Posts

Posted on

Monkeywanger – the Crimes of Oscar Dirlewanger (Special Edition)


By Peeler Watt Ph.D., illustrated by MIND, Jahn Fermindoza & Red Ink studios
ISBN: 978-1-47928-230-2

As any long-time reader will attest, I’m a huge advocate of doing it yourself when it comes to making comics and this collection – gathering the first three books of an epic historical exposé of one of humanity’s greatest monsters – shows just why, as it spectacularly blends harsh fact with high drama to reveal a mere smattering of the atrocities perpetrated by macabre madman Oskar Paul Dirlewanger, one of the most infamous and deviant of villains to find purpose, outlet and sanction under the Nazis…

This ambitiously oversized (280x216mm) mostly blood-red-and-monochrome horror story by historian Peeler Watt (not his real name) and animator/illustrator Mike Ian Noble Dobson (augmented and supplemented by Jahn Fermindoza and Filipino studio Red Ink Animation: Van Winkle Amaranto, Silvan Amante, Mikaela and Sharon Amaranto, Clewin Mars & Flor Villa) introduces fictionalised antagonist Untersturmfuhrer Otto Voge (an amalgam of actual people caught up in Dirlewanger’s sphere of unholy influence), a dedicated, passionate patriotic German cop with a secret who volunteered for active duty with the SS and lived to regret it…

The tale begins, after a brief and brutal comic strip pr̩cis of the political, social and religious background, with Voge arriving in the Nazi controlled Jewish ghetto of Lublin in August 1941 and seeing first-hand the atrocities perpetrated by Penal Battalion Oranieburg Рan SS division personally founded by Dirlewanger from criminal scum too debased for the regular army.

Due to a clerical error Voge was assigned to the appalling dreg unit rather than a decent and proper army division on active service and soon realises that the soldiers have their commanding officer’s full approval to loot, brutalise and torture the subjugated Poles – Jewish or otherwise.

The deviant Captain is nonetheless very impressed with his new subordinate’s obvious martial prowess. After savage skirmishes in the devastated city the Captain puts Voge forward for an Iron Cross, impressing the young leutnant with his obvious craving for real combat on the Russian Front rather than glorified guard duty in the ghetto.

Dirlewanger is an odd character, a spit-and-polish martinet with terrifying self-composure: ruthlessly cruel, fiercely passionate in his prejudices but utterly devoted to the pet monkey “Moses” which is never far from his side…

Voge’s fellow officers are little better than the conscripted men, but they would all be horrified if they knew their comrade’s dark secret: Voge is a Soviet sleeper agent who has been reporting to his Communist paymasters since his days as a peace-time policeman…

When Dirlewanger sends his men on another raid to rob and torment the subjugated Jews, Voge tries to curb their worst excesses but, as partisan’s attack the soldiers, the Leutnant is again forced to display his talent for combat, further cementing his commander’s favourable impressions. As Jewish women and children are rounded up Voge pushes his luck and manages to save one mother and her mentally deficient child from the fate of the others…

As the days pass Voge learns more about his outcast fellows and their reprehensible chief. Dirlewanger was a decorated hero in WWI and the Spanish Civil War, but also a psychopathic killer, and child-molester (according to some historians he was also a sadist and necrophiliac and given the dubious distinction of being “the most evil man in the SS”) …but certainly no fool.

Voge finds it increasingly impossible to stay uninvolved and concentrate on either his ostensible duties or covert mission and soon is deeply embroiled in the criminal machinations of the Battalion whilst simultaneously secretly working with Jewish Partisans. His only concern is to save innocent civilians from his debauched and murderous German comrades, but finds that they are equally endangered by their own ruthlessly driven and fanatical Resistance fighters and Voge’s increasingly impatient Russian spymasters…

The day is swiftly approaching when the mounting, conflicting pressures will surely cause a fatal misstep, but when Dirlewanger gets word from a Jewish informant of a Catholic convent hiding Hebrew girls that should be spicing up the Nazi’s private brothel,  it soon becomes clear that Voge’s own morality might be his actual undoing.

