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Archie Comics Spectacular – It’s a Date


By Archie Superstars (Archie Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-936975-70-9

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Another amazing example of pure comicbook magic… 9/10

Since comicbooks were invented in 1933, Superheroes have become the genre most closely associated with the four-colour format. Nevertheless other forms of sequentially illustrated fiction have held their own periodically and the one which has maintained a unique position over the years (although almost completely abandoned by most publishers and picked up by television) is the teen-comedy genre begun by and still synonymous with a ginger-headed freckled lad named Archie Andrews.

He began his rise to glory when second-string publisher MLJ added a strip based on the Andy Hardy matinee movies to the line-up of costumed mystery men they’d created after Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 in 1938.

In 1939 MLJ launched Blue Ribbon Comics, Top-Notch and Pep Comics filled with the now mandatory blend of masked heroes, two-fisted adventurers strips and one-off gags. Pep actually made a little history with its lead feature The Shield – the USA’s first superhero draped in the American flag – but generally MLJ were followers not innovators.

That changed at the end of 1941 when Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John Goldwater (MLJ, geddit?) spotted a gap in their blossoming market. In December their Fights ‘n’ Tights pantheon was extended to include a wholesome, hometown hero: an “average teen” whose invitingly human-scaled adventures might happen to any of the readers, but with the laughs, good times, romance and slapstick heavily emphasised.

Pep Comics #22 introduced the gap-toothed, red-headed goof, already showing off to the pretty blonde next door. Goldwater had developed the concept of a boyish everyman, and left writer Vic Bloom & artist Bob Montana alone to fill in the details and make it all work it work.

And it did. So effective and all-pervasive was the impact and reassuring message which the new kid offered to the boys “over there” and those scared folk left behind on the Home Front that Archie and his familiar, beloved, secure milieu immortalised in Riverdale and its inhabitants gang represented, that one might consider them the most effective Patriotic Propaganda weapon in comics history…

It all started with an innocuous 6-pager introducing Archie, cute girl-next-door Betty Cooper, the boy’s quirky best friend and confidante Forsythe P. “Jughead” Jones and the small-town utopia they lived in.

The premise was an instant hit and in 1942 Archie graduated to his own title. Archie Comics #1 was MLJ’s first non-anthology magazine and began the inexorable transformation of the company. With the introduction of rich, raven-haired Veronica Lodge all the pieces were in play for the industry’s second Landmark Phenomenon (after Superman).

By May 1946 the kids had taken over. MLJ became Archie Comics, benching its costumed heroes years before the Golden Age ended and becoming to all intents and purposes a publisher of family comedies. This overwhelming success, just like the Man of Steel’s, compelled a change in the content of every other publisher’s titles and was the genesis of a multi-media industry which included toys, games, merchandise, newspaper strips, TV shows, movies, pop-songs and even a chain of restaurants.

Why does it work? Archie is a splendidly ordinary, good-hearted kid, not too smart, a bit impulsive and unthinking and generally lacking common sense – just like we were – whilst Betty – pretty, sensible, capable and devoted is the quintessential Girl Next Door, with everything that entails.

She loves the ridiculous redhead but is also best friends with her own great rival. Ronnie is spoiled, exotic, quixotic and glamorous but seemingly only settles for our boy if there’s nobody better around… except she might actually love him too…

Archie just can’t decide who or what he wants. Even with these two alluring archetypes always around he still gets distracted every time a pretty new girl sashays past…

This engaging and never-tawdry eternal triangle has been the solid basis of more than seventy years of charmingly raucous, gently preposterous, frenetic, chiding and even heart-rending comedy, encompassing everything from surreal wit to frantic slapstick, as the kids and an ever-increasing cast of friends grew into an American institution.

Adapting seamlessly to every trend and fad, perfectly in tone with and mirroring the growth of teen culture, the host of writers and artists who’ve crafted the stories over the decades have made the denizens of Riverdale a benchmark for youth and a visual barometer of growing up American.

The unconventional Jughead is Mercutio to Archie’s Romeo, generally providing rationality and a reader’s voice, as well as being a powerful and mischievous catalyst of events in his own right. There’s even a likeably reprehensible Tybalt analogue in the cocky crafty shape of Reggie Mantle – who first popped up to cause mischief in Jackpot Comics #5 (Spring 1942) – to act as spur, foil and rival and keep the tension ticking over.

This beguiling triangle (plus annexe and outhouse) has been the rock-solid foundation for decades of comics magic and even though the concept is perpetually self-renewing, Archie has thrived by constantly reinventing and refining these core characters, adapting them to the changing world outside the bright, flimsy pages and shamelessly co-opting youth, pop culture, sport, gadgets and fashion trends into its infallible mix of slapstick and young romance.

Each and every social revolution has been painlessly assimilated into the mix with the editors tastefully confronting a number of social issues affecting the young in a manner both even-handed and tasteful over the years.

Most importantly, the quotidian supporting cast – from affable jock Moose to plain Jane Big Ethel or boy genius Dilton Doily, School Principal Mr. Weatherbee or Ronnie’s irascible dad – is always expanding, with constant addition of new characters such as African-American aspiring cartoonist Chuck and his girlfriend Nancy, fashion-diva Ginger, Hispanic couple Frankie & Maria and a host of others.

There are frequent new additions in the opposition too, like spoiled home-wrecker-in-waiting Cheryl Blossom, all contributing to the wide and surprisingly broad-minded scenario.

In 2010 Archie even jumped the final social repressive hurdle when Kevin Keller, an openly gay young man and clear-headed advocate, joined the cast, capably tackling and dismantling the last major taboo in mainstream comics.

Of course the major component of the company’s success has always been the superbly enticing artwork and charming, funny stories by a small army of creative superstars, and this digest-sized spectacular gathers a treasure trove of their very best efforts into a romantically-themed collection which teasingly opens with ‘The Big Decision’ by Barbara Slate, Tim Kennedy & Jon D’Agostino, wherein the red-headed rascal finally chooses his eventual life-mate… for about three seconds…

Betty & Veronica then star in ‘Foot Sore’ (George Gladir, Dan DeCarlo Jr. & Jimmy DeCarlo) as the girlish slaves to fashion lose out to primitive male obduracy after which ‘Root of All Evil’ by Frank Doyle and the astounding Harry Lucey finds Archie desperate to prove Ronnie’s money means nothing to him…

In ‘Muscle Main Man’ (Jim Pellowski, Dan Parent &Jim Amash) the Lodges find that inept Archie is not the worst boyfriend Veronica might pick, whilst in ‘Suspicion’ (Jim Ruth, Chic Stone & D’Agostino) the green-eyed monster drives our hero to make an especially big fool of himself before ‘Inflation Elation’ (Gladir, Bob Bolling & Bob Smith) sees Betty turn the boy’s pennypinching ways to her advantage…

Betty & Veronica take the spotlight in ‘Three’s A Crowd’ (Kathleen Webb, Parent & Rich Koslowski) when one of them horns in on the other’s date night, whilst in ‘Match Play’ (Gladir, Jeff Shultz & Al Milgrom) a computer-dating service proves no help when faced with Ronnie’s picky criteria…

