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Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes


By various (Tempo Books/Grosset & Dunlap)
ISBN: 0-448-14535-9

Here’s another early attempt to catapult comics off the spinner racks and onto proper bookshelves; this time from 1977, coinciding with and celebrating one of the periodic surges in popularity of the venerable Legion of Super-Heroes.

The many-handed mob of juvenile universe-savers debuted in Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958) in a Superboy tale wherein three mysterious kids invited the Boy of Steel to the future to join a team of metahuman champions inspired by his historic feats. Created by Otto Binder & Al Plastino, the throwaway concept inflamed public imagination and after a slew of further appearances throughout Superman Family titles, the LSH eventually took over Superboy’s lead spot in Adventure for their own far-flung, quirky escapades, with the Caped Kryptonian reduced to “one of the in-crowd”…

This terrific little black and white tome, part of National Periodical Publications’ on-going efforts to reach wider reading audiences – which began during the “Camp” craze of the 1960s with reformatted Superman and Batman pocket paperbacks and intermittently continued for the next twenty years – is particularly appealing as it leads off with a straight Superboy solo story.

The exploits of the Kid Kryptonian were always problematic. Since his inception (More Fun Comics #101 January/February 1945) the character had been perennially set in the past, “the adventures of Superman when he was a boy”. He was always popular and a solid seller, but as the world and the readership grew increasingly more complex in the late 1960s, the vague, timeless “about twenty years ago” settings grew ever-harder to reconcile with the uniform continuity being formed within the cohesively congealing DC universe.

For long term readers, the tales were seen to have occurred anytime between 1929-1957 and eventually DC (as NPP became) simply gave up the ghost and simply told fans to subtract 12-20 years from whatever the date was in Superman. More succinctly: “deal with it, it’s only a comicbook…”

When the Legion were revived after a nearly two years in limbo, they moved briefly into the back of Superboy before taking over the title (Déjà vu, much?). Thereafter all the Boy of Steel’s adventures took place in the future, not the past…

Tragically, however, that relegated a huge amount of superb comics stories to oblivion: not acknowledged and never included in those reprint collections increasingly targeting the mainstream fan-base. Mercifully, one of those lost tales – from a brilliant run by scripter Frank Robbins and artists Bob Brown & Wally Wood – found its way into this collection for a wider and less picky audience…

‘Superboy’s Darkest Secret!’ (from Superboy #158, July 1969) is a powerful and moving epic which fits nowhere in accepted continuity. In this beautifully rendered tragedy the Boy of Steel discovers his birth parents had actually – and unwillingly – escaped Krypton and now lay interred in a life-pod deep inside a debris field of Kryptonite and space mines. Moreover, the only person who could reunite him with them was the kindly Kryptonian savant who had murdered them and was now determined to resurrect them…!

The Heroes of Tomorrow finally show up in ‘The Six-Legged Legionnaire!’ (Adventure Comics #355, April 1967 by Otto Binder, Curt Swan & George Klein) as Superboy brings his High School sweetie Lana Lang to the 30th century, where she joins in a mission against a science-tyrant as the shape changing Insect Queen. Disaster strikes when she loses the alien ring that enables her to resume her human form…

‘Curse of the Blood-Crystals!’ by Cary Bates, Dave Cockrum & Murphy Anderson comes from Superboy #188 (July 1972); the sixth stunning back-up tale of the unstoppable Legion revival that would eventually lead to the team taking over the title. This clever yarn of cross-and-double-cross finds a Legionnaire possessed by a magical booby-trap and forced to murder Superboy – but which hero is actually the prospective killer…?

This nifty nostalgic nugget ends with a rather strange but genuinely intriguing choice.

By 1970 the team’s popularity was on the wane. They had lost their Adventure Comics spot to Supergirl and become a back-up feature in Action Comics. Moreover, the masterful penciller Curt Swan had left to devote himself fully to Superman…

The shorter stories were bolder and more entertaining than ever, but too many casual readers had moved on. ‘The Legionnaires Who Never Were!’ (Action #392, September 1970, by Bates, Winslow Mortimer & Jack Abel) was their last adventure until popping up in Superboy and presents a brilliant psychological thriller/mystery romp as Saturn Girl and Princess Projectra return to Earth and discover that they no longer exist…. Of course, there’s a sound reason why all their old comrades are trying to kill them…

The Legion of Super-Heroes has long been graced with the most faithful and determined hard-core fans in comics history. Once the graphic novel market was established all of their old adventures became readily available in many different formats, so for most readers and collectors the true value of this scarce back-pocket item probably lies in that solo Superboy treat.

I’ve always harboured a secret delight in these paperback pioneers of the comics biz; however, and if you’re in any way of similar mien, I can thoroughly recommend the sheer tactile and olfactory buzz that only comes from holding such an item in your own two hands…

Wipe them first, though, right…?
© 1966, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1977 DC Comics Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Superman: The Doomsday Wars


By Dan Jurgens & Norm Rapmund (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-124-3

Although largely out of favour these days as all the myriad decades of Superman mythology are gradually reassimilated into DC continuity, the stripped down, gritty post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Man of Steel devised by John Byrne and marvellously built upon by a succession of gifted comics craftsman produced some genuine classics.

This isn’t one of them, but Superman: the Doomsday Wars is a supremely enjoyable and thrilling Fights ‘n’ Tights diversion that should delight anybody in need of a solid piece of mature graphic novel entertainment.

Originally released as a three-part Prestige Format miniseries in 1998, this story blends spectacular blockbuster action and plenty of guest stars with skilful soap opera sub-plots; focussing on the birth of Pete Ross and Lana Lang’s first child just as the greatest physical threat Superman ever faced returned yet again…

Lana, Pete and Clark Kent grew up together in Smallville and shared a lifelong bond, but it was stretched to the breaking point when a present-day battle with Brainiac was curtailed so the Man of Steel could rush back to his hometown for a family emergency.

Lana had just given birth months prematurely and the cottage hospital was not equipped to handle a “premie” with Baby Ross’ massive complications.

Lana was Clark’s first love and knew about his heroic alter-ego. Her oblivious husband Pete was Clark’s best friend but still jumped to all the wrong conclusions when his wife began demanding to see the Metropolis newsman…

Even as Lana begged Superman to take her baby any place where his too-early life could be preserved, the Justice League were being decimated by the devastating Doomsday. As the Metropolis Marvel began cautiously transporting the most precious and fragile thing he had ever held across America to the world’s most advanced Natal care centre in Atlanta he was unaware that his personal Bête Noir was unerringly heading there too, leaving a swathe of carnage in his mindless wake…

Except that Doomsday wasn’t mindless anymore…

By incredible, time-bending means Brainiac had taken over the living engine of destruction, but Doomsday’s pure, unrelenting rage was expelling the master villain’s consciousness. So, in need of a new body, Brainiac took baby Ross (later, unwisely christened “Clark”), determined to remake the infant into a perfect, permanent home for his insidious intellect…

Moving, tragic and revealing many intriguingly insightful moments which shaped the nature and personality of the World’s Greatest Hero, The Doomsday Wars is not merely a power-packed punch-fest – although there is an abundance of action too – but a magically affecting melodrama about choices and repercussions interspersed with a chilling remembrance of the ghastly consequences that followed the last time Clark Kent made the Expedient rather than Right choice…

If you love the genre but need a little more depth in your Costumed Dramas this is a lost gem you’ll be glad you tracked down.
© 1998, 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Conan: The Ravagers Out of Time

– a Marvel Graphic Novel


By Roy Thomas, Mike Docherty & Alfredo Alcala (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-87135-911-7

During the 1970′s the American comic book industry opened up after more than fifteen years of cautious and calcified publishing practices which had come about as a reaction to the scrupulously-censorious oversight of the self-inflicted Comics Code Authority. The body was created by the publishers themselves to self-police their product and keep it palatable and wholesome after the industry had narrowly survived a McCarthy-style Witch-hunt during the mid-1950s.

One of the first genres to be revisited was Horror/Mystery comics and from that opening up came the pulp masterpiece Conan the Cimmerian.

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

Marvel Comics tested the waters in early 1970 with ‘The Sword and the Sorcerers’ (from horror anthology Chamber of Darkness #4) whose hero Starr the Slayer bore no small resemblance to the Barbarian. It was written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Barry Smith, who was just breaking out of the company’s Kirby house-style.

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

Conan became a huge hit; a giant brand that saw new prose tales, movies, a TV series and cartoon show, a newspaper strip and all the other paraphernalia of success… and it all stemmed from the vast range of quality comics initiated by Thomas and Smith.