Painfully aware that his now suspicious commander was playing with him, Voge moves too late to save the girls and, after another ferocious clash between partisans and battalion soldiers, realises a final confrontation is now unavoidable…

Dark, brooding, painfully oppressive and grimly adult in nature, Monkeywanger is a powerful story of war, obsession and duty that will certainly impress fans of war stories, history buffs and devotees of fine storytelling, and there’s even the prospect of more to come …

No Trademark invoked so I’m assuming © 2012 Peeler Watt. All rights reserved.
For more information and to obtain your own copy check out http://www.monkeywanger.com

Posted on

Astonishing X-Men: Exogenetic


By Warren Ellis, Phil Jiminez & Andy Lanning (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3169-4

By now you’re either aware or not of mutant continuity, so in the spirit of this high octane, terse, gritty and bombastic monster-mashing thriller, I’ll forego the usual catch-up scorecard and précis and simply state that new readers can jump on with the minimum of confusion and, aided by the skilful use of banter, be readily brought up to cruising speed. Set in the aftermath of M-Day when the world’s mutant population was horrifically reduced to a couple of hundred Children of the Atom, the current official team of Cyclops, White Queen Emma Frost, Wolverine, Storm, the Beast and spunky Japanese teen Hisako Ichiki (AKA Armor) convene to tackle the latest threat to Earth’s dwindling mutant race.

To counter hostile public opinion in a world that has always hated and feared mutants, these heroes have renounced their traditionally clandestine lifestyle to fight their battles in the glare of the media. The new agenda is simple: carry on saving the day but do it in such a way that the world knows who to thank. Thus they can slowly change humanity’s attitudes and misperceptions whilst still doing their job.

It all sounded so easy…

Exogenetic opens with Abigail Brand and her agents of S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient World Observation & Response Department) sterilising yet another alien-infested asteroid base before succumbing to an overwhelming counterattack from the horrific invaders – parasitic Brood who have repeatedly attempted to ingest and assimilate our mutant champions.

Barely escaping, she heads back to Earth in a doomed ship where her helpless ground officers call in a little Homo Superior help…

Her craft is heading for a catastrophic crash into San Francisco, so it’s lucky that bestial Hank McCoy – the X-Men’s brilliant technical wizard and Brand’s current boyfriend – is heading the rescue mission, but even after a spectacular last-minute save nobody is truly safe…

In the gawping city-crowds avidly rubber-necking below is mutant Laurie Collins …but she’s been dead for months. The resurrected Wallflower suddenly mutates into a monstrous, marauding organic Sentinel indiscriminately determined to kill X-Men and human San Franciscans alike; firing off “her” inbuilt and reconfigured Brood drones in the way robotic Sentinels utilise missiles and ray-blasts…

After another breathtakingly bombastic imbroglio the mutants are eventually victorious, but forensic examinations of the remains indicate that Laurie was regrown, modified with ET DNA and mechanically augmented by agents unknown based on doomsday files stolen from McCoy’s own database and cell bank.

Someone has plundered the X-Men’s own secret technologies and desecrated their honoured dead…

Moreover the illicit harvester of dead X-Genes seems intent on using the purloined powers, stolen mechanisms and alien plasm to create an army to wage an all-out war of genocide on the Earth’s paltry remaining mutants…

With Abigail’s help the horrified heroes track down elderly geneticist Kaga who has apparently spent more than a decade on his plan to eradicate Earth’s Homo Superior. However after invading his floating storehouse of exotic and exhumed weaponry the appalled and traumatised X-Men discover that their race’s greatest foe has the most incredible and oddly logical motive for his fanatical crusade…

Untroubled by extraneous subplots or meandering sidebar storylines, starring an horrific host of “monsterised” old friends and foes whilst irresistibly combining stunning action and superb characterisation: this is a staggeringly impressive and addictive summer blockbuster.

Forthright, uncomplicated, and unforgettable, this riotous rollercoaster of thrills still finds moments for wrenching empathy and laugh-out-loud gags as the team again triumphs against impossible odds, and creators Warren Ellis, Phil Jimenez & Andy Lanning have a perfect grasp of their charges here, and even leave a sting in the tale to end on….

Collecting Astonishing X-Men #31-35 (with text features from Astonishing X-Men/Amazing Spider-Man: the Gauntlet Sketchbook), this book also includes a gallery of covers and variants by Jimenez, Frank D’Armata, Travis Charest & Justin Ponsor, plus a copiously illustrated lengthy interview with the artist discussing his approach and techniques to illustrating the saga in ‘Sketching Out Phil Jimenez’.
© 2009, 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Posted on

Superman Archives volume 6


By Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Don Cameron, Jack Burnley, Fred Ray, Ed Dobrotka, John Sikela, Leo Nowak, George Roussos, Pete Riss, Sam Citron & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-602-8

I sometimes think – like many others I know – that superhero comics were never more apt or effective than when they were whole-heartedly combating fascism with explosive, improbable excitement and mysterious masked marvel men. All the most evocative visceral moments of the genre seem to come when gaudy gladiators soundly thrashed – and please forgive the offensive contemporary colloquialism – “Nips and Nazis”.  However, even in those long-ago dark days, comics creators were wise enough to augment their tales of espionage and imminent invasion with a barrage of gentler and more whimsical four-colour fare…

This sixth classic hardcover Superman compendium – collecting #21-24 (March/April to September/October 1943) of the World’s Premier Superhero own solo title – revisits the height of those war years with the indomitable Man of Tomorrow a thrilling, vibrant, vital role model whose sensational exploits spawned a host of imitators, a genre and an industry. His startling abilities and take-charge, can-do attitude had won the hearts of the public at home and he was embraced as a patriotic tonic for the troops across the war-torn world.