The Lodge lass’s callous nature deposits her at the base of ‘The Infernal Triangle’ (Frank Doyle, Dan DeCarlo & Vince DeCarlo) when she tries to meddle with Betty’s love-life after which Ronnie finds a new beau in ‘By George!’ (Dan DeCarlo & Rudy Lapick). although they soon make-up – sort of – enough to try the dubious tactic of a ‘Dress Down Date’ (Doyle, Dan DeCarlo & Lapick) on cash-poor Betty…

Webb, Bolling & Lapick then detail Ronnie’s very temporary bout of maturity (i.e. sharing) in ‘Growing Pains’, after which ‘Well Placed Point’ – a fifties classic by Bill Vigoda – sees Archie give in to a challenge from Reggie which inevitably draws the wrath of Ronnie down upon his dim ginger head and ‘Chivalrous Chumps’ (John Albano, Dan DeCarlo Jr. & James DeCarlo) finds both laddish rivals’ heads simultaneously turned by some new girls in town…

A formal event allows Reg an opportunity to palm Arch off with a Magician’s rigged tuxedo in ‘Borrowed Trouble’ by Pellowski, Bolling & Smith, after which ‘Fun Daze Together’ (Webb, Doug Crane & Lapick) provides a rare chance for Betty to get her guy, before a garbled phone message taken by Archie’s dad leads to a happy outcome for someone in ‘Dial a Date’ (by Gladir & Stone).

‘Happy Days’ (Ruth & Stone) finds Archie and Betty frantically trying to save their old trysting tree whilst 2-part saga ‘The Search!’ (Parent & Amash) has Ronnie’s parents foolishly attempting to find far more suitable boyfriends – and living to regret it…

Lesser lights Big Moose and Midge star in ‘Don’t Be a Sport’ (Pellowski & Kennedy), learning to their surprise just what really keeps them together, whilst Chuck and Nancy almost split up in ‘Bowl Brummel’ (Gladir, Bolling & Lapick) after his slovenly attires enflame her ire…

To their bemused sorrow, Archie & the entire gang become embroiled in boy genius Dilton‘s ‘Rate-a-Mate’ (Parent & Koslowski) romance program before arrogant self-proclaimed gift to women Reggie tries his slickest moves on the wrong woman in ‘The Lawbreaker’ (Dick Malmgren) and the whole amorous kit and caboodle then culminates and closes with a brace of half-page howlers as ‘Betty in Up to Dates!’ and ‘Archie in Auto Know Better’ both reveal the pervasive appeal of Riverdale’s richest debutante…

Mesmerising, breathtaking graphic wonderment, fun-fuelled family entertainment and enticing pop art masterpieces; these comic confections always capture the joyous spirit of intoxicating youthful vitality which changed the comic industry forever and comprise an essential example of artistic excellence no lover of narrative art should miss.

© 2013 Archie Comics Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Betty Blues


By Renaud Dillies, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM/ComicsLit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163758-4

Renaud Dillies belongs to that cool school of European artists who are keenly aware of the visual power imbued by using anthropomorphic characters in grown up stories – a notion we’ve all but lost here in Britain and one primarily used for kiddie comics and pornography in the USA and Asia.

Dillies was born in Lille in 1972, the inveterate dreamer, artist and storyteller in a brood of five kids. Music was a big part of his parents’ lives: British Pop – especially The Beatles and John Lennon – and Jazz, mostly Big Band, Swing and Satchmo, and the lad listened and learned…

After college – studying Humanities, Graphic and Decorative arts at Saint-Luc School of Fine Arts in Tournai – he began his comics career, like so many others, at Spirou, drawing backgrounds for prolific cartoonist Frédéric Jannin (Rockman, Germain et Nous and many more) and also inking Frédéric “Clarke” Seron on sorceress comedy Mélusine.

The young author blended his twin passions for comics and music in his first solo work and Betty Blues – published by Paquet in 2003 – took the “Best Debut” award at that year’s Angoulême Comics Festival.

He followed up with Sumato, Mister Plumb (with Régis Hautière) and Mélodie du Crépuscule (Melody of Twilight) before moving to Darguad in 2009 to and create Bulles et Nacelle with Christophe Bouchard (available in English as Bubbles and Gondola) and, in 2011, Abélard (again with Hautière and also available in translation from NBM/ComicsLit).

During this period he still toiled as a jobbing Bande Dessinées creator. Under the pen-name “Jack” he drew comedy sports features Les Foot Maniacs and Tout sur le Rugby for Bamboo and illustrated some Arboris’ erotic short stories for the series Salut les coquinas.

Coming from the same dark place and cultural sources as Benoît Sokal’s wry, bleak and witty Inspector Canardo detective duck tales, Betty Blues is both paean and elegy to the unholy trinity of Modern Cool and Shattered Idealisms: Noir, Jazz and Lost Love, all focused through the mythologizing lens of cinematic Fifties Americana.

The tragic, flawed star of this intoxicating fable is Little Rice Duck, possibly the greatest bird ever to blow a trumpet in the seedy clubs and wild environs of the West Wood. Starring at the nightspots and making music are his life but his hot girlfriend Betty is getting pretty tired playing second fiddle to his art.

She’s a pretty bird who needs lots of loving attention, the Good Life and Expensive Champagne, so on one more tedious night when Rice is deep in the spotlight blowing hot and loud, she calamitously listens to an unctuous, sleazy fat cat at the bar who offers her plenty of all three before sneaking off with him…

Her disappearance hits Rice as hard as he subsequently hits the bottle, and his too-late regrets shake him to the core. Going downhill fast, the always-angry little guy throws his magnificent trumpet – which has cost him true love – off a high bridge and hops a train heading “anywhere but here”…

The Horn hits a boat-riding sap and thus begins to affect the lives of a succession of other poor schnooks whilst, elsewhere uptown, Betty begins to reconsider her hasty decision as the downsides of being a rich guy’s trophy – or pet – start to become apparent…

For Rice, the end of the line finds him deep in a forested nowhere-land dubbed “Kutwood” where he is befriended by the owl Bowen who is both lumberjack and radical environmental terrorist.

Slowly he is drawn into the affable agitator’s world of violence, sabotage and anti-capitalist polemic, but all he is really thinking about during so many late night conversations is the tatty old trumpet nailed high up out of reach on Bowen’s cabin wall…

And Jazz: sweet, hot Jazz music…

Back in city Betty starts to fear for life, soul and sanity on the chubby arm of her mercurial plutocrat-cat, as the portentous trumpet begins to reshape the lives of many ordinary folk innocent and venal. And then one day Betty meets an old friend of Rice’s who tells her he’s gone missing…

Sad, grim, brooding and surprisingly suspenseful, this captivating riff on complacency, ill-considered aspirations and lost chances is beguilingly constructed and subtly realised, with a smart undercurrent of bleakly cynical humour counter-pointing the Noir flavour and motif of inescapable doom.

Betty Blues will delight mature readers with a well-honed sense of the absurd and an abiding taste for the dark…
© 2003 Editions Paquet. English translation © 2013 NBM.