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

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

All comics fans adore a team-up – especially if the antagonists fight each other as well as whatever menace brought them together – and this dream-ticket event, superbly illustrated by Mike Docherty & Alfredo Alcala, with painted colour from Tom Vincent, combines the big three in a stupendous battle to save the entire Hyborian Age from supernatural Armageddon.

When Conan leads a raid against a Turanian treasure caravan he once more meets friendly foe Red Sonja and an uncomfortably familiar ancient Pict shaman named Gonar who warns them of an old eldritch enemy recently risen from the dead for a third time and destined to become a threat to all who ever lived. After some heated debate the heroes determine to seek out the horror and Conan’s rag-tag bandit army accompany them – less concerned with saving the world than liberating the vast gold mine where Rotath the All-Conquering currently resides…

The sorcerer’s latest form is a hideous confused monster but it still recalls its most recent slayer Conan (see Chronicles of Conan volume 6). The re-resurrected, bewildered and utterly deranged mage wants a human body and when he fails to secure the Cimmerian’s, the gilded nightmare rips open the veil of time and drags Conan and Sonja back eight centuries, where they meet the only other hero ever to have killed Rotath – King Kull.

Determined to wreak final revenge upon all who have ever thwarted him, Rotath employs a legion of intelligent primates dubbed the Ape Lords to attack Kull’s empire of Valusia and blackmails Conan into abducting the King so that the monster can possess his form.

Of course after every mandatory battle of heroes they always unite in common cause and the greatest warriors of two ages are soon making the undying golden wizard rue the day he was reborn…

With brawny battles, warring wizards and enough suspense to choke a mastodon, this action-packed yarn is rip-roaring fantasy fare, brimming with supernatural horrors, wild women, wickedly worldly cynicism and spectacular titanic clashes, cannily recounted by immensely talented creators at the top of their form.

Still readily available, The Ravagers Out of Time is a another magnificently oversized tale produced in the European Album format with large, glossy white pages (285 x 220mm rather than the standard US proportions of 258 x 168mm) which provides another heady swig of untrammelled joy for lovers of the genre and fans of the greatest hero(es) ever to swing a sword or plunder a tomb…
© 1992 Conan Properties, Inc. Conan the Barbarian is a Registered Trademark of Conan Properties Inc. All rights reserved. Kull © 1992 Kull Productions, Inc. Kull and the distinctive likeness thereof is a Trademark of Kull Productions, Inc. All rights reserved. Red Sonja © 1992 Red Sonja Corporation. Red Sonja and the distinctive likeness thereof is a Trademark of Red Sonja Corporation. All rights reserved.

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Xenozoic


By Mark Shultz (Flesk)
ISBN: 978-1-933865-31-7

Some things just are cool.

Perfect unto themselves and intrinsically, inexplicably, indefinably just right in any milieu and venue. Thus in 1986 when Mark Shultz wrote and drew the EC comics inspired pastiche/homage ‘Xenozoic!’ for Kitchen Sink’s fantasy anthology Death Rattle, his solid blend of pulp fiction, fifties automobile chic and honking great saurians hit an instantly addictive chord with the comics buying public.

Xenozoic Tales the series debuted early in 1987 and ran until 1989: 14 sporadic, magical issues which spawned an animated television series, assorted arcade, video and role-playing games, trading cards, action figures, candy bars and a succession of reprints (comics and graphic novel collections) from Kitchen Sink, Marvel and Dark Horse – although mostly under its alternative title Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.

Flesk Publications specialises in art books and the lavish tomes they produce are dedicated to the greats of our industry, with volumes on sequential narrative and fantasy illustration starring Steve Rude, Al Williamson, James Bama, Gary Gianni, Franklin Booth, William Stout and Joseph Clement Coll.

This oversized (279 x 216mm) 352-page softcover monochrome collection re-presents all the stories (excluding a few side-bar stories by sometimes inker and collaborator Steve Stiles) in one luxuriously exuberant and staggeringly compelling compilation and even finds a little room for some extra sketches and unused drawings.

A thousand years from now Earth is slowly recovering from a shattering disaster which devastated the planet and sent mankind scuttling into deep subterranean shelters for centuries. Now humans are reduced to isolated pockets of tribal civilisation eking out a precarious existence in enclaves cobbled together from equal parts recovered remnant technology, renewable natural resources and sheer ingenuity.

In the thousand years since the fall, beasts from many disparate eras – from dragonflies to dinosaurs, trilobites to sabretooth tigers – have all re-established themselves in the tenuous yet expansive ecology. Historian/engineer/shamans called the Old Blood have, for centuries, advocated a doctrine of natural balance; helping mankind progress and thrive in harmony with the environment, but now the species’ old habits of greed, waste and ruthless exploitation are becoming dominant again in too many ambitious tribal leaders…

Following a foreword from creator Mark Schultz and an effusive introduction from animator Craig Elliot there’s a lovely descriptive character epigram of ‘Jack and Hannah’ to contemplate, after which the much-recycled but always excellent adventures commence with ‘An Archipelago of Stone’ as, in sparkling tribute to the work of Wally Wood, Joe Orlando and Jack Davis, the once magnificent pre-Cataclysm metropolis now known as the City in the Sea gets word of an ambassador from the far off tribe of Wassoon.

The formidable Hannah Dundee has sailed north to cement friendly relations with the Sea City dwellers, exchange knowledge and ask the governors to rein in Jack “Cadillac” Tenrec: Old Blood nature shaman, brilliant engineer, miraculous mechanic, ancient auto aficionado and the tribe’s top hunter. The problem is that Tenrec hunts poachers and he’s so good at it that the criminals are steadily drifting into Wassoon territory to escape his lethal attentions…

In this packed 12-page tale all this information is cleverly imparted as some of those poachers try to murder the Ambassador before she can even present her credentials, but the formidable Cadillac Jack is, as usual one step ahead of everybody…

‘The Opportunists’ gives Hannah a chance to display her own capabilities as she promptly solves a long-standing problem of her host’s fishing fleet with the help of keen observation, a weedy scholar named Remfro and a brace of scavenging Zekes (pteranodons), after which ‘Law of the Land’ returns focus to Tenrec as the wrench-jockey and big-game hunter leads a relief column to an outlying mine project and discovers an incorrigible poacher in his team.

Slaughtering dinos for spurious yet valuable medical “cures” is phenomenally profitable, so Jack’s lethal treatments are always carried out with a long-term view of deterring other greedy potential criminals too…

On reaching the mine, ‘Rogue’ (inked by Steve Stiles) concentrates on a crazed man-eating Shivat, which Jack and the ever-present, too-inquisitive Ambassador are forced to put down. Of course there’s a reason why the T-Rex is bothering with human prey, and once more Tenrec gets to teach a poacher a salutary final lesson. Next that debut tale from Death Rattle is marginally remodelled and neatly slotted in as ‘Xenozoic!’ follows Tenrec’s troop into a deep swamp in search of a missing scientific expedition. The hideous fate of Dr. Fessenden and his team gives the first clue to the impossible ecology of the post-Cataclysm world…

Initially unwelcome Hannah Dundee was growing on Jack, which explains why – against his better judgement – the hunter complies with her insane attempt to domesticate a mastodon in ‘Mammoth Pitfall!’ – a task made even harder by a poacher seeking to murder them and steal his “overlander” (a rebuilt, customised, guano-powered Cadillac).

‘The Rules of the Game’ (Stiles inks) finds Jack and Hannah still waiting for the mammoth to get bored (like elephants, they’re easily riled and never forget), affording us a glimpse as the engineer’s adored horde of retrieved, restored automobiles, but when he shows off his driving skills they are caught in a flash-flood and treated to another example of the mysterious forces which bind the new world together…

Shultz’s art had been constantly evolving and by the time of ‘Benefactor’ – the first full-length adventure – the more subtle, humanistic influences of Al Williamson, Angelo Torres and Frank Frazetta were informing every page. This was particularly effective in this tale of political intrigue wherein the increasingly trusted Hannah is introduced to the clandestine ancient race that has helped Old Blood shamans steer humanity away from their self-destructive course, but regrettably those urges aren’t extinguished yet and one of the City Governors follows, intent on assassinating the man who is increasing stalling human “Progress”…

The true reason for Dundee’s mission is disclosed in ‘History Lesson’ when Jack takes her to The Library; a vast, partially flooded subterranean vault filled not only with lost books but also pre-Cataclysm technology. However, trouble is brewing and Scharnhorst, leader of the “moles” who excavate and guard the finds, has discovered a deadly ancient weapon and is planning to make a play for supreme power…

Thinking the crisis over Jack and Hannah go on a fishing ‘Excursion’ but after learning the history of the Wassoon tribe Jack stumbles into a far deadlier catch than he anticipated. In ‘Foundling’ Hannah solves the mystery of a baby missing for a decade and discovers more about the mysterious Grith who secretly shepherd the planet whilst ‘Green Air’ sees aviation addict Remfro attempt the first manned flight in a millennium after which ‘The Growing Pool’ gives more clues to the nature of the Xenozoic Age when an ancient, artificial gene soup is discovered, only to escape into a lake and trigger a fantastic explosion of raw evolutionary insanity…

As guardian of the eco-system Jack had tried to destroy the burgeoning life-lab but was betrayed and knocked out by those closest to him. ‘In the Dreamtime…’ finds him recovering from his wounds, when city Governor Dahlgren turns up with a warning and a mission. Heading out to a road-building project that’s gone quiet Tenrec and Hannah stumble into a macabre and deadly extinction event which almost ends their lives too, before ‘Last Link In the Chain’ sees Scharnhorst make her grab for power; attempting to assassinate Jack whilst taking control of the City Governors.