Behind stunning, morale-boosting covers by Fred Ray and Jack Burnley depicting Superman thrashing scurrilous Axis War-mongers, reminding readers what we were all fighting for and even having a gentle, stress-relieving laugh with us, scripter Jerry Siegel was producing some of the best stories of his career, showing the Man of Steel in all his ebullient glory, thrashing thugs, spies and masters of bad science whilst America kicked the fascists in the pants…

However at this time of this collection the call of armed duty caught up with the writer and Don Cameron was hired to fill the authorial void. Co-creator Joe Shuster however, exempt from military service due to his rapidly failing eyesight, was still fully involved in the creative process, despite being plagued by crushing deadlines on the syndicated newspaper strip iteration. In the comicbooks he could only manage the occasional story and was forced to merely oversee the illustration production line: drawing character faces whenever possible, but leaving the lion’s share to the burgeoning talent pool of the “Superman Studio”…

Following the fulsome Foreword ‘A Short Flight and a Long Journey’ by distribution and retail guru Stephen A. Geppi, the all-star, full-colour action begins with the splendid, all-Siegel contents of Superman #21 starting with ‘X-Alloy’, drawn by Ed Dobrotka & John Sikela, wherein a virtual secret army of Nazi infiltrators and fifth columnists stole American industrial secrets and would have conquered the nation from within if not for the ever vigilant Man of Steel.

It was Clark Kent rather than his flamboyant alter ego who really cracked the Leo Nowak-limned case of ‘The Four Gangleaders’ who had declared war on each other, whilst in ‘The Robber Knight’ (illustrated by Shuster & George Roussos) Lois Lane was accused of shoplifting after an armour-suited Robin Hood began giving pretty women “presents” from the department store he plundered. Once again it took a real steel hero to sort things out before ‘The Ghost of Superman!’ (with Pete Riss art) saw the Action Ace play dead to trick a confession out of a cheap killer defying justice…

Light-hearted yet barbed whimsy led in the Siegel-scripted issue #22 as ‘Meet the Squiffles!’ (Riss) found Adolf Hitler approached by the king of a nefarious band of pixies who offered to sabotage all of America’s mighty weapons. Neither nefarious rogue had factored Superman – or patriotic US gremlins – into their schemes though…

A philanthropic, well-beloved gambler was framed by unscrupulous stockbrokers, but with the Man of Tomorrow’s assistance eventually regained ‘The Luck of O’Grady!’ (Sikela), after which ‘The Great ABC Panic!’ (Dobrotka) featured the return of the perfidious Prankster who almost succeeded in patenting the English language until his greatest enemy intervened, and Riss’ ‘A Modern Robin Hood’ saw the inevitable tragic end to a well-intentioned, altruistic thief who could handle Superman but not actual mobsters and gunsels…

Superman #23 opened with a Don Cameron script illustrated by Sam Citron. ‘America’s Secret Weapon!’ was a rousing paean to American military might as Clark and Lois reported on cadet manoeuvres and the Man of Steel became an inspiration to the demoralised troops in training. Siegel then wrote the rest of the issue beginning with ‘Habitual Homicide’ (Roussos art): a crime-caper worthy of Batman which began when a co-ed rebuffed her tutor’s amorous advances, prompting the unstable scholar to frame her boyfriend for murder. Unfortunately for Superman and the staff of Spurdyke University, once Professor Raymond Lock started killing he found that he really liked it…

Then ‘Fashions in Crime!’ (Riss) found Lois and Clark plunged into the world of Haute Couture and designer knock-offs, accidentally uncovering a lethally lucrative business run by a masked swell dubbed The Dude, whilst the Sikela-illustrated ‘Danger on the Diamond!’ once more combined sports action with gambling skulduggery as Superman saved the career of an on-the-skids Baseball player and cleaned up the game… again.

Cameron wrote all but one tale in issue #24, starting with a surreal Dobrotka fantasy which eschewed rational continuity to relocate the entire Superman cast back to the 1890s, where our hero saved his chaste intended from ‘Perils of Poor Lois!’