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Impossible Tales: The Steve Ditko Archives volume 4


By Steve Ditko & various, edited by Blake Bell (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-640-9

Perfect Christmas Present Alert! – For every discerning comics fan and suspense lover… 10/10

Once upon a time the short complete tale was the sole staple of the comicbook profession, where the plan was to deliver as much variety as possible to the reader. Sadly that particular discipline is all but lost to us today…

Steve Ditko is one of our industry’s greatest talents and probably America’s least lauded. His fervent desire to just get on with his job and to tell stories the best way he can, whilst the noblest of aspirations, will always be a minor consideration or even stumbling block for the commercial interests which for so long controlled all comics production and still exert an overwhelming influence upon the mainstream bulk of Funnybook output.

Before his time at Marvel, young Steve Ditko perfected his craft creating short stories for a variety of companies and it’s an undeniable joy to be able to look at this work from a such an innocent time when he was just breaking into the industry: tirelessly honing his craft with genre tales for whichever publisher would have him, utterly free from the interference of intrusive editors.

This fourth fantastic full-colour deluxe hardback reprints another heaping helping of his ever more impressive works: all published between July 1957 to March 1959 and all courtesy of the surprisingly liberal (at least in its trust of its employees’ creative instincts) sweat-shop publisher Charlton Comics. Some of the issues here were actually put together under the St. John imprint, but when that company abruptly folded much of its already prepared in-house material – even entire issues – were then purchased and published by clearing-house specialist Charlton with almost no editorial changes.

And whilst we’re being technically accurate it’s also important to note that the eventual publication dates of the stories in this collection don’t have a lot to do with when Ditko crafted these mini-masterpieces: Charlton paid so little the cheap, anthologically astute outfit had no problem in buying material it could leave on a shelf for months – if not years – until the right moment arrived to print…

All the tales and covers reproduced here were created after implementation of the draconian, self-inflicted Comics Code Authority rules (which sanitised the industry following Senate Hearings and a public witch-hunt) and all are wonderfully baroque and bizarre fantasy, suspense or science fiction yarns and helpfully annotated with a purchase number to indicate approximately when they were actually drawn.

Sadly there’s no indication of how many (if any) were actually written by Ditko, but as at the time the astoundingly prolific Joe Gill was churning out hundreds of stories every year for Charlton, he is always everyone’s first guess when trying to attribute script credit…

Following an historically informative Introduction and passionate advocacy by Blake Bell, the evocative tales of mystery and imagination commence with ‘The Menace of the Maple Leaves’, an eerie haunted woods fable from Strange Suspense Stories #33 (August 1957), closely followed a dark and sinister con-game which goes impossibly awry after a wealthy roué consults a supposed mystic to regain his youth and vitality and is treated in ‘The Forbidden Room’ (Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #4 July 1957)…

From November 1957, Do You Believe in Nightmares? #1 offers a bounty of Ditko delights, beginning with the stunning St. John cover heralding a prophetic ‘Nightmare’, the strange secret of a prognosticating ‘Somnambulist’ and the justice which befell a seasoned criminal in ‘The Strange Silence’: all proving how wry fate intervenes in the lives of mortals. ‘You Can Make Me Fly’ then goes a tad off-topic with a tale of brothers divided by morality and intellect and the issue ends with a dinosaur-packed romp courtesy of ‘The Man Who Crashed into Another Era’…

Next up is a tale from one of Charlton’s earliest star characters. Apparently the title came from a radio show which Charlton licensed, and the lead/host/narrator certainly acted more as voyeur than active participant, speaking “to camera” and asking readers for opinion and judgement as he shared a selection of funny, sad, scary and wondrous human interest yarns all tinged with a hint of the weird and supernatural.

When rendered by Ditko, whose storytelling mastery, page design and full, lavish brushwork were just beginning to come into its mature full range, the Tales of the Mysterious Traveler were esoteric and utterly mesmerising…

From issue #6 (December 1957) ‘Little Girl Lost’ chills spines and tugs heartstrings with the story of a doll that loved its human companion, followed by a paranoid chase from Strange Suspense Stories #35 (December 1957) as ‘There it is Again’ sees a scientist dogged by his most dangerous invention…

Unusual Tales #10 (January 1958) provides a spooky cover before disclosing the awesome secret of ‘The Repair Man from Nowhere’ and, following the wickedly effective Cold War science fiction parable ‘Panic!’ from Strange Suspense Stories #35, resumes with ‘A Strange Kiss’ that draws a mining engineer into a far better world…

Out of This World #6 (November 1957) provides access to ‘The Secret Room’ which forever changed the lives of an aging, destitute couple. Then the cover and original artwork for Out of This World #12 (March 1959) lead to a tale in which a ruthless anthropologist is brought low by ‘A Living Doll’ he’d taken from a native village…

Returning to Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #6 results in three more captivating yarns. ‘When Old Doc Died’ is perhaps the best in this book, displaying wry humour in the history of a country sawbones who was only content when helping others, whilst ‘The Old Fool’ everybody mocked proved to be his village’s greatest friend, and ‘Mister Evriman’ explored the metaphysics of mass TV viewing in a thoroughly chilling manner…

The dangers of science without scruples informed the salutary saga of a new invention in ‘The Edge of Fear’ (Unusual Tales #10, January 1958), after which the cover of This Magazine is Haunted #14 (December 1957) ushers us into cases recounted by the ghoulish Dr. Haunt; specifically a scary precursor to cloning in ‘The Second Self’ and a diagnosis of isolation and mutation which afflicted ‘The Green Man’…

The cover and original art for the giant-sized Out of This World #7 (February 1958) precedes ‘The Most Terrible Fate’ befalling a victim of atomic warfare whilst ‘Cure-All’ detailed a struggle between a country doctor and a sinister machine which healed any ailment.

We return to This Magazine is Haunted #14 wherein Dr. Haunt relates a ghastly monster’s progress ‘From Out of the Depths’ before ‘The Man Who Disappeared’ tells his uncanny story to disbelieving Federal agents, whilst Out of This World #7 provides an ethereal ringside seat from which to view a time traveller’s ‘Journey to Paradise’.

From Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #7 (March 1958), ‘And the Fear Grew’ relates how an Australian rancher fell foul of an insidiously malign but cute-looking critter, after which ‘The Heel and the Healer’ reveals how a snake-oil peddler found a genuine magic cure-all, whilst ‘Never Again’ (Unusual Tales #10 again) took an eons-long look at mankind’s atomic follies and ‘Through the Walls’ (Out of This World #7) saw a decent man framed and imprisoned, only to be saved by the power of astral projection…

Out of This World #12 (March 1959) then declared ‘The World Awaits’ when a scientist uncovered an age-old secret regarding ant mutation and eugenics, Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #7 (February 1958) exposed ‘The Angry Things’ which haunted a suspiciously inexpensive Italian villa, and the gripping cover to Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #10 (November 1958) segues into the unsuspected sacrifice of a jazz virtuoso who saved the world in ‘Little Boy Blue’…

A tragic orphan found new parents after ‘The Vision Came’ (Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #8, July 1958) and Dr. Haunt proves television to be a cause of great terror in ‘Impossible, But…’ from This Magazine is Haunted volume 2, #16 (May 1958) – an issue which also disclosed the world-changing fate of a soviet scientist who became ‘The Man from Time’…