Tenrec’s precious balance of nature is keeping man down and she intends to restore humanity’s rightful place as ‘Lords of the Earth’. Wounded, discredited and on the run Jack leaves the City in the Sea as civil war is about to erupt and is forced to journey with Hannah to Wassoon, where he will swiftly discover that her people might be even worse.

Is it simply impossible for humanity to live in harmony with everything else on the planet…?

As they flee south Jack and Hannah wash up on a deadly island paradise where bugs and seagoing invertebrates have evolved to fill every ecological niche – including top-predator – in ‘Primeval’. On reaching Wassoon ‘Two Cities’ introduces Tenrec to truly Byzantine and Machiavellian politicking as various factions seek to exploit his knowledge and worth, just as Scharnhorst’s Sea Wolves arrive, demanding his arrest and return. They leave with a corpse, but it isn’t Jack’s…

He isn’t without friends however. Hannah’s old Nanny is high in the Old Blood hierarchy and in direct contact with the Grith, enabling Jack to turn the tables and make a few new allies in ‘Dangerous Grounds’ before this unfinished symphony of pulp wonderment concludes (hopefully temporarily) in ‘Another Swarm’ as an unlikely alliance is formed when the Grith reveal the true powers who run the Earth and dinosaur shaman Jack Tenrec prepared to return to the city that disavowed him…

Blockbusting in scope, magnificently fanciful and beautifully rendered, Xenozoic is the ideal everyman graphic novel: a perfect example of exciting, engaging classical comics storytelling that should be on everyone’s “must read” list.

© 2011 Mark Schultz. All Rights Reserved.

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The Complete Crumb Comics volume 13: the Season of the Snoid


By Robert Crumb and others (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-296-9

Like crisps, chocolate and bad puns; once you get the taste of Robert Crumb on your palate, it’s almost impossible to shift the craving for more. Here’s another re-released edition from the superb and multi-award winning Complete Crumb Comics series that will tickle the bad-taste-buds of discerning comics cognoscenti and is bound to make a whole new generation of fans among the cool kids who will take my usual disclaimer in the full spirit which it is intended.

This book contains really clever and outrageously dirty pictures, rude words, non-condemnatory drug references and allusions, godless questioning of authority and brilliantly illustrated. highly moving personal accounts and opinions. If you – or those legally responsible for you – have a problem with that, please skip this review and don’t buy the book. That will certainly teach us…

Robert Crumb is a unique creative force in the world of comics and cartooning with as many detractors as devotees. His uncompromising, excoriating, neurotic introspections, his pictorial rants and invectives, unceasingly picked away at societal scabs and peeked behind forbidden curtains for his own benefit, but he has always happily shared his unwholesome discoveries with anybody who takes the time to look… In 1987 Fantagraphics Books began the nigh-impossible task of collating, collecting and publishing the chronological totality of the artist’s vast output and those mesmeric volumes are now being reissued.

The son of a career soldier, Robert Dennis Crumb was born in Philadelphia in 1943, into a functionally broken family. He was one of five kids who all found different ways to escape their parents’ highly volatile problems and comic strips were paramount among them.

As had his older brother Charles, Robert immersed himself in the comics and cartoons of the day; not just reading but creating his own. Harvey Kurtzman, Carl Barks and John Stanley were particularly influential, but also strip artists such as E.C. Segar, Gene Ahern, Rube Goldberg, Bud (Mutt and Jeff) Fisher, Billy (Barney Google), De Beck, George (Sad Sack) Baker and Sidney (The Gumps) Smith as well as illustrators like C.E. Brock and the wildly imaginative and surreal 1930’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts.

Defensive and introspective, young Robert pursued art and self-control through religion with equal desperation. His early spiritual repression and flagrant, hubristic celibacy warred with his body’s growing needs…

Escaping his stormy early life, he married young and began working in-house at the American Greeting Cards Company. He discovered like minds in the growing counterculture movement and discovered LSD. In 1967 Crumb relocated to California and became an early star of Underground Commix. As such he found plenty of willing hippie chicks to assuage his fevered mind and hormonal body whilst reinventing the very nature of cartooning with such creations as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, Devil Girl and a host of others.

He worked on in what was essentially a creative utopia throughout the early 1970’s but the alternative lifestyle of the Underground was already dying. Soon it would disappear: dissipated, disillusioned, dropped back “in” or demised. A few truly dedicated publishers and artists stayed the course, publishing on a far more businesslike footing as Crumb carried on creating, splitting his time between personal material and commercial art projects whilst incessantly probing deeper into his turbulent inner world.

After an introduction from his brother Maxon Crumb, this re-issued 13th tome opens with ‘Treasure Island Days’ an autobiographical junket of the young Crumb boys from Lemme Outa Here in 1978, produced in collaboration with brother Charles, after which come the nigh-legendary pieces produced for CoEvolution Quarterly #23-26 in 1979-1980, still powerfully impressive after all these years.

The gently biting ‘A Short History of America’, the subversively salacious ‘Bearzie Wearzies’ as well as the stunning black, white and yellow covers to #24, the wildly manic ‘Bop It Out’ (with a canny cameo from the amazing “No-Shit Sherlock”) and the gloriously dry and acerbic fable ‘Adventures of Onionhead’, is followed by the first of a clutch of fabulous American Splendor collaborations with uniquely Ordinary Hero Harvey Pekar in ‘Excerpt’ (from Cleveland Magazine 1980). ‘Me and My Sweetie’ (Portfolio of Underground Art) and the superbly expressionistic cover to Tele Times (vol. 2 #21) end the initial black and white section of the book.

The middle section is full colour and comprises covers and album art; beginning with Bizarre Sex, #8, American Splendor #24 and Snoid Comics, before presenting the rarer (for comics readers at least) material: Blind Boy Fuller: Truckin’ My Blues Away, Banana in Your Fruit Basket, Cheap Suit Serenaders (Crumb’s own Swing nostalgia band), Cheap Suit Party Record, Memphis Jug Band, Yazoo’s History of Jazz, Wild Family Orchestra, a selection of record labels designed by Crumb and Eddie Lange: Jazz Guitar Virtuoso. In addition to these magical concoctions there are also four superb pages of Heroes of the Blues Trading Cards and an Early Jazz Greats poster ad.

The comics section resumes with Crumb’s crudest, most abrasive, confrontational and possibly most cathartic creation: an arrogant, abusive, sex-crazed little homunculus called Mr. Snoid.

Unpleasant and usually unwelcome, Snoid was utterly self-obsessed; a rampaging animate artistic impulse which nevertheless managed to sway or bully those around him into complying with whatever gratuitous flight of the Id he might contemplate or require instant gratification for…

Always his own harshest critic and ever-searching for artistic perfection, it was still hard for even his biggest fans to look at Crumb-the-creator in the same way after the Snoid hit town.

The character debuted in 1980 in – what else – Snoid Comics , grabbing the spotlight from panel one of ‘This Cartooning is Tricky Business’ before declaring his unpleasant manifesto and attitude on everything from art to women in ‘The Snoid Goes Bohemian.’ The most unsavoury origin in comics followed in ‘How Snoids are Born’ after which ‘One Foot to Heaven’ finds the little stinker looking for a little action and ‘Mr. Snoid Among His Fellow Humans’ gives a final insight into his obscenely unique philosophy of life.

As liberating, challenging and guiltily, wrongly funny as Snoid was, his creation – or perhaps escape – certainly reinvigorated Crumb creative juices, both as auteur and artistic collaborator.

‘Freddy Visits for the Weekend’ and the two strips that comprise ‘Vox Populi’ (drawn for Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor #5) resonate with new vehemence and understated tension, whilst the illustrations for Michael Bloomfield’s ‘Me and Big Joe’ from High Times #64 sparkle with affection and warmth.