Siegel & Riss then revealed ‘The King of Crackpot Lane’ – a Marx Brothers-inspired romp which introduced whacky mute inventor Louie Dolan of the Army’s Department of Constructive Theories whose impossible gadgets made a lot of trouble for both the Man of Tomorrow and America’s enemies…

Cameron, Dobrotka & Roussos close this collection with a couple of stirring adventure yarns; first with ‘Surprise for Superman!’ which saw the Metropolis Marvel plagued by an inventive impostor who even fooled Lois, after which ‘Suicide Voyage!’  ends everything on an exuberant high as Clark – and stowaway Lois – visit the Arctic as part of a mission to rescue downed American aviators. Of course nobody was expecting a secret invasion by combined Nazi and Japanese forces, but Superman and a patriotic polar bear were grateful for the resultant bracing exercise…

Ageless and evergreen, endlessly re-readable, these epic hardback Archive Editions fabulously frame some of the greatest and most influential comics tales ever created, and taken in unison form a perfect permanent record of breathtaking wonder and groundbreaking excitement. How can any dedicated fan resist them?
© 1943, 2003 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Showcase Presents the Flash volume 4


By John Broome, Gardner Fox, Frank Robbins, Carmine Infantino, Ross Andru & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2297-0

Barry Allen was the second speedster to carry the name of Flash, and his debut was the Big Bang which finally triggered the Silver Age of comics after a series of abortive original attempts such as Captain Flash, The Avenger, Strongman (in 1954-1955) and remnant revivals (Stuntman in 1954 and Marvel’s “Big Three”, Human Torch, Sub-Mariner & Captain America from 1953 to 1955).

Although none of those – or other less high-profile efforts – had restored the failed fortunes of masked mystery-men, they had presumably piqued readers’ consciousness, even at conservative National/DC. Thus the revived human rocket wasn’t quite the innovation he seemed: alien crusader Martian Manhunter had already cracked open the company floodgates with his low-key launch in Detective Comics #225, November 1955.

However in terms of creative quality, originality and sheer story style The Flash was an irresistible spark and after his landmark first appearance in Showcase #4 (October 1956) the series – eventually – became a benchmark by which every successive launch or reboot across the industry was measured.

Police Scientist – we’d call him a CSI today – Barry Allen was transformed by an accidental lightning strike and chemical bath into a human thunderbolt of unparalleled velocity and ingenuity. Yet with characteristic indolence the new Fastest Man Alive took three more try-out issues and almost as many years to win his own title. However when he finally stood on his own wing-tipped feet in The Flash #105 (February-March 1959), he never looked back…

The comics business back then was a faddy, slavishly trend-beset affair, however, and following a manic boom for superhero tales prompted by the Batman TV show the fickle global consciousness moved on to a fixation with of supernatural themes and merely mortal tales, triggering a huge revival of spooky films, shows, books and periodicals. With horror on the rise again, many superhero titles faced cancellation and even the most revered and popular were threatened. It was time to adapt or die…

At the time this fourth collection of his own hard-won title begins, the Vizier of Velocity was still an undisputed icon of the apparently unstoppable Superhero meme and mighty pillar of the costumed establishment, but dark days and changing fashions were about to threaten his long run at the top…

Reprinting the transitional issues #162-184 (from June 1966 to December 1968), this compilation shows how Flash had set into a comfortable pattern of two short tales per issue leavened with semi-regular book-length thrillers; always written by regular scripters John Broome or Gardner F. Fox and illustrated by Carmine Infantino (and Joe Giella) but that safe format was about to radically change.

Flash #162 featured the Fox-penned sci-fi chiller ‘Who Haunts the Corridor of Chills?’ in which an apparently haunted fairground attraction opened the doors into an invasion-mystery millions of years old and stretched the Scarlet Speedster’s powers and imagination to the limit, whilst the next issue offered two tales by globe-trotting author Broome.

‘The Flash Stakes his Life – On – You!’ took an old philosophical adage to its illogical but highly entertaining extreme when criminal scientist Ben Haddon used his gadgets to make the residents of Central City forget their champion ever existed. That then had the incredible effect of making the Flash fade away and, were it not for the utter devotion of one hero-worshipping little girl…

By contrast ‘The Day Magic Exposed Flash’s Secret Identity!’ is a sharp duel with a dastardly villain as approbation-hungry evil illusionist Abra Kadabra escaped prison and traded bodies with the 64th century cop sent to bring back to face future justice, leaving the Speedster with an impossible choice to make.