Another selfless inventor chose to be a ‘Failure’ rather than doom humanity to eternal servitude in a stunning yarn from Strange Suspense Stories #36 (March 1958), whilst the luckiest man alive at last experienced the downside of being ‘Not Normal’ (Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #7) before Unusual Tales #11 – from March 1958 – revealed the secret of Presidential statesmanship to a young politician in ‘Charmed, I’m Sure’, and exposed a magical secret race through an author’s vacation ‘Deep in the Mountains’…

This mesmerising collection then concludes with the suitably bizarre tale of Egyptian lucky charm ‘The Dancing Cat’ (from Strange Suspense Stories #37, July 1958) to ensure the spooky afterglow remains long after the final page and leave you hungry for more mystic merriment and arcane enjoyment…

This sturdily capacious volume has episodes that terrify, amaze, amuse and enthral: utter delights of fantasy fiction with lean, stripped down plots and simple dialogue that let the art set the tone, push the emotions and tell the tale, from times when a story could end sadly as well as happily and only wonderment was on the agenda, hidden or otherwise.

These stories display the sharp wit and contained comedic energy which made so many Spider-Man/J. Jonah Jameson confrontations an unforgettable treat a decade later, and this is another cracking collection not only superb in its own right but as a telling examination into the genius of one of the art-form’s greatest stylists.

This is a book serious comics fans would happily kill or die or be lost in time for…
This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books. Introduction © 2013 Blake Bell. All rights reserved.

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VIP – the Mad World of Virgil Partch


Edited by Jonathan Barli (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-664-5

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: impossibly inventive – an all-year-round treat… 9/10

Virgil Parch is another of those almost forgotten key men of comedy cartooning: a pervasive creative force working away for years, making people laugh and slowly, steadily changing the very look and nature of the industry.

Although largely unremarked upon and unremembered these days, Virgil Franklin Partch II (1926-2004) is probably one of the most influential – and most successful – American cartoonists in history.

His arch, absurd, rude, sly, subtle, skewed, whacky and astoundingly unique gags, strips, stories and animated shorts were generated with machine gun rapidity from a seemingly inexhaustible well of comedy excess, which could be rendered in a variety of styles which completely revolutionised the American publishing from the moment in 1941 that the artist switched from Walt Disney Studio ideas man to freelance gag-maker.

He is most well regarded for his cavalier abandonment of traditional form and anatomy. Partch is the guy who liberated gag-cartooning from the bonds of slavish attention to body detail: replacing broadly human shape and proportion with a wildly free and frenetic corporeal expressionism – perhaps even symbolism – which captivated legions of fellow artists and generations of fun-starved readers. He’s the guy who made 19 fingers on one hand work…

This superbly comprehensive and lavishly huge (260x315mm) landscape hardback art book/biography (in monochrome & full-colour) covers his life and career in scrupulous detail through a wealth of his best cartoons – many shot from original art – and includes oodles of roughs, sketches, layouts and doodles, all accompanying the bright and breezy life-history by James Barli, and all augmented with loads of intimate photos.

The joyous journey begins after a heartfelt Introduction by stylistic and thematic heir Peter Bagge with ‘Partch ad absurdam’: broken down into easily digested chapters beginning with ‘Prologue: Under the Volcano’ which introduces the man’s remarkable forebears whilst ‘The Call of the Wild’ and ‘Of Mice and Men’ details his early life and the eclectic education which led to his joining the fabled Walt Disney Studio in its golden, pre-strike prime.

‘Brave New World’ and ‘The Divine Comedy’ reveal how the assembled animators’ habit of pranking each other with gag cartoons led friend Dick Shaw to dispatch many of Partch’s drawings to magazines such as Collier’s and The New Yorker in 1941, whilst ‘A Farewell to Arms’ covers the new family man’s stint in the Army where his gift was exploited by Forrest J. Ackerman, beginning his own stellar career as editor of Army newspaper Bulletin…

On demobilisation Partch’s path was assured and he became the most prolific gag-seller in America: it was almost impossible to find a magazine or periodical that didn’t carry one of his cartoons, and when Playboy debuted in 1953 there was one of his women sharing cover-space with Marilyn Monroe…

As seen in ‘Point of No Return’ and ‘The Genius’, whilst working as an animator (for Walter Lantz on Woody Woodpecker) and as a cartoonist for leftwing New York newspaper PM, Partch started a constant stream of book collections in the fifties which captured and reflected the risqué, hard-drinking sophistication of the era as well as simultaneous lives as an ad man and writer for other draughtsmen, and worked with futurist economist William J. Baxter on a series of prognosticative books which warned of such nebulous dangers as out-of-control capitalism, the Military-Industrial Complex, “1 Per-Centers” and even Global Warming…

His passion for sports – especially sailing – is covered in ‘Three Men in a Boat’ whilst in

‘As a Man Grows Older’ changing times and the urgings of old pal Hank (Dennis the Menace) Ketchum provoked the restless creator to launch his comicstrip Big George! whilst increasingly becoming a cultural ambassador for his craft and art form. He also upped his range of commercial and design projects and invented the grittier strip The Captain’s Gig.

The rise and rise of Virgil Partch is covered in ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ whilst ‘Epilogue: the Death of Virgil’, like a bad punch line, recounts the truly stupid and meaningless end of a legend when both the artist and his wife perished in a car crash on August 10th 1984…

The Unknown Quantity then focuses on his astounding output through ‘A Partch Picture Gallery’ subdivided into ‘Cartoons from PM‘, ‘War in Pieces’ (military madness), surreal and absurd ‘Reality Bites’ and the boozy world of ‘Cork High and Bottle Deep’.

His laid back view of sex is recapitulated in ‘The Eternal Chase’ and ‘Battle of the Sexes’ whilst ‘The Sporting Life’ and ‘Partched’ focus on his other overweening interests…

His graphic expertise and design triumphs are celebrated in ‘Covered’ and ‘(m)Ad Man’, his skewed view of the world’s leaders in ‘Political Partch’, after which a selection of his articles and stories kicks off with ‘The Private War of Corporal Partch’, before ‘The Vipper Comes to Town’, ‘Bourbon and Watercolors’, ‘Vacation for Vipper’ and ‘Inland Cruise of the “Lazy B”’ bring this glorious tribute to times past and an incredible artist to a close.

Virgil Partch was blessed with a perpetually percolating imagination and a unique visual point of reference which made him a true catalyst of cartoon change, and Fantagraphics Books have once again struck pure gold by commemorating and celebrating this lost legend of graphic narrative arts.

Most importantly this is an astoundingly funny collection: the vast accumulation of funny drawings and clever stories still as powerfully hilarious as they ever were, and all brilliantly rendered by a master craftsman no connoisseur of comedy can afford to miss.
© 2013 Fantagraphics Books. All text © 2013 Jonathan Barli. All images © their respective copyright holders. Introduction © 2013 Peter Bagge. All rights reserved.