‘Hospital Fun’ #1-2, scripted by Pekar, first appeared in Village Voice #25, after which Crumb’s next breakthrough series began in Zap #10, 1982, as the introspective, retrospective autobiographical ‘My Troubles With Women’ shockingly and hilariously opened more doors into Crumb’s troubled soul for us all to peer uncomfortably at…

This incautiously appealing edition ends with a selection of covers, ads and illustrations by Crumb from the ecologically proactive (we would now call it “Green”) Californian magazine Winds of Change (volume 2, #1-9 from 1980-1981) and includes articles by wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb and five of their collaborative strips ‘Everyday Funnies’ before this 13th chronicle closes with a typically effective (unpublished) book cover for ‘King of the Freaks’.

None of these collections is free of potentially offensive material and Crumb’s work is riddled with his often hard-to-embrace obsessive self-exploratory concerns. As always his work gouges out the creator’s most intimate and disturbing idiosyncrasies about women, sex, racial stereotypes, unchecked social change and a million other daily beefs and niggles. But there’s no disparagement intended or harm meant – except perhaps to himself – and his staggering honesty, incisive inquisitiveness and neurotic, intimate over-sharing is always leavened with a devastatingly ironic wit and rendered in imagery too powerful to ignore. Be warned but please don’t misunderstand what you’re looking at…

Crumb’s sublime cartooning has brought cachet and serious critical thought to our once ghettoised art form and, love or loathe him, no one can diminish his contribution to the broad world of graphic narrative. These superb books are the perfect introduction to any (definitively over 18) newcomers unaware of grown up comics… so if you are intrigued snatch up this book and all the others as soon as conceivably possible…

All material from American Splendor © 1980, 1998 Harvey Pekar & R.Crumb. All other material © 1976, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1998, 2011 R. Crumb. All rights reserved.

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The Complete Crumb Comics volume 15: Featuring Mode O’Day and Her Pals


By Robert Crumb and others (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-413-0

Robert Crumb is a unique creative force in the world of comics and cartooning with as many foes as fans, but his idiosyncratic, unflinching, uncompromising, controversial and always bewitching work is impossible to ignore.

Therefore if intemperate language, putative blasphemy, artfully grotesque cartoon nudity, fetishism and comedic fornication are liable to upset you, stop reading this review and don’t buy the book. Stop reading now, check out an old, archived review instead or just come back tomorrow…

In 1987 Fantagraphics began the almost impossible task of collating, collecting and publishing the chronological totality of the artist’s output.

Son of a career soldier, Robert Dennis Crumb was born in Philadelphia in 1943 to a large and troubled family. After a tempestuous early life, he began working as an in-house art-drone at the American Greeting Cards Company and trading card giant Topps Publishing, married early and briefly before “dropping out” and joining the Counterculture movement, where he changed the nature of cartooning with such creations as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, Devil Girl and a host of others.

Within a decade the explosively reactive underground movement was gone; dissipated, disillusioned, dropped back “in” or dead, with only a few notable independent and truly dedicated publishers staying the course. Always his own harshest critic and ever-searching for artistic perfection, in 1981 Crumb convinced Ron Turner of Last Gasp to publish a new anthology of underground/alternative/cutting edge commix in a new anthology.

Weirdo – with Crumb as editor and major contributor until 1983 when he handed over the editor’s role to his “discovery” Peter Bagge (who provides a fascinating introduction and overview for the tome under review here) – was, for many of us, the last bastion of a real gone world.

With the onus of deadlines and responsibility of magazine production removed Crumb resumed his quixotic search for artistic satisfaction…

Recently re-released, this 15th softcover volume (originally published in 2001) collects Crumb’s comic strips from Weirdo #9-15, assorted gags, private commissions, freelance illustration work, album covers and other pictorial ephemera plus strips from American Splendor and Zap Comix, covering the hedonistic, greed-soaked early 1980s which were such a painful anathema to someone of the Artist’s socialist/liberal leanings.

After Bagge’s aforementioned text recollections the graphic magic begins with the Crumb contributions in Weirdo #9 (Winter 1983-1984), a stunning and meticulous frontispiece, ‘Arline ‘n’ Bob and that Thing in the Back Bedroom’ – an autobiographical account of the “joys” of parenthood crafted in collaboration with second wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb plus the first snide and sardonic appearance of Reagan-era, appalling and avaricious anti-icon ‘Mode O’Day and Her Pals’ in a barbed observation of fame-hungry wannabes and the pathetic, empty gullibility of the nouveau-riche.

More of Mode (dabbling with the chic of being a benefactor and coffee-magnate of the so-troubled Nicaraguans) and nothing else appeared in Weirdo #10 in Summer 1984 whilst #11 featured a stark and salutary updating of an old favourite in ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and a magical selection of single panel cartoons declaring ‘Love’s Like That!’

Mode stalked and blagged her way into the good graces of an ugly plutocrat with her usual lack of success or happiness in #12, but Weirdo #13 (Summer 1985) was given over to Crumb’s stunning ‘Psychopathia Sexualis’ wherein the case histories of a number of “deviants” were brought to incredible grimy, sordid, evocative life as Crumb sampled the truly bizarre nature of humanity described by giant of psychology Richard Freiherr von Krafft–Ebing.

Issue #14 featured the far lighter and whimsically bombastic anti-pop (or is it simply anti-maximum decibels?) inquiry ‘Where Has It Gone, All the Beautiful Music of Our Grandparents?’ and the marvellously introspective yet light ‘Life Certainly Is Existential!’, whilst #15 opened with the surreal domesticity of ‘Comics from Other Planets Dept’, slipped comfortably into two pages of splendid ‘Gags’ and closed with a captivating ad parody.

The covers of Weirdo #9-15 (including a heartfelt ‘Parting Shot‘ at Ayn Rand), lead off the expansive central, full-colour section, which continues with record and book covers for The Klezmorim’s Streets of Gold, The Otis Brothers, Charles Bukowski’s Bring Me Your Love and There’s No Business Like Show Business, novel covers Texas Crude and The Monkey Wrench Gang; a Louis Bluie poster plus incidental illustrations and sticker art.

Back in black and white there’s a page of miscellaneous ads and illustrations from 1983, after which ‘Hypothetical Quandry’ (written by Harvey Pekar for his magnificent American Splendor on-going graphic autobiography: issue #9, if you’re keeping count) appears, showcasing Crumb’s far bolder and more liberated big-black-brush art style.

Crumb’s long creative association with author Charles Bukowski produced phenomenal results, and here, after a portrait of the writer and promotional art, follows a sequence of illustrations from Bring Me Your Love and There’s No Business Like Show Business, as well as Ken Weaver’s Texas Crude. More miscellaneous illustration art for Pepper & Stern Rare Books, The Magazine, Co-Education Quarterly and seven pages of vignettes and cameos from The Monkey Wrench Gang round out this section.

‘Constipated Chaos Consortium’ is a mind-bending jam-collaboration with fellow underground luminaries Spain Rodriguez, Bosirus Eerie, Victor Moscoso, S. Clay Wilson and Robert Williams and the first of three contributions to Zap #11 from 1985: the other two being ‘Jesus People USA’ (a hypothetical interview between a fundamentalist Christian reporter and ‘R. Crumb, Underground Pornographer and All-Around Lost Soul’) and the powerful and engaging biography of lost Blues legend (Charley) ‘Patton’.

This sublime – and key – transitional tome in the development of one of the art form’s greatest living proponents concludes with another section of miscellaneous illustrations including collaborations with wife and daughter Aline and Sophie and a poster with Dan O’Neill, Victor Moscoso and Bob Crabb.

As always this varied and impressive selection of Crumb’s craft is riddled with his often hard-to-embrace themes and emblematic declamatory and potentially offensive visual vocabulary: as always the work touches on the creator’s most intimate and disturbing idiosyncrasies regarding sex and women, both in the unsettling Abstract and the painful, side-splitting, lustful, painful and loving Concrete and, as always, the reader’s response can only be Love or Loathe…

Crumb’s subtle mastery of his art-form and obsessive need to reveal his most hidden depths and every perceived defect – in himself and the world around him – has always been a unquenchable wellspring of challenging comedy and riotous rumination. This superb series charting the perplexing pen-and-ink pilgrim’s progress is the perfect vehicle to introduce any (definitively over 18) newcomers of your acquaintance to the world of grown up comics. And if you need a way in yourself, snatch up this book and the other sixteen as soon as conceivably possible…

All material © 2011 R. Crumb and its respective owners or co-owners. All other material © 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 2001, 2011 R. Crumb. All rights reserved.

