with brooding, bloody blisteringly bombastic, shocking sagas: a stirring reminder of past glories and uncanny adventures still to be revealedâ€¦
â„¢ & Â© 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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