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Superior Spider-Man volume 3: No Escape


By Dan Slott, Christos N. Gage, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Humberto Ramos, John Dell, Terry Pallot & Victor Olazaba (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-556-7

Over the years the Wondrous Wallcrawler has undergone a plethora of radical evolutions, refits and even backsliding revisions, but his latest evolution – springing out of the landmark Amazing Spider-Man #700 – was certainly the most striking and compelling character carve-up of all the MarvelNOW! relaunches.

In that issue, the personality of Peter Parker seemingly died when Doctor Otto Octavius took over his body, arguably becoming a wholly Superior Spider-Man.

Parker’s mind had been transferred and trapped in the rapidly failing body of the fading super-villain where, despite his every desperate effort, in the end Peter perished with and within that decrepit, expiring frame.

Now the coldly calculating Octopus is permanently installed in the Wondrous Wallcrawler’s body and successfully living Peter’s life, albeit with a few minor but necessary alterations, upgrades and improvements…

The situation is not completely hopeless. At the moment of the monster’s greatest triumph Parker made Octavius relive and 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 understanding. Otto had a change of heart, and swore to live the rest of his stolen life in tribute to his enemy; honestly endeavouring to carry on Spider-Man’s self-imposed mission and equally guided by the abiding principle “with great power comes great responsibility”…

However the ingrained monomania within proved hard to suppress and the usurped web-spinner incessantly worked to prove himself a better man: augmenting Parker’s gadgets and methodology with millions of spy robots to patrol the entire city at once, constantly adding advanced tech and refining new weaponry to the suit and even acting pre-emptively rather than merely reacting to crises as the original had…

Otto went back to college because he was appalled Parker had no doctorate and even 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 Web-spinner; all but appropriating the Arachnid as a deputy – to the utter incredulity of an imperceptible psychic shard of Peter Parker which lurked within the deepest recesses of the hero’s overwritten mind…

The helpless ghost was an unwilling passenger, unsuspected by Octavius yet increasingly privy to the villain’s own barely-suppressed memories. Moreover, some of Parker’s oldest friends began to suspect something was amiss…

Police CSI Officer 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 claimed then that he was Peter trapped in the villain’s body…

Everybody accepts Spider-Man has changed. Not only is he exceedingly more efficient these days, but far more brutal too: practically crippling bad-guys Boomerang, Vulture and Scorpion. This new hard-line attitude actually increased his public approval rating and, after a deadly hostage siege, the hero’s status peaked after the webslinger executed the psychotic perpetrator Massacre…

Once more scripted by Dan Slott (with Christos N. Gage), No Escape collects issues #11-16 of the fortnightly Superior Spider-Man (August-October 2013) and details the shocking events following the denouement of the previous volume.

In that stunning game-changer Octavius, having finally detected the niggling ghost of Parker’s sentience inside their head, performed cyber-psychic surgery to exorcise the fragmented remnants of his hated nemesis and now gloatingly basks in the triumph of a super-powerful body and life all his own…

A nasty new day dawns with ‘A Lock for Every Key’ – illustrated by Giuseppe Camuncoli & John Dell – as Jameson “invites” Spider-Man to accompany him on a trip to soon-to-closed super-penitentiary The Raft. The discredited prison is almost empty now and one of the last official functions will be the execution of Alistaire Smythe, the cyborg Spider-Slayer who slaughtered Jameson’s wife Marla…

The Mayor is dead-set on watching the killer die and expects the tough new Spider-Man to ensure nothing interrupts proceedings. “Parker’s” civilian life is again spiralling downward: sitting through college classes taught by morons simply to gain a doctorate is excruciating, he’s shunning all Peter’s old friends, and is being harassed for lack of productivity by employer Max Modell at technological think-tank Horizon Labs.

At least his blossoming romance with brilliant Anna Maria Marconi is still progressing satisfactorily…

When the skeleton security staff on the Raft are unable to cope with Smythe’s startling escape bid, Spider-Man is smugly convinced he has covered all the bases, but even Otto was unprepared for Spider-Slayer upgrading three villains on life-support and, as the Wallcrawler clashes with Smythe, technologically augmented Scorpion, Vulture and Boomerang are unleashed to kill all the people trapped on the island.

Worst yet, uncontrollable, voracious man-eating monster The Lizard is also loosed to stalk the jail’s darkened corridors…

The drama escalates in ‘Lockdown’ (with additional inks by Terry Pallot) as the vengeful Jameson grabs a gun and goes after Smythe himself. When he meets Spider-Man the Mayor orders the Arachnid Avenger to kill Spider-Slayer at any cost, much to the delight of the ruthless new landlord in Peter Parker’s skull…

Unleashed at last, Octavius soon cleans house and brilliantly, mercilessly ends the affair in ‘The Slayers and the Slain’. Better yet, because he recorded a certain conversation, he now has enough dirt on the Mayor to force Jameson to hand over The Raft…

Humberto Ramos & Victor Olazaba return to render ‘A Blind Eye’ as the new owner of “Spider Island” designs a new costume, builds giant war-tanks and hires a gang of arachnid henchmen to help him clean the city for the decent, law-abiding citizens.

First target is the embarrassingly public Shadowland: unassailable citadel of Wilson Fisk, Kingpin of Crime. Always logical but supremely innovative, the Superior Spider-Man and his army assault the Kingpin’s Keep head-on in full view of the astounded citizenry of Hell’s Kitchen…

Forcing Jameson to back his plan post-hoc, Octavius and his Spider-gang raze the fortress to the ground, apparently killing Fisk in the process and driving his chief enforcer Hobgoblin into hiding… and all to great public acclaim…

Unfortunately this just clears the way for covert mastermind Goblin King (a former Green Goblin) to accelerate his own plans to take over the underworld with his Goblin Army Cult…

The 2-part ‘Run Goblin, Run’ concludes this chilling compilation as ‘The Tinkerer’s Apprentice’ sees young Phil Urich, latest iteration of Hobgoblin, frantically trying to recoup his losses after the fall of Shadowland only to become the patsy for malevolent underworld armourer Ty Stone, a subtle manipulator with a deadly agenda all his own…

Forced to rob banks for ready cash, Urich becomes a priority on Spider-Man’s To-Do list and is forced to take hostages at the Daily Bugle when the web-spinner “outs” him on live TV…

Meanwhile, Carlie Cooper has shared her suspicions about Spider-Man with her Captain Yuri Watanabe (who secretly moonlights as vengeful costumed vigilante The Wraith). Together the women begin gathering definitive proof of their suspicions regarding the wallcrawler…

The convoluted machinations culminate in a bombastic battle as ‘Goblin Season’ finds Phil Urich soundly defeated only to be liberated by The Goblin King’s forces and co-opted as the crime-lord’s latest living weapon: a Goblin Knight to lead his armies to inevitable victory…

To Be Continued…

This up-to-the minute tech-heavy reinvention of course comes with 21st century AR icon sections. These Marvel Augmented Reality App pages offer access to story bonuses once you download the little dickens – free from marvel.com – onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

Spider-Man has been reinvented so often it’s almost become commonplace, but this iteration – for however long it lasts – is one no lover of high-octane adventure should miss: smart, shocking and incredibly addictive.
™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. Italy. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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The Broons Annual 2014


By Morris Heggie & Peter Davidson (DC Thomson)
ISBN: 978-1-84535-506-7

Last-Minute Christmas Dilemmas Solved: How the Holidays Have To Be celebrated… 10/10

The Broons is one of the longest running newspaper strips in British history, having run almost continuously in Scottish newspaper The Sunday Post since its first amazing appearance in the March 8th 1936 edition: the same issue which launched mischievous wee laddie Oor Wullie.