Issue #164 held another pair of fast fables. ‘Flash – Vandal of Central City!’ by Broome, found the hero losing control of his speed and destroying property every time he ran. Little did he know old enemy Pied Piper was back in town… Kid Flash then solo-starred in the Fox tale ‘The Boy Who Lost Touch with the World!’ as Wally West’s nerdy new friend suddenly became periodically, uncontrollably intangible…

With Flash #165 and ‘One Bridegroom too Many!’ Broome, Infantino & Giella took a huge step in the character’s development as Barry finally married his long-time fiancée Iris West. This shocking saga saw the hero’s sinister antithesis Professor Zoom, the Reverse-Flash attempt to replace him at the altar in a fast-paced, utterly beguiling yarn which also posed a Gordian puzzle for Barry.

Should the nervous newlywed reveal his secret identity to Iris – who had no idea she was marrying a superhero – or say nothing, maintaining the biggest lie between them and pray she never, ever found out? Every married man already knows the answer* but for us secretive little kids reading this the first time around, that question was an impossible, imponderable quandary…

Building soap opera tension by fudging the issue, #166 carried on as usual with Broome’s delicious comedy ‘The Last Stand of the Three-Time Losers!’ which saw a cheesy bunch of no-hoper thieves accidentally discover an improbable, exploitable weakness in Flash’s powers and psyche, after which the Monarch of Motion became a ‘Tempting Target of the Temperature Twins!’ when Flash sprained his ankle just as Heat Wave and Captain Cold chose to renew their almost-friendly rivalry in Central City…

With #167 Sid Greene became the series’ inker and kicked off his run with a light-hearted but accidentally controversial Fox/Infantino tale that utterly incensed the devoted readership. ‘The Real Origin of The Flash!’ introduced Heavenly Helpmate – and Woody Allen look-alike – Mopee who had long ago been ordered to create the accident which transformed a deserving human into the Fastest Man Alive.

Tragically, Mopee had cocked-up and was now back on Earth to rectify his mistake and it took all of Flash’s skill, ingenuity – and patience – to regain his powers. The story is a delightfully offbeat hoot but continuity-conscious fans have dubbed it apocryphal and heretical ever since…

Less contentious was Fox’s back-up yarn ‘The Hypnotic Super-Speedster!’ which allowed Kid Flash an opportunity to bust up a gang of thieves, prank a theatrical mesmerist and give a chubby school chum the athletic thrill of a lifetime.

Broome then produced for #168 a puzzling full-length thriller in which the Guardians of the Universe sought out the Flash and declared ‘One of our Green Lanterns is Missing!’  Even as the Scarlet Speedster hunted for his missing best buddy, he was being constantly distracted by a gang of third-rate petty thugs who had somehow acquired incredible futuristic super weapons…

Flash #169 was an all-reprint 80-Page Giant represented here by its stunning cover and an illuminating ‘How I Draw the Flash’ feature by Carmine Infantino, followed by a full-length Fox thriller in #170. ‘The See-Nothing Spells of Abra Kadabra!’ found the Vizier of Velocity hexed by the cunning conjuror and unable to detect the villain’s actions or presence. Sadly for the sinister spellbinder, Flash had help from his visiting Earth-2 predecessor Jay Garrick and JSA pals Doctors Fate and Mid-Nite…

‘Here Lies The Flash – Dead and Unburied’ (Fox, Infantino & Greene) pitted the restored speedster against Justice League foe Doctor Light, who was attempting to pick off his assembled enemies one at a time whilst #172 offered a brace of Broome blockbusters beginning with ‘Grodd Puts the Squeeze on Flash!’ which saw the super-simian blackmail his nippy nemesis into (briefly) busting him out of a Gorilla City cell, whilst ‘The Machine-Made Robbery!’ featured the return of that most absent-minded Professor Ira West. Luckily son-in-law Barry was around to foil a perfidious plot by cunning criminals. The genius’ new super-computer was public knowledge, and by clever crooks wanted to hire the device, secretly intent on designing a perfect crime.

Issue #173 featured a titanic team-up as Barry, Wally West and Jay Garrick were separately shanghaied to another galaxy as putative prey of alien hunter Golden Man in ‘Doomward Flight of the Flashes!’ However Broome’s stunning script slowly revealed layers of intrigue and the Andromedan super-safari concealed a far more arcane purpose for the three speedy pawns, before the wayward wanderers finally fought free and found their way home again.

In 1967 Infantino was made Art Director and Publisher of National DC and, although he still designed the covers, Flash #174 was his final full-pencilling job. He departed in stunning style with Broome’s ‘Stupendous Triumph of the Six Super-Villains!’ in which Mirror Master Sam Scudder discovered a fantastic looking-glass world where the Scarlet Speedster was a hardened criminal constantly defeated by a disgusting do-gooder reflecting champion.