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Twin Spica volume 7


By Kou Yaginuma, translated by Maya Rosewood (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-935654-12-4

The yearning, imagination and anticipation of space travel, such a critical component of post-World War II society, is paramount to this inspiring manga series from Kou Yaginuma, who first captured the hearts and minds of the public with his poignant short story ‘2015 Nen no Uchiage Hanabi’ (‘2015: Fireworks’, published in Gekkan Comics Flapper magazine, June 2000).

Since then he has expanded and enhanced the subject, themes and characters into a major epic combining hard science and humanist fiction with lyrical mysticism and traditional tales of school-days and growing up.

2024AD: teenaged Asumi Kamogawa has always dreamed of going into space. From her earliest moments the lonely child gazed up at the stars with her imaginary friend Mr. Lion, especially at the twinkling glow of Virgo and the alluring binary star Spica. An isolated, serious child, she lived with her father, a common labourer who once worked for the consortium which built the rockets for Japan’s Space Program.

In 2010, when Asumi was a year old, the first Japanese launch ended in utter catastrophe when rocket-ship Shishigō (“The Lion”), exploded: crashing to earth in the city of Yuigahama. Hundreds were killed and many more injured, including Asumi’s mother. Maimed and comatose, the matron took years to die. The shock crushed her grieving husband and utterly traumatised infant Asumi.

In response to the disaster Japan set up an astronautics and space sciences training facilty and after years of struggle Asumi was accepted by the Tokyo National Space School. Slowly making friends like Shinnosuke Fuchuya (who used to bully her as child), jolly Kei Oumi, chilly Marika Ukita and spooky, ultra-cool style-icon and fashion victim Shu Suzuki, she daily moved closer to her unshakable dream of going to the stars.

Against all odds – she is small, physically weak and very poor – Asumi endures. She still talks with Mr. Lion, who might be the ghost of an astronaut who died on the Shishigō…

I blinked and somehow missed a couple of volumes of this supremely moving saga, so by way of experiment I’m reviewing this seventh book without knowing all that’s recently occurred, and I’m delighted to announce that there’s been progress but not enough to confuse new or lax readers…

The story begins as the still quite formal classmates join Asumi on a vacation to her childhood home in Yuigahama and uncover a mystery about standoffish Marika, who has discovered an unsuspected connection to the rebuilt city. She is doubly plagued by an illness she hides from her comrades and teachers as well as phantom memories which increasingly draw her to a secluded shrine dedicated to the disaster.

When Marika succumbs to her inner torment and wanders away to find the isolated commemoration she becomes dangerously lost and Asumi, pushed by her own ghosts, tracks her down just in time…

As they wait together to be found, deeper bonds are forged, some secrets are revealed and we are afforded a glimpse into the events prior to and just following the crash of the Shishigō. It becomes clear that both girls are afflicted with the same unquenchable need to escape the Earth…

Asumi’s father Tomoro Kamogawa is a no fan of the space program, having lost his wife, his engineering job and his pride to the race for space. In the wake of the catastrophe he was assigned by his bosses at the corporation who built the ship to lead the reparations committee.

Guilt-wracked and himself bereaved, the devastated widower had to visit and apologize to each and every survivor and victim’s grieving family. He raised his daughter alone, working two and often three menial jobs at a time for over a decade.

Now, his old engineering colleague Takahito Sano is one of Asumi’s Professors at the Space School and the men’s previous history and relationship is revealed. A possible cause of the crash is mooted as the five astronaut trainees bond in an atmosphere of unravelling secrets and too many persistent ghosts and memories…

The second half of the book concentrates on the students’ return to school and their next semester of training. Asumi has struck up a more than casual relationship with a boy in a park. He volunteers at a hospice and is trying to learn the harmonica so that he can play to an old woman with dementia. He reminds Asumi of a sickly High-school friend named Shimazu…

Diffidently bonding, the boy tells her of a Sunday concert he’s playing at a week hence and she promises to be there…

Meanwhile at school the latest test of strength, ingenuity and fortitude finds the class divided into teams and transported to a decommissioned prison. Their task: to break free within seven days. Asumi convinces the teachers to drive them back to the city early if they all finish the task before Sunday…

However, even with things working her way there’s a hitch and only terse, unpredictable Fuchuya can help the girl he spends so much time studiously annoying and ignoring – if he can be bothered…

This volume also contains two more bittersweet autobiographical ‘Another Spica’ vignettes from author Yaginuma’s days as a part-time server on a soft-drink stand in a theme park; both delightfully painful accounts of amorous timidity, deep yearning, over-thinking and unrequited young love

All these gloriously heady confections initially appeared in 2004-2005as Futatsu no Supika 7 and 8 in the Seinen manga publication Gekkan Comics Flapper, targeted at male readers aged 18-30, but this ongoing, unfolding beguiling saga is perfect for any older kid with stars in their eyes…

Twin Spica ran for eight enchanting years (September 2001-August 2009): sixteen volumes tracing the orbits of Asumi and her friends from callow students to competent astronauts and the series has spawned both anime and live action TV series.

This delightful serial has everything: plenty of hard science to back up the savvy extrapolation, an ever-more engaging cast, enduring mystery, tender moments, isolation and teen angst and true friendships; all wrapped up in a joyous coming-of-age drama with supernatural overtones and masses of sheer sentiment.

Utterly defining the siren call of the Starry Reaches for a new generation (and the older ones too) Twin Spica is quite simply too good  to miss…

These books are printed in the Japanese right to left, back to front format.

© 2011 by Kou Yaginuma/Media Factory. Translation © 2011 Vertical, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents Batman volume 2

New revised review

By Gardner Fox, John Broome, Robert Kanigher, Sheldon Moldoff, Carmine Infantino & various (DC Comics)
ISBN 978-1-84576-661-0

This volume from the wonderfully cheap and cheerful Showcase Presents… imprint serves up all thirty-six new Batman stories from September 1965 to December 1966 (which originally appeared in Batman #175-188 and Detective Comics #343-358 – excluding Batman’s #176, 182, 185 & 187 which were all-reprint 80-Page Giants) in beautiful, crisp black and white. They were produced in the months leading up to the launch of and throughout the first year of the blockbuster Batman television show (premiering on January 12th 1966 and running for three seasons of 120 episodes in total).

The show aired twice weekly for its first two seasons, resulting in vast amount of Bat-awareness, no end of spin-offs and merchandise – including a movie – and the overkill phenomenon of “Batmania”. No matter how much we might squeal and foam about it, to a huge portion of this planet’s population Batman is always going to be that “Zap! Biff! Pow!” buffoonish costumed Boy Scout…

Regrettably this means that the comic stories published during that period have been similarly excoriated and maligned by most Bat-fans ever since. It is true that some tales were crafted with overtones of the “camp” fad, presumably to accommodate newer readers seduced by the arch silliness and coy irony of the show, but no editor of Julius Schwartz’s calibre would ever deviate far from the characterisation that had sustained Batman for nearly thirty years, or the then-recent re-launch which had revitalised the character sufficiently for television to take an interest at all.

Nor would such brilliant writers as John Broome, Bill Finger, Gardner Fox and Robert Kanigher ever produce work which didn’t resonate on all the Batman’s intricate levels just for a quick laugh and a cheap thrill. The artists tasked with sustaining the visual intensity included such greats as Carmine Infantino, Sheldon Moldoff, Chic Stone, Joe Giella, Murphy Anderson and Sid Greene, with covers from Gil Kane and Joe Kubert supplementing the stunning and trend-setting, fine-line Infantino masterpieces.

Most of the stories in this compendium reflect those gentler times and editorial policy of focusing on Batman’s reputation as “The World’s Greatest Detective”, so the colourful, psychotic veteran costumed super-villains are still in a minority here, but there are first appearances for a number of exotic foes who would become regular menaces for the Dynamic Duo in years to come.

The mayhem and mystery begin with a book-length epic from Detective Comics #343 (September 1965) by John Broome, Carmine Infantino & Joe Giella, incorporating back up feature Elongated Man (a costumed sleuth who blended the charm of Nick “Thin Man” Charles with the outré heroic antics of Plastic Man) in ‘The Secret War of the Phantom General!’

This tense thriller pitted the hard-pressed heroes against a hidden army of gangsters and Nazi war criminals, whilst #344 introduced intellectual bandit Johnny Witts, ‘The Crime-Boss who was Always One Step Ahead of Batman!’ in a sharp duel of mentalities from Gardner Fox, Sheldon Moldoff & Giella.