Both the boisterous boy and the copiously populated, engaging working class family comedy under discussion here were created by journalist, writer and Editor Robert Duncan Low with DC Thomson’s greatest artist Dudley D. Watkins and, once the strips began to be collected in reprint editions as Seasonal annuals, those books alternated stars and years right up to the present day.

This Christmas it’s a Broons year and the latest compilation is just as packed with all-ages fun, rambunctious slapstick hilarity and comfortably gentle domestic warmth, courtesy of current custodians of mirth Morris Heggie & Peter Davison, scrupulously continuing the tradition of inviting, resplendent and amusing Scots cultural domination…

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

In 1936 his next bright idea was the “Fun Section”: an 8-page pull-out comicstrip supplement for the Sunday Post.

The clear stars were The Broons and Oor Wullie and Low’s most brilliant notion was to devise both as comedies in the charismatic Scottish idiom and broad unforgettable vernacular where, supported by features such as Auchentogle by Chic Gordon, Allan Morley‘s Nero and Zero, Nosey Parker and other strips, they laid the groundwork for the publisher’s next great leap.

In December 1937 Low launched the first DC Thomson comic weekly. The Dandy was followed by The Beano in 1938 and early-reading title The Magic Comic in 1939. War-time paper shortages and rationing curtailed the strip periodical revolution, and it was 1953 before the next wave of cartoon capers releases. The Topper started the ball rolling again in the same year that Low & Ken Reid created Roger the Dodger for The Beano…

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

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

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

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

For all those astonishingly productive years he had unflaggingly drawn a full captivating page each of Oor Wullie and The Broons every week, so his loss was a colossal blow to the company. DC Thomson reprinted old episodes of both strips in The Sunday Post and the Annuals for seven years before a replacement was found whilst The Dandy reran Watkins’ Desperate Dan stories for twice that length of time.

Instantly an undeniable, rock solid facet of Scots popular culture, the first Broons Annual (technically Bi-Annual) appeared in 1939, alternating with Oor Wullie right up to the present day, and for millions of readers the year doesn’t end well without them.

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

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

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

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

Although there’s still a wealth of older editions still available and many great spin-offs and merchandise such as The Broons Days Oot Travel Guide or Maw Broon’s Cookbook, there’s no lack of quality in modern annuals and always something worth seeing in these grand tomes.

This year’s model (by Heggie & Davidson) comprises a softcover monochrome collection featuring 96 pages of gentle gags, family frolics and gloriously slapstick shenanigans including plumbing disasters, fireplace fiascos, food foolishness, dating dilemmas, appliance atrocities, fashion freak-outs, exercise exploits and childish pranks by young and old alike…

In the town there’s a wealth of traditional problems like getting girls into Burns Night suppers, sporting specialities, pimples and plooks, grievances and dalliances with good friends, nosy neighbours and total strangers, confrontations with the constabulary and shopping shocks.

Moreover in the two years worth of strips included here all the usual holidays are honoured: Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas and Hogmanay. Musical moments and pet perils abound and there are even a few landmark developments such as Grandpaw’s secret lady-friend Annie…

And whilst in the country the hunt for cheap Christmas trees cause grief, hiking gets heavy, lost strangers are welcomed, family members are temporarily mislaid, animals uproariously intrude, gardens are tended – and abused – and the legendary Scottish weather takes full advantage of the timorous mortals subjected to it…

This comfortable, nigh-unchanging bastion of happy certainty and convivial celebration of a mythic (almost) lost life and time persists in these pages despite the grudging, sneaky infiltration of such hedonistic, technological and sociological interlopers as flat-screen TVs, mobile phones, dating websites and Winnebagoes, but at least you can be certain that whenever the tawdry present does intrude on proceedings, the happy multitude of the Clan Broon can be relied upon to break, lose or rubbish the offending article…

These books are timeless examples of perfect cartoon magic and you can’t really have a happy holiday without at least one of them in your life…

© 2013 DC Thompson & Co. Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Betty and Veronica’s Princess Storybook – Archie and Friends All-Stars volume 21


By Dan Parent, Jeff Schultz, Rich Koslowski & various (Archie Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-936975-71-6

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Charming stories for kids of all ages… 8/10

Archie Andrews has been around for more than seventy years: a good-hearted lad lacking in common sense whilst Betty Cooper, the pretty, sensible girl next door – with all that entails – waits ardently nearby, loving the great ginger goof. Veronica Lodge is a rich, exotic and glamorous debutante who only settles for our boy if there’s nobody better around. She might actually love him too, though.

Despite their rivalry, Betty and Veronica are firm friends. Archie, of course, can’t decide who or what he wants…

Archie’s unconventional best friend Jughead Jones is Mercutio to Archie’s Romeo, providing rationality and a reader’s voice, as well as being a powerful catalyst of events in his own right. That charming triangle (+ one) has been the basis for decades of funnybook magic and the concept is eternally self-renewing…

Adapting seamlessly to every trend and fad of youth culture since before there even was such a thing, the host of writers and artists who’ve crafted the stories over the decades have made the “everyteen” characters of utopian Riverdale a benchmark for childhood development and a visual barometer of growing up.

In this collection, reprinting stories from 2013, the warring gal-pals and extended cast of the small-town American Follies are again plunged deep into whimsy and fable as writer Dan Parent tweaks and reinvents more classic fairytales like a New World Yonderland or venerable Christmas Panto (and boy, will those references bewilder the un-British and/or under thirties out there), providing sharp, smart and frequently uproarious spoofs on the eternal nature and magic of young love…

Augmented with informative, history-packed text features on the original prose stories, incisive creator commentary and a cover-&-variants gallery by Parent, Jill Thompson, Renee De Liz, Alitha Martinez, Gisele & Stephanie Buscema as well as a Foreword and Afterword by the scripter, this bright and breezy, full-colour chronicle begins with ‘The Story of the Rapunzels’ before ‘Bad Hair Daze’ takes the much-told tale into strange new territory.

Here a devoted childless couple is “blessed” with a happy event after promising a witch their firstborn, but the crone can only lay claim to one of the twins girls that result… Choosing blonde Betty and rejecting raven-tressed Veronica, the hag isolates the golden child in a tall tower for years, but completely underestimates the power of sibling love – and rivalry – when Ronnie finds her sister and Prince Archie finds them both…

Next is ‘Betty and the Beast’, wherein sorceress Veronica curses haughty Prince Archibald to a life of hideous isolation after he refuses to go steady with her. The lonely, angry, repentant monstrosity only begins to change without and within after dutiful daughter Betty moves in to save her doddery old dad from the monster’s ill-tempered predations…

The tale is further complicated when vain Lothario Reginald sets out to rescue poor Betty but finds the seductive sorceress more to his taste…

‘Snow White and the Riverdale Dwarves’ once more casts Ronnie as the villain (with potential home-wrecker Cheryl Blossom as her snippy magic mirror), jealous of Betty’s buxom beauty and determined to commit appalling deeds to remain the “hottest in the land”…

Thankfully a bizarre bunch of diminutive forest dwellers are ready to take the golden girl in and aid the rather ineffectual Prince Archibald in saving the day and getting the girl…

The next classic revision stars our girls as ‘The Little Mermaids’ who both sacrifice their tails and beautiful voices for a chance to spend three mute days in the surface world trying to win the love of a certain ginger royal scion.