Stealing the heroic Mirror Master’s secret super-weapon Scudder called in fellow Rogues Pied Piper, Heat Wave, Captain Cold, Captain Boomerang and The Top to enjoy their foe’s final downfall but they were not ready for the last-minute interference of the other, evil, Barry Allen…

When Infantino left, most fans were convinced the Flash was ruined. His replacements were highly controversial and suffered most unfairly in unjust comparisons – and I count myself among their biggest detractors at the time – but in the intervening years I’ve leaned to appreciate the superb quality of their work.

However, back in a comics era with no invasive, pervasive support media, Flash #175 (December 1967) was huge shock for the fans. With absolutely no warning, ‘The Race to the End of the Universe!’ proclaimed E. Nelson Bridwell as author and introduced Wonder Woman art-team Ross Andru & Mike Esposito as illustrators.

Moreover the story was another big departure. DC Editors in the 1960s had generally avoided such questions as which hero is the strongest/fastest/best for fear of upsetting some portion of their tenuous and perhaps temporary fan-base, but as the superhero boom slowed and the upstart Marvel Comics began to make genuine inroads into their market, the notion of a definitive race between the almighty Man of Steel and the “Fastest Man Alive” had become an inevitable, increasingly enticing and sales-worthy proposition.

After a deliberately inconclusive first race around the world – for charity – (‘Superman’s Race with the Flash’, Superman #199, August 1967, reprinted in the themed volume Superman Vs Flash) the stakes were catastrophically raised in the inevitable rematch from Flash #175.

The tale itself found the old friendly rivals compelled to speed across the cosmos when ruthless alien gamblers Rokk and Sorban threatened to eradicate Central City and Metropolis unless the pair categorically settled who was fastest. Bridwell added an ingenious sting in the tale and logically highlighted two classic Flash Rogues, whilst Andru & Esposito delivered a sterling illustration job in this yarn – but once more the actual winning was deliberately fudged.

Broome produced a few more stories before moving on and #176 offered two of his best. ‘Death Stalks the Flash!’ tapped into the upsurge in spooky shenanigans when Iris contracted a deadly fever and her hyper-fast hubby ran right into her dreams to destroy the nightmarish Grim Reaper after which ‘Professor West – Lost Strayed or Stolen?’ delightfully inverts all the old absent-minded gags. Barry’s Father-in-Law successfully underwent a memory-enhancing process but still managed to get inadvertently involved with murderous felons…

Fox then produced one of the daftest yet most memorable of Flash thrillers in #177 as The Trickster invented a brain-enlarging ray and turned his arch-foe into ‘The Swell-Headed Super-Hero!’ after which #178’s cover follows – being merely another all-reprint 80-Page Giant…

Written by newcomer Cary Bates and Gardner Fox, Flash #179 (May 1968) was another landmark. The prologue ‘Test your Flash I.Q.’ and main event ‘The Flash – Fact of Fiction?’ took the multiple Earths concept to its logical conclusion by trapping the Monarch of Motion in “our” Reality, where the Sultan of Speed was just a comic-book character! Offering a simultaneous alien monster mystery this rollercoaster riot was a superb introduction for Bates who eventually became the regular writer of the series and the longest serving creator of the legend of Barry Allen.

First though, jobbing cartoonist Frank Robbins added Flash to his credits by scripting an almost painfully tongue-in-cheek oriental spoof accessing everything from Kurosawa to You Only Live Twice to his own Johnny Hazard strip (see Johnny Hazard: Mammoth Marches On).

In #180 Barry and Iris visited friends in Japan and became embroiled in a deadly scheme by fugitive war criminal Baron Katana to turn the clock back and restore feudal control over Nippon using ‘The Flying Samurai’ – a sinister plot unravelled after only the most strenuous efforts of the newlyweds in an all-action conclusion ‘The Attack of the Samuroids!’

Broome’s last hurrahs came in #182 with the clever return of Abra Kadabra whose futuristic legerdemain and envy of real stage magicians compelled him to turn the speedster into ‘The Thief Who Stole all the Money in Central City!’ whilst ‘The Flash’s Super-Speed Phobia!’ saw an unlikely accident inflict a devastating if temporary psychological disability on the fleet thief-taker.

The tone of the stories was changing. Aliens and super science took a back-seat to less fantastic human-scaled dramas, and Robbins scripted the last two tales in this tome beginning with a devilishly deceptive case of bluff and double-bluff as Barry Allen became ‘The Flash’s Dead Ringer!’ in a convoluted attempt to convince crime-boss the Frog that the police scientist wasn’t also the Fastest Man Alive, before proving that he too was adept at high concept fabulism in #184 when a freak time-travel accident trapped Flash millennia in the future after accidentally becoming the apparent ‘Executioner of Central City!’