The same creative team produced the epic shocker ‘The Decline and Fall of Batman’ in the 175th issue of his own titular magazine wherein fringe scientist Eddie Repp almost ended the Caped Crusaders’ careers by assaulting them with electronic ghosts, after which Detective #345 introduced a terrifying, tragic new villain in ‘The Blockbuster Invasion of Gotham City!’ (Fox, Infantino & Giella) as a monstrous giant with the mind of a child and the raw, physical power of a tank was constantly driven to madness at sight of Batman and only placated by the sight of Bruce Wayne…

Batman #177 opened with a Bill Finger, Moldoff & Giella puzzler, ‘Two Batmen Too Many’ complete with a pair of superhero guest-stars, after which ‘The Art Gallery of Rogues!’ by Broome, Moldoff & Sid Greene combined good-natured matchmaking with murderous burglary whilst ‘Batman’s Inescapable Doom-Trap!’ (Detective #346, Broome, Moldoff & Giella) highlighted the Caped Crimebuster’s escapology skills when a magician-turned-thief alpha-tested his latest stunt on the unwilling, unwitting hero.

‘The Strange Death of Batman!’ by Fox, Infantino & Giella in Detective # 347 saw the debut of habitual B-list villain the Bouncer in a bizarre experimental yarn which has to seen to be believed, whereas it was business as usual in the all-action Batman #178 where the ‘Raid of the Rocketeers!’ (Robert Kanigher, Moldoff & Giella) set the Gotham Gangbusters on the trail of jet-packed super-thugs whilst Broome, Moldoff & Greene began referencing the tone of the TV series in the light-hearted crime-caper ‘The Loan Shark’s Hidden Horde!’

Whilst ‘The Birdmaster of Bedlam!’, who hatched his first sinister scheme in Detective #349 (Kanigher, Moldoff & Giella) proved ultimately incapable of containing the Caped Crusaders, Batman #179 provided more of a challenge with ‘Clay Pigeon for a Killer!’ (Kanigher, Moldoff & Greene – erroneously credited as Giella here) finding Batman using a television “Most Wanted” show to trap a murderer beyond the reach of the law and ‘The Riddle-less Robberies of the Riddler!’ by Broome Moldoff & Giella, fully recreating the modern Prince of Puzzlers. The felon discovered he could not escape or defy the obsessive psychological compulsion which prevented him from committing crimes unless he sent clues to Batman, but sadly even when Eddie Nigma cheated, the Masked Manhunter kept solving the riddles…

The microcephalic man-brute who hated Batman returned when ‘The Blockbuster Breaks Loose!’ in a blistering, action-fuelled thriller by Fox, Infantino & Giella (Detective #349) which also hinted at the return of a long-forgotten foe, whilst ‘The Monarch of Menace!’ from #350 (Kanigher, Moldoff & Giella), introduced the greatest criminal in the world, who started well but inevitably fell to the Gotham Gangbuster’s indomitable persistence.

Batman #180 introduced the uncanny Death-Man in ‘Death Knocks Three Times!’ Kanigher’s best tale of this era and an early indication of the Caped Crusaders eerie potential (illustrated by Moldoff & Giella) after which Detective #351 premiered game-show host turned felonious impresario Arthur Brown in ‘The Cluemaster’s Topsy-Turvy Crimes!’ by Fox, Infantino & Greene.

‘Beware of… Poison Ivy!’ in Batman #181 introduced the deadly damsel to the Caped Crusader’s Rogues Gallery, but in this tale she was a mere criminal boss using sex as her weapon to split up the Dynamic Duo and defeat rival villainess in a sly tale from Kanigher, Moldoff & Giella. Following a spiffy, iconic pin-up courtesy of Infantino & Murphy Anderson comes a superb Mystery Analysts of Gotham City shocker ‘The Perfect Crime… Slightly Imperfect!’, by Fox, Moldoff & Greene whilst Detective #352 featured Broome, Moldoff & Giella’s ‘Batman’s Crime Hunt A-Go-Go!’, wherein the Gotham Guardian hit an incredible hot-streak, repeatedly catching criminals in the act with incredible lucky hunches. Of course, there’s no such thing as luck and sinister stage mentalist Mr. Esper was manipulating the crime-busting campaign for his own sinister ends…

After another stunning Infantino & Anderson Batman pin-up the action continues with ‘The Weather Wizard’s Triple-Treasure Thefts!’ (Fox, Infantino & Giella) in #353 which pitted the Dynamic Duo in spectacular opposition to the Flash’s arch enemy: one of the first times a DC villain moved out of his usually stamping grounds. Batman #183 opened with ‘A Touch of Poison Ivy‘ (Kanigher, Moldoff & Giella) as the seductive siren tried once again to turn the Caped Crusader’s head before the excellent “fair-play” mystery ‘Batman’s Baffling Turnabout!’ saw Gardner Fox challenge the readers to deduce what could turn the hero against a bewildered Boy Wonder…

‘No Exit for Batman’ (Detective #354, by Broome Moldoff & Giella) introduced bloodthirsty oriental fiend Dr. Tzin-Tzin in a bruising all-action tale, before Fox’s ‘Mystery of the Missing Manhunters!’ generated one of the most memorable covers of the decade for Batman #184 and the back-up Robin solo tale ‘The Boy Wonder’s Boo-Boo Patrol!’ (Fox, Chic Stone & Sid Greene) showed the lad’s sheer potential in a clever tale of thespian skulduggery and smart conundrum solving.

Detective #355 once more highlighted our hero’s physical prowess as well as deductive capabilities in the blistering ‘Hate of the Hooded Hangman!’ (Broome, Infantino & Giella), after which the extended duel with a mutant mastermind culminated in ‘The Inside story of the Outsider!’ and the resurrection of faithful retainer Alfred in a classic confrontation by Fox, Moldoff & Giella from Detective Comics #356.

Batman #186 featured the Clown Prince of Crime in possibly his most innocuous exploit ‘The Joker’s Original Robberies’ as Broome, Moldoff & Giella, tried to out-Camp the TV show, but ‘Commissioner Gordon’s Death-Threat!’ (written by Fox) put the artists’ talents to far better use in a terse and compelling kidnap thriller. Broome redeemed himself in Detective #357 with the clever secret identity saving puzzler ‘Bruce Wayne Unmasks Batman!’ (Infantino & Giella).

Batman #188 featured ‘The Eraser Who Tried to Rub Out Batman!’ (Broome, Moldoff & Giella) and the decidedly sharper and less silly murder-mystery ‘The Ten Best-Dressed Corpses in Gotham City!’ by Fox, Moldoff & Greene after which this collection concludes on a note of psychological intrigue as Detective #358 described ‘The Circle of Terror’ (Broome, Moldoff & Giella) wherein the Masked Manhunter was progressively driven to the edge of madness by Op Art maestro the Spellbinder.

With covers by Infantino, Gil Kane, Murphy Anderson and Joe Kubert, pin-up extras, frequent reprint compendiums and lots of cross-pollination with the TV series, DC were pulling out all the stops to capitalise on the screen exposure and ensure the comic buying public got their 12¢ worth, but the most effective tool in the arsenal was always the sheer variety of the stories.

The bulk of the yarns reprinted here are thefts, capers and sinister schemes by heist men, murderers, would-be world-conquerors and mad scientists and I must say it is a joy to see these once-common staples of comic books in action again. You can have too much psycho-killing, I say, and just how many alien races really and truly can be bothered with our poxy planet – or our women?

And yes, there are one or two utterly daft escapades included here, but overall this book is a magical window onto a simpler time but not burdened by simpler fare. These Batman adventures are tense, thrilling, engrossing, engaging and even amusing and I’d have no qualms giving them to my niece or my granny.

Tune and become a proper Bat-fan.

© 1965, 1966, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Essential Captain America volume 5


By Jack Kirby, Frank Robbins, Frank Giacoia & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4535-6

Created by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby in an era of frantic patriotic fervour, Captain America was a dynamic and highly visible response to the horrors of Nazism and the threat of Liberty’s loss. He faded during the post-war reconstruction but briefly reappeared after the Korean War: a harder, darker sentinel ferreting out monsters, subversives and the “commies” who lurked under every American bed. Then he vanished once more until the burgeoning Marvel Age resurrected him just in time to experience turbulent, culturally divisive 1960s.

This fifth Essential collection features the spectacular return of “The King”, as Jack Kirby took over writing, drawing and editing the Sentinel of Liberty in the year of the country’s two hundredth birthday. This stunning black and white compendium reprints issues #187-205 (July 1975-January 1977) of the monthly comicbook and includes Captain America Annual #3 and the magnificent commemorative tabloid Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles.