The determined rivals hadn’t reckoned on Cheryl the Sea Witch cheating on the compact of course, but the surprise twist in this tale comes from Archie’s final choice and the girls’ prompt reaction…

Closing this enormously entertaining second showing of an irresistible idea is the outrageously amusing ‘Reggiestiltskin’ with Ronnie and Betty BFFs until that annoying Prince Archie sees and wants them both.

Sadly they both desire him too, which enchantress Princess Cheryl can’t allow. She wants the kingdom and will even marry the idiot Prince to get it and so employs wily gold-hungry goblin trickster Reggiestiltskin to get the girls out of the way.

However, even cunning witch-queens can underestimate the conniving nature of gold-grabbing goblins…

Co-starring all the adorable supporting characters we know and love (Jughead as Betty’s sharp-tongued fish-pal Forsythe is a sight once seen, never forgotten), these smartly beguiling skits are a marvellous example of just why Archie has been unsurpassed in this genre for generations: providing decades of family-friendly fun and wholesome teen entertainment…

And they were all read and re-read happily ever after…
© 2013 Archie Comics Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Fran (Continuing and Preceding Congress of the Animals)


By Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-661-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A beguiling glimpse on a different kind of party … 9/10

There are a few uniquely gifted and driven comics creators who simply just defy categorisation or even description. There’s a pantheon of artisans: Kirby, Ditko, Hergé, Eisner, Clowes, Meskin, Millioniare and a few others who bring something utterly personal and universal effective to their work just beyond the reviewer’s skills (mine certainly) to elucidate or encapsulate or convey. They are perfect in their own way and so emphatically wonderful that no collection of praise and analysis can do them justice.

You just have to read the stuff yourself.

At the top of that distinguished heap of funnybook glitterati is Jim Woodring: a position he has maintained for years and clearly appears capable of holding for generations to come.

Woodring’s work is challenging, spiritual, grotesque, philosophical, heartbreaking, funny, beautiful and extremely scary. Moreover, even after reading that sentence you will have absolutely no idea of what awaits the first time you read any of his books (or even if you’re a confirmed aficionado) – when opening a new silent peripatetic classic like Fran…

Set in the general vicinity of Woodring’s wildly, warped universe, this is a time and relativity shredding adjunct which can be read before, after or even during his 2011 milestone Congress of the Animals..

Cartoonist, fine artist, toy-maker and artistic Renaissance man, Woodring’s eccentric output has delighted far too small an audience since his first mini-comics forays in 1980. Even though the reader may have avidly adored his groundbreaking Fantagraphics magazine series Jim (1986), its notional spin-off Frank (of which the volume Weathercraft won The Stranger 2010 Genius Award for Literature), maybe Tantalizing Stories, Seeing Things or the more mainstream features such as his Star Wars and Aliens tales for Dark Horse Comics, there is still never anything but surprise waiting when his next story appears…

Woodring grows rather than constructs solidly surreal, abstractly authentic, wildly rational, primal cartoon universes wherein his meticulous clean-lined, sturdily ethereal, mannered blend of woodblock prints, R. Crumb landscapes, expressionist Dreamscapes, religious art and monstrous phantasmagoria all live and play and often eat each other.

His stories follow a logical, progressional narrative – usually a non-stop chase from one insane invention to the next – layered with multiple levels of meaning but totally devoid of speech or words, boldly assuming the intense involvement of the reader will participate and complete the creative circuit.

Fran is another such vertiginous vehicle but adds a cruel patina of lovelorn tragedy and loss to ongoing tribulations of dog-faced Frank and his regular crew of irregular pals and foes in a perilous perambulation of innocence lost, where pride, arrogance, casual self-deceit, smug self-absorption and inflated ego leads to a shattering downfall.

Put bluntly, Fran was his wonderful girlfriend and through mishap, misunderstanding, anger and intolerance he loses her.

…And no matter what he does or wheresoever he wanders with his faithful sidekicks at his side, poor Frank just can’t make things right and perfect and good again…

Through madcap chases, introspective exploration and the inevitable direly dreadful meetings and menacings in innumerable alternate dimensions, True Love takes a kicking – and all without a single word of dialogue or description.

Here, the drawn image is always king, even if the queen has gone forever – or is it just a day?

Many Woodring regulars return, as both eponymous Krazy Kat-like ingénues work things out on the run through a myriad of strange uncanny places and there are absolute mountains of bizarre, devilish household appliances, writhy, clawing things, toothy tentacle things and the unspeakable Thingy-things inhabiting the distressingly logical traumic universe of his author’s fevered sensorium.

Of course Woodring’s work is not to everyone’s taste or sensibilities – otherwise why would you need me to plug his work so earnestly – and as ever, these astounding drawings have the perilous propensity of repeating like cucumber and making one jump long after the book has been put away, but the artist is an undisputed master of graphic narrative and an affirmed innovator always making new art to challenge us and himself. And, of course, he makes us love it and leaves us hungry for more…

All art-forms need such creators and this glorious hardback monochrome chronicle of Forbidding Love could well change your reading habits for life.

Now aren’t you curious to take this trip…?
© 2013 Jim Woodring. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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Hip Hop Family Tree book 1: 1970s-1981


By Ed Piskor (Fantagraphics)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-690-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: way better than Record Tokens… 8/10

Comics is an all-encompassing narrative medium and – even after 30 plus years in the game – I’m still frequently amazed and delighted at the new ways creators constantly find to use the simple combination of words and pictures in sequence to produce new and intoxicating ways of conveying information, tone, style and especially passion to their target audience.

A particularly brilliant case in point is this compulsive compilation of strips and extras from self-confessed Hip Hop Nerd and cyber geek Ed Piskor (author of the astonishing Hacker graphic novel Wizzywig) which originally appeared in serial form on the website Boing Boing.

In astounding detail and with a positively chillin’ attention to the art styles of the period, Piskor details the rise of the rhyme-and-rhythm musical art form (whilst paying close attention to the almost symbiotic growth of graffiti and street art) with wit, charm and astonishing clarity.

Charting the slow demise of the disco and punk status quo by intimately following fledgling stars and transcendent personalities of the era, ‘Straight Out of the Gutter’ begins in the mid 1970s with the South Bronx block parties and live music jams of such pioneers as DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, Grandwizard Theodore and Afrika Bambaataa.