These tales first appeared at a time when superhero comics almost disappeared for the second time in a generation, and perfectly show the Scarlet Speedster’s ability to adapt to changing fashions in ways many of his four-colour contemporaries simply could not. Crucial as they are to the development of modern comics, however, it is the fact that they are brilliant, awe-inspiring, beautifully realised thrillers which can still amuse, amaze and enthral both new readers and old lags. This lovely compendium is another must-read item for anybody in love with the world of graphic narrative.
© 1966, 1967, 1968, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.
* In case you’re not married, or not a man, the answer is: Fake your own death and move to Bolivia. And if you find a woman there, always tell her everything before she asks or finds out.

Posted on

Dark Avengers volume 1: Assemble


By Brian Michael Bendis, Mike Deodato, Will Conrad & Rain Beredo (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3852-5

One of the most momentous events in Marvel Comics history occurred in 1963 when a disparate array of freshly minted individual heroes banded together to stop the Incredible Hulk. The Mighty Avengers combined most of the company’s fledgling superhero line in one bright, shiny and highly commercial package, and over the years the roster has waxed and waned until almost every character in their universe – and even some from others – has at some time numbered amongst their serried ranks.

In recent times when the draconian Federal initiative known as Superhuman Registration Act led to Civil War between costumed heroes, Tony Stark AKA Iron Man was appointed the American government’s Security Czar – the “top cop” in sole charge of a beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom: Director of high-tech enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. and last word in all matters involving metahumans and the USA’s vast costumed community…

Stark’s mismanagement of various crises led to the arrest and assassination of Captain America and an unimaginable escalation of global tension and destruction, culminating in an almost-successful Secret Invasion by shape-shifting alien Skrulls.

Discredited and ostracised, Stark was replaced by rehabilitated villain and recovering split-personality Norman Osborn (the original Green Goblin), who assumed full control of the USA’s covert agencies and military resources, disbanded S.H.I.E.L.D. and placed the nation under the aegis of his new umbrella organisation H.A.M.M.E.R.

The erstwhile Spider-Man villain had begun his climb back to respectability after taking charge of the Government’s Thunderbolts Project; a penal program which offered a second chance to metahuman criminals who volunteered to perform Federally-sanctioned missions…

Not content with commanding legitimate political and personal power, Osborn also secretly conspired with a coalition of major menacing masterminds to divvy up the world between them. The Cabal was a Star Chamber of super-villains all working towards a mutually beneficial goal, but such egomaniacal personalities could never play well together and cracks soon began to show, both in the criminal conspiracy and Osborn himself.

As another strand of his long-term plan the Homeland Security overlord subsequently sacked the Avengers and formed his own, more manageable team…

Collecting the first six issues of the controversial Dark Avengers title by Brian Michael Bendis, Mike Deodato & colourist Rain Beredo (from March-September 2009), this beguiling, suspenseful chronicle commences a slow-building saga as part of the “Dark Reign” company-wide crossover event intended to reset the entire Marvel Universe…

The drama opens in 690AD as time-bending sorceress Morgana Le Fay spies on a coterie of 21st century masters of menace comprising Doctor Doom, Asgardian God Loki, gang-boss The Hood, mutant Emma Frost, ambivalent anti-hero the Sub-Mariner and the ostensibly reformed media darling Osborn…

Constantly courting public opinion the former Green Goblin launched his Avengers whilst building up a new, personally loyal high-tech paramilitary rapid-response force. Moreover, seemingly to keep himself honest, Osborn then hired ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. hardliner Victoria Hand as his Deputy Director, tasked with watching the recovering madman for any signs of regression into criminal insanity…

His second-in-command was also occupied with the day-to-day running of the organisation – giving Osborn time to convince Greek War-God Ares, mentally troubled golden superman Sentry and altruistic, dimensionally displaced alien Noh-Var – now dubbed Captain Marvel – to enlist on his team.

Unable to any recruit any other established champions, the master planner then offered devious deals to criminal psycho-killers Bullseye, Moonstone, Venom and Wolverine‘s deeply disturbed son Daken Akihiro to impersonate actual heroes Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man and the irascible mutant X-Man.