At the end of the previous volume the Red Skull had returned in all his gory glory and, after a staggeringly effective campaign of terror, revealed that the high-flying Falcon had been his unwitting secret weapon for years: a cheap gangster named Sam “Snap” Wilson reprogrammed by the Cosmic Cube into the perfect partner for Captain America and a tantalising, ticking time bomb waiting to explode…

Captain America and the Falcon #187 opens the show here with ‘The Madness Maze!’ (by John Warner, Frank Robbins & Frank Chiaramonte) with the Skull fled and the now-comatose Falcon in the custody of super-spy agency S.H.I.E.L.D. Suddenly the Star-Spangled Avenger was abducted by a mysterious flying saucer and attacked by alchemical androids employed by a rival espionage outfit , culminating in a ‘Druid-War’ (Warner, Sal Buscema & Vince Colletta), before Tony Isabella, Robbins & Chiaramonte put Cap into an ‘Arena For a Fallen Hero!’ where psychological warfare and unarmed combat combined into a radical therapy to kill or cure the mind-locked sidekick.

Just as the radical cure kicked in an old foe took over S.H.I.E.L.D.’s flying HQ in ‘Nightshade is Deadlier the Second Time Around!’ (Isabella, Robbins & Colletta), after which the crimes of forcibly-reformed Snap Wilson were examined and judged in the climactic wrap-up ‘The Trial of the Falcon!’ (Isabella, Bill Mantlo, Robbins & D. Bruce Berry) with a predictable court ruling, a clutch of heroic cameos and a bombastic battle against the sinister Stilt-Man.

With the narrative decks cleared, Captain America and the Falcon #192 featured an ingenious, entertaining filler written by outgoing editor Marv Wolfman, illustrated by Robbins & Berry, wherein Cap hopped on to a commercial plane and found himself battling Dr. Faustus and a contingent of gang-bosses on a ‘Mad-Flight!’ thousands of feet above New York.

In 1976 Kirby exploded back into the Marvel Universe with a slew of new creations (2001: a Space Odyssey, Machine Man, The Eternals, Devil Dinosaur) and assumed control of established characters Captain America and latterly the Black Panther. His return was much hyped at the time but swiftly became controversial. His new work quickly found friends, but his tenure on his earlier inventions divided the fan base.

Kirby was never slavishly wedded to tight continuity and preferred, in many ways, to treat his stints on Cap and the Panther as a kind of creative “Day One”.

Captain America Annual #3 was a feature- length science fiction shocker which eschewed the convoluted back-story and cultural soul searching of the recent past and simply confronted the valiant hero with a cosmic vampire in ‘The Thing From the Black Hole Star!’; a riot of rampaging action and end-of-the-world wonderment featuring a fallible but fiercely determined fighting man free of doubt and determined to defend the world at all costs…

Kirby had big plans for the nation’s premiere comicbook patriotic symbol. Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles was released to commemorate the USA’s two hundredth year in Marvel’s tabloid Treasury Format (80+ pages of 338 x 258mm dimensions) and featured the Sentinel of Liberty on an incredible excursion through the key eras and areas of American history.

A vast, expansive, panoramic and iconic celebration of the memory and the myth of the nation, this almost abstracted and heavily symbolic 84 page extravaganza perfectly survives the surrender of colour and reduction to standard comic dimensions, following Captain America when cosmic savant Mister Buda propelled the querulous Avenger into successive significant segments of history: encountering lost partner Bucky during WWII, meeting Benjamin Franklin in Revolutionary Philadelphia and revisiting the mobster-ridden depression era of Steve Roger’s childhood.

Cap met Geronimo during the Indian Wars, suffered the horrors of a mine cave-in, survived a dogfight with a German WWI fighter ace, battled bare-knuckle boxer John L. Sullivan, resisted slavers with abolitionist John Brown, observed the detonation of the first Atom Bomb, saw the great Chicago Fire and even slipped into America’s future…

He experienced the glory days of Hollywood, the simple joys of rural homesteading and the harshest modern ghetto, before drawing strength from the nation’s hopeful children…

Inked by such luminaries as Barry Windsor-Smith, John Romita Sr. and Herb Trimpe the book-length bonanza is peppered with a glorious selection of pulsating pin-ups.

After absorbing the worth of a nation Captain America and the Falcon #193 concentrated on saving it with the opening salvo in an epic storyline leading up the immortal super-soldier’s own 200th issue.

Inked by fellow veteran Frank Giacoia ‘The Madbomb’ revealed a ‘Screamer in the Brain!’ when a tiny new weapon was triggered by unknown terrorists, reducing an entire city block to rubble by driving the populace into a mass psychotic frenzy. Experiencing the madness at close hand Cap and the Falcon were seconded by the government to find the culprits and the full scale device hidden somewhere in America…

‘The Trojan Horde’ introduced plutocratic mastermind William Taurey who intended to unmake the American Revolution and restore an aristocracy. Using inestimable wealth, a cadre of similarly disgruntled millionaire elitists, an army of mercenaries, slaves transformed into genetic freaks and other cutting edge super-science atrocities, the maniac intended to forever destroy the Republic.

Moreover, when he was in charge, the first thing Taurey intended was to hunt down the last descendent of Colonial hero Steven Rogers, who had killed Taurey’s Monarchist ancestor and allowed Washington to win the War of Independence.

Little did he suspect the subject of his wrath had already infiltrated his secret army…

In ‘It’s 1984!’ (inked by D. Bruce Berry) Cap and Falcon got a first-hand look at the kind of world Taurey advocated, battling their way through monsters, mercenaries and a mob fuelled by modern mind-control and Bread and Circuses, before ultra-spoiled elitist Cheer Chadwick took then under her bored and privileged wing…

Even she couldn’t keep her new pets from being sucked into the bloody, brutal Circus section of the New Society as the heroes were forced to fight for their lives in ‘Kill-Derby’ and as the US army raided the secret base in ‘The Rocks are Burning!’ (Giacoia inks) the heroes realised it was all for nought since the colossal Mad-Bomb was still active and lost somewhere in their vast Home of the Brave.

The offbeat ‘Captain America’s Love Story’ took a decidedly different and desperate track as the Bastion of Freedom was forced to romance a sick woman to get to her father – who had invented the deadly device – after which ‘The Man Who Sold the United States’ returned to all-out action as the Cap and Falcon raced a countdown to national disaster as the Bomb was finally triggered by ‘Dawn’s Early Light!’ in a spectacular showdown climax which surpassed every expectation.

With Captain America and the Falcon #201, the pace shifted to malevolent moodiness and uncanny mystery with ‘The Night People!’: a street-full of mutants and maniacs who periodically phased into and out of New York City, creating terror and chaos every evening. When Falcon and Leila were abducted by the eerie encroachers there were soon converted to their crazed cause by the ‘Mad, Mad Dimension!’ they inhabited during daylight hours, leaving Captain America and new associate Texas Jack Muldoon hopelessly outgunned when their last-ditch rescue attempt left them all battling an invasion of berserkers beasts in ‘Alamo II!’

On bludgeoning, bombastic top-form, the Star-Spangled Avenger saved the day once more, but no sooner were the erstwhile inhabitants of Zero Street safely ensconced on Earth than ‘The Unburied One!’ pitted the indefatigable champions against a corpse which wouldn’t play dead. The concluding chapter and last tale in this blockbusting tome revealed the cadaver had become home to an energy being from the far future when ‘Agron Walks the Earth!’ but not even its blistering power and rage could long baulk the indomitable spirit and ability of America’s Ultimate Fighting Man.

This supremely thrilling collection also has room for a selection of Kirby cover roughs and un-inked pencils that will delight art fans and aficionados. The King’s commitment to wholesome adventure, breakneck action and breathless wonderment, combined with his absolute mastery of the comic page and unceasing quest for the Next Big Thrill, always make for a captivating read and this stuff is as good as any of his post Fourth World stuff.

However, it does make this book a bit of a double-edged treat. Engaging and impressive as the first half-dozen stories in this volume are, they are worlds away in style, form and content from the perfect imaginative maelstrom of Kirby at his creative peak.

Not better but very, very different.

You can hate one and love the other, but perhaps it’s better to try to appreciate each era on its own merits…

Fast-paced, action-packed, totally engrossing fights ‘n’ tights masterpieces no fan should ignore and above all else, fabulously fun tales of a true American Dream…

© 1972, 1973, 1984, 1975, 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Asterix the Legionary, Asterix and The Chieftain’s Shield & Asterix at The Olympic Games


By Goscinny and Uderzo, translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (Orion Books)
ISBNs: 978-0-7528-6621-5, 978-0-7528-6625-3 and 978-0-7528-6626-0

One of the most-read comics in the world, the chronicles of Asterix the Gaul have been translated into more than 100 languages; with animated and  live-action movies, TV series, assorted games and even a theme park (Parc Astérix, near Paris). More than 325 million copies of 34 Asterix books have sold worldwide, making Goscinny & Uderzo France’s bestselling international authors.