The new music is mired in the maze of inescapable gang culture but as early word-of-mouth success leads to at first rare vinyl pressings and the advent of the next generation, the inevitable interest of visionaries and converts leads to the circling of commercial sharks…

The technical and stylistic innovations, the musical battles and physical feuds, the management races by truly unsavoury characters to secure the first landmark history-making successes are all encyclopaedically yet engaging revealed through the lives – and, so often early deaths – of almost-stars and later household names such as Furious 4-plus-1, Kurtis Blow, The Sugarhill Gang, the Furious Five, and even three kids who will become Run-DMC.

The story follows and connects a bewildering number of key and crucial personalities – with a wealth of star-struck music biz cameos and ends with Hip Hop on the very edge of global domination following the breakout single Rapture (from new wave icons and dedicated devotees Blondie) and the landmark TV documentary by Hugh Downs and Steve Fox on the national current affairs TV show 20/20 which brought the new music culture into the homes of unsuspecting middle America…

To Be Continued…

Produced in the tone and style of those halcyon, grimily urban times and manufactured to look just like an old Marvel Treasury Edition (an oversized – 334x234mm -reprint format from the 1970s which offered classic tales on huge and mouth-wateringly enticing pulp-paper pages), this compelling confection also includes a copious and erudite ‘Bibliography’, ‘Discography’ and ‘Funky Index’, an Afterword: the Hip Hop/Comic Book Connection (with additional art by Tom Scioli) and a fun-filled Author Bio.

Moreover there’s also a blistering collection of ‘Pin Ups and Burners’ with spectacular images from guest illustrators including The Beastie Boys by Jeffrey Brown, Afrika Bambaataa by Jim Mahfood, Fat Boys by Scioli, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five by Ben Marra, Vanilla Ice by Jim Rugg, Run-DMC by Dan Zettwoch, Eric B. and Rakim by John Porcellino, Salt-n-Pepa by Nate Powell, KRS-One by Brandon Graham & Snoop Dogg by Farel Dalrymple to get your pulses racing, if not your toes tapping…

Cool, informative and irresistible, Hip Hop Family Tree is wild fun and deliciously addictive. It will be a harsh wait for the next volume…
This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books. All Hip Hop comic strips by Ed Piskor © 2013 Ed Piskor. Pin ups and other material © 2013 their respective artists. All rights reserved.

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Giles: the Collection 2014


By Giles (Hamlyn)
ISBN: 978-0-600-62456-1

Your Last-Minute Christmas Dilemmas Solved!

For the latter part of the 20th century, cartoonist Carl Giles owned Christmas. His annual end of year collections of wry social commentary through engaging graphic brilliance epitomised everything English for us and a truly global population of fans and admirers.

Ronald Giles – AKA Karloff/Karlo AKA “Carl” (aren’t school friends simply the best?) – was born in Islington in 1916 and left school at 14 to work as an office-boy for Superads: a company which supplied cartoonists for companies needing animation commercials.

The work appealed to the boy Giles and he eventually graduated to cartoonist and animator himself, working with film mogul Alexander Korda and latterly newspaper star Roland Davies, who was then adapting his own beloved strip Come On, Steve into a string of animation short features.

In 1937 Giles joined socialist Sunday periodical Reynolds News; producing topical cartoons and the strip Young Ernie and, exempted from military service because he was deaf in one ear and blind in one eye, mastered his craft there through the darkest days of WWII.

In 1943 his work caught the eye of the editor of the Sunday Express, who invited Giles to work on the Evening Standard before changing his mind and offering him a more prestigious and lucrative position with the Daily Express as well as the Sunday edition.

Reluctantly quitting Reynolds News (he was never at ease with his new employers’ Right Wing political stance), “Karlo” began his meteoric rise to wealth and household namehood with his first panel cartoon appearing on Sunday, October 3rd 1943.

Although unable to serve as a soldier, Giles contributed to the War Effort through animated films for the Ministry of Information and cartoons for the Railway Executive Committee and in 1945 became the Daily Express‘ “War Correspondent Cartoonist”, embedded with the 2nd Army and Coldstream Guards – a job which took him to the concentration camps Bergen/Belsen when they were liberated by the Allies…

Throughout that traumatic time his drawings kept the Allies amused and, once hostilities ceased, Giles began carving out a comfortable, unassailable position in the consciousness of the nation, with his gently scathing, joyously seditious, outrageously busy and brilliantly rendered panels poking fun at the reader and the changing world through the collective lens of a hilarious hoi-polloi family dominated by a terrifying matriarch known as “Grandma”…

Although he also worked on commercial ads (Fisons, Guinness and others), freelanced for magazines such as Men Only and produced Christmas cards and other material for charitable institutions such as the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (of which he was made Life President), the Royal National Institute for the Deaf and the Game Conservancy Research Fund, the Daily and Sunday Express became his home for the next half century and he produced rare gems and marvels there.

From August 5th 1945 to his retirement in 1991 the “Giles Family” reigned supreme in the nation’s comedy consciousness, with the artist practically dictating how a vast swathe of the population reacted to the news, and from 1946 the best of each year’s output was collected into an annual, with all material selected – and sometimes remastered – by the artist himself.

The series was phenomenally popular and every year celebrity fans (Politicians, Heads of State, the Royal Family and the Great and Good of Sport and Entertainment) would vie for the honour of writing a Foreword, before another tumultuous rib-tickling year was reprised and recapped with genuine warmth, sly sarcasm and biting wit…

When the artist retired in 1991, later editions – no longer released by Express Newspapers – began to include some of his other works and, following Giles’ death in 1995, the volumes switched to thematic compilations rather than strictly chronological reportage.

This year’s model was compiled by John Field – who also contributed the Introduction: Giles and Society – whilst political commentator John Sergeant follows in the footsteps of such notables as Frank Sinatra, Margot Fonteyn, Spike Milligan, Sean Connery and Sir Malcolm Sargeant (no relation) in supplying a pithy appreciative Foreword before the latest selection of best bits begins with a selection of cartoons starring ‘Police’…

Reprinting selected gags from Christmas Eve 1945 to March 28th 1989, Giles reveals how much and how little the common man’s relationship to the “Boys in Blue” has changed, after which ‘Sport’ features in a string of palpable hits – and no misses – spanning August 1950 to July 1988.

The cartoonist frequently turned his eagle eye upon his own profession and ‘Journalism’ offers some of the most trenchantly effective jabs and barbs from November 15th 1945 through to February 23rd 1989, after which a special section entitled ‘Giles and Journalism’ features cartoons from the war years and some later events when the artist was the news and not merely its interpreter…

‘The Economy’ always provided great material for classic cartoons and the panels culled from June 2nd 1946 to March 29th 1987 recall some of the grimmest and most hilarious moments in modern memory, whilst the related topic of ‘Shopping’ (December 13th 1951 – December 9th 1990) offers full reign to the lovable anarchists of the Giles Family to be on their best and worst behaviour to end this latest outing on a raucous, riotous high…

With a biographical essay on the author’s ‘Cartoons at the British Cartoon Archive’ this book is another superb example of genius at work and proves once more why Giles was voted “Britain’s Favourite Cartoonist of the 20th Century”. If you’ve never been exposed to the artistic brilliance of the man and our collective history, this tome might well be your year…
Text and images © 2013 Express Newspapers. Giles® is a registered trademark of Express Newspapers. All rights reserved.