The diminutive, doughty hero was created in 1959 by two of the art-form’s greatest proponents, René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo; masters of the form at the peak of their creative powers. Although their perfect partnership ended in 1977 with the death of prolific scripter Goscinny, the creative wonderment still continues – albeit at a slightly reduced rate of rapidity as Uderzo continues to produce new works.

Like everything good, the premise works on multiple levels: ostensibly, younger readers enjoy the action-packed, lavishly illustrated comedic romps where sneaky, bullying baddies get their just deserts whilst more worldly readers enthuse over the dry, pun-filled, sly, witty satire, enhanced for English speakers by the brilliantly light touch of translators Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge who played no small part in making the indomitable Gaul so palatable to the Anglo-Saxon world. (Personally I still thrill to a perfectly delivered punch in the bracket as much as a painfully swingeing string of bad puns and dry cutting jibes…)

Asterix the Gaul is a cunning underdog who resists the iniquities, experiences the absurdities and observes the myriad wonders of Julius Caesar’s Roman Empire with brains, bravery and a magic potion.

The stories were alternately set on the tip of Uderzo’s beloved Brittany coast, where a small village of redoubtable warriors and their families resisted every effort of the Roman Empire to complete their conquest of Gau,l and throughout the expansive Ancient World circa 50BC.

Unable to defeat this last bastion of Gallic insouciance the mostly victorious invaders resorted to a policy of containment. Thus the little seaside hamlet is permanently hemmed in by the heavily fortified garrisons of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium.

The Gauls don’t care: they daily defy the world’s greatest military machine by just going about their everyday affairs, protected by the magic potion of resident druid Getafix and the shrewd wits of a rather diminutive dynamo and his simplistic best friend…

Firmly established as a global brand and premium French comics export by the mid-1960s, Asterix the Gaul continued to grow in quality as Goscinny & Uderzo toiled ever onward, crafting further fabulous sagas; building a stunning legacy of graphic excellence and storytelling gold.

In late 1966 they began Asterix the Legionary (running in Pilote #368-389), which was later adapted as half of the plot for the movie Asterix Vs Caesar (the other album incorporated into the animated epic being Asterix the Gladiator).

This clever romp introduced the destabilising concept of true romance to the doughty hero and his prodigious pal Obelix as, whilst boar hunting in the great forest around their still-unconquered village, they encountered the fabulously beautiful Panacea picking mushrooms.

The little darling had freshly returned to the village after years away in Condatum and the sheltered Obelix was instantly smitten. Dazed and confused by the only force that could ever affect him, the gentle giant was teased by Asterix and Getafix, but undaunted, Obelix began bringing the oblivious lass a succession of inappropriate presents.

However, when the befuddled buffoon found Panacea crying he dashingly volunteered to mend her woes. Tragically for him the problem was a boyfriend named Tragicomix, who had been pressed into military service with the Roman Army…

Where other men would take advantage of the hopeless situation, Obelix, afflicted with a True Crush, determined to make Panacea happy and rushed off to rescue her lost love. Ever faithful, Asterix and little Dogmatix accompany him to keep him out of trouble.

In Condatum they discovered that Tragicomic had already been shipped out to Africa where Caesar was battling fellow Roman Scipio in a clandestine Civil War and Asterix realised the only way to find Tragicomix was to enlist in the Roman Army…

In Basic Training they met a motley assortment of fellow recruits – all national stereotypes – allowing for a broad bombardment of gentle ethnic comedy and graphic accent humour. There was Neveratalos the Greek, Goths Allegoric and Hemispheric, Gastronomix from Belgium, Selectivemploymentax the Briton and poor Ptenisnet the Egyptian, who didn’t know the language and thought he was on a holiday package tour…

After lashings of their unique brand of anarchy disrupting regulation army life, Asterix, Obelix and crew shipped out to Africa. When they arrived the war was going badly for Caesar, but more importantly, Tragicomix was missing and believed captured by Scipio’s forces…

With magic potion in hand Asterix, Obelix and Dogmatix decided to take matters in hand…

A hilariously engaging yarn with delicious overtones of the iconic British comedy Carry On Sergeant, this is an action-packed farce big on laughs but with a bittersweet core that will tug at the heartstrings of young and old alike…

Asterix and the Chieftain’s Shield (originally entitled Le bouclier arverne) was the eleventh epic outing for the Greatest French Hero of Them All; debuting in Pilote #399 and running until #421 in 1967. it acted as a kind of tongue in cheek patriotic history lesson and began years before the usual setting of Asterix tales when Gaulish over-chief Vercingetorix surrendered to Caesar at the Battle of Alesia by throwing down his weapons and armour at the Conqueror’s feet.

Such was the shame of the defeated Gauls that the location of the clash was deliberately excised from their memories. Now, nobody remembers where Alesia was…

After the battle the accoutrements lay where they fell until a greedy Legionary stole the Great Shield, subsequently losing it in a game of dice. From there the legendary buckler passed through many scurrilous hands before fading into legend…

Jumping to “modern” times, in the village of indomitable Gauls Chief Vitalstatistix is terribly ill: a sedentary life of over-indulgence has ruined his liver and since Getafix’s druidic potions can’t help him, he has to go to the spa town of Aqua Calidae (Arverne) for a rest-cure and diet.

It isn’t all bad though since his forthright wife Impedimenta has to stay behind….

As a chief he needs an honour guard and Asterix, Obelix and Dogmatix are happy to accompany him, especially as the chief uses the journey to test all the inns and taverns en route. Once there though, the warriors’ robust consumption – and boisterous high jinks – appals all the dieting dignitaries and impatient patients so Asterix and Obelix are summarily kicked out of the Health Resort.

Footloose and fancy-free the boys tour the local countryside of Gergovia idly trying to find the lost site of Alesia until they encounter Roman envoy Noxius Vapus and his cohort. After indulging in their favourite sport of Roman-bashing the lads befriend local merchant Winesandspirix – a veteran of Alesia – while Noxius hightails it to Rome and tells Caesar the Gauls are revolting…

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Set on putting the Gauls in their place and reminding them who’s boss, Caesar determines to hold a Roman Triumph with the shield of Vercingetorix as the centrepiece.

He’s none to happy when he discovers it’s been missing for years…

And thus begins the second stage of this hilariously thrilling detective mystery as the Romans frantically hunt for the missing artefact and Asterix and Obelix set out to thwart them at every turn…

No prizes for guessing which faction succeeds and who scurries home in defeat and disgust in this marvellously slapstick saga with a delightfully daft twist ending…

Asterix at the Olympic Games first appeared weekly in Pilote #434-455, serialised in 1968 to coincide with and capitalise upon the Mexico City Games. The translated British album was released four years later, just before the 1972 Munich Olympiad.

The Romans of Aquarium garrison are in an ebullient mood. Their comrade Gluteus Maximus has been selected to represent Rome at the Greeks’ Great Games in Olympia. Centurion Gaius Veriambitius is happy too, because he knows if Gluteus wins they can both write their ticket in Rome…

It all starts to go horribly wrong when the Roman superman is bested and humiliated by Asterix and Obelix whilst training in the Great Forest. His confidence shattered, Gluteus returns to Aquarium and only regains a modicum of his old form when Veriambitius reminds him that the potion-fuelled Gauls won’t be at the Games…

Meanwhile the men of the village have decided to go to Olympia en masses and have a go themselves…

There follows a uproarious and nigh-scandalous sequence of events as the unbeatable Greeks try to placate their Roman overlords; the Latin competitors undergo the tortures of the arrogant damned to cheat, wheedle and somehow exclude the all-conquering Gauls whilst the basically honest and honourable Asterix devises a cunning yet fair way to beat the politically motivated, greed-inspired “sportsmen” and uphold the best traditions and ideals of the Olympic Games.

Guess who wins…

Spoofing package tours, obnoxious tourists, self-serving sports authorities and doping scandals in equal proportion, this sparkling escapade features some of Uderzo’s most inspired art as he recreates the grandeur and glory of the Ancient World whilst simultaneously graphically lampooning the haughty elites of the Sporting World, the Military and Politics. A genuine classic which should be given to every competitor at London 2012 and especially the organising committees…

Asterix volumes are always stuffed with captivating historical titbits, soupcons of healthy cynicism, singularly surreal action and splendidly addictive adventure, illustrated in a magically enticing manner. These are perfect comics that every one should read over and over again.
© 1967-1969 Goscinny/Uderzo. Revised English translation © 2004 Hachette. All rights reserved.