It still wasn’t enough for the cunning control freak. The answer finally came when he found a huge cache of Stark-built Iron Man suits. With a little judicious tinkering Osborn soon had his own super-armour, retooled and finished to invoke impressions of both Captain America and the Golden ex-Avenger. Now, as the Iron Patriot he could personally lead his hand-picked team from the front as a true hero should…

The first mission was nothing to boast of however as a H.A.M.M.E.R. diplomatic team escorted Dr. Doom back to his devastated homeland of Latveria, ravaged by a S.H.I.E.L.D. punitive mission in retaliation for the Dictator’s numerous outrages. No sooner had the escorts arrived though than Le Fay attacked, eager to kill Doom for a thousand slights and his previous treatment of her…

The second, flashback-filled issue fills in some blanks in the mystic rivals’ shared history as the Sinister Sorceress unleashes her horde of horrors against Doom and the American Agents, precipitating a deadly response from the Iron Patriot and his private army…

Soon the ersatz Avengers are knee-deep in gore as they mercilessly destroy the witch’s minions and when the unstoppable Sentry tears off Morgana’s head it seems their first mission is a complete success.

However Le Fay is the Mistress of Time and simply returns with a greater force, killing Sentry in her determination to kill Doom – until another Avenger brutally ends her only to be her first target on her next appearance. The pattern just keeps repeating and soon Iron Patriot is almost out of Avengers…

The third issue opens with more flashbacks as Osborn uses psychological warfare to bind the emotionally damaged Bob Reynolds to him. The too-good-to-be-true, nigh-omnipotent nice-guy metahuman is secretly afflicted with an alternate personality dubbed The Void and only a slavish, puppy-like devotion to childhood sweetheart-and-wife Lindy enables Sentry to resist the horrendous dark urgings of his other self…

Osborn has convinced the golden hero that his deadly split-personality is a fiction that can be fought – but they’re both quite wrong…

Back at the battle Doom and Osborn combine technological resources to take the fight back to Le Fay in the far past and undo most of her victories, even restoring Latveria to a measure of its former self. Only Sentry cannot be resurrected and the grim Americans head home pondering the early loss of their most powerful member. When they reachNew Yorkhowever Sentry is waiting for them and with horror Osborn realises that it’s not Bob Reynolds in charge of that tousled golden head…

Episode #4 changed tack by confronting a big issue head on. A crisis had occurred when the true Hawkeye attempted to expose his Avenger duplicate as a sham and Osborn quickly manufactured a televised confession which brilliantly turned the tables on his accuser by pushing all the viewers’ buttons. Now the reformed Goblin was merely a decent American patriot recovering from mental illness, thanks to the grace of God, and anyone who said otherwise a sick, ungrateful, godless traitor…

The former villain is on an unbeatable roll: after all didn’t he also talk down the Void and re-establish Bob as dominant personality in the composite meta-human time bomb of the reborn Sentry? Yet Osborn still isn’t as secure as he thinks: cracks begin to appear when the counterfeit Ms. Marvel begins her campaign to seduce and control her Avenger comrades. Without even knowing why she needs to undermine the team’s cohesion and challenge Osborn’s authority, the rogue former psychiatrist beds naive Noh-Var and lets slip to the innocent alien dupe the kind of people his fellow “heroes” truly are…

This first collection spirals to spectacular climax when a rebel band of Atlanteans attackLos Angelesand Osborn’s demand for a show of retaliatory force provokes a split in the Cabal. Unsatisfied when the Sub-Mariner quits the league of villains, the increasingly unstable Security Czar then sends his puppet Sentry into the depths of the ocean to deliver a very clear reprimand – one which leaves only one Atlantean alive…

And as Osborn discovers that his Captain Marvel has gone AWOL the manic, chaos-loving goblin voice inside the head ofAmerica’s Top Cop begins to laugh exultantly…

To Be Continued…

Certainly not one for younger fans, this is another striking saga from author Bendis, packed with intrigue, suspense and breathtaking action, magnificently illustrated and supplemented by a glorious cover gallery and variants by Deodato & Beredo, Marko Djurdjevic, Adi Granov, Mike Choi, Daniel Acuña, Stefano Caselli, Khoi Pham & Rafa Sandoval.

Experimenting boldly with narrative sequencing and contrasting time frames, flipping back and forth across a number of story-threads and superbly building tension through misinformation, Dark Avengers: Assemble is mired in the minutiae of Marvel Universe history, so whilst this offers a moodily different take on Fights ‘n’ Tights thrillers that will impress devotees of the genre and continuity, newer readers need to be prepared to put up with a little contextual confusion. Nevertheless, although the tale might be all but incomprehensible to casual readers, this clever display of comics creativity illustrates the mature extremes to which “straight” superhero stories can be pushed.
© 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Prison Pit Book Four


By Johnny Ryan (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-591-4

Johnny Ryan is a comedian who uses comics as his most liberated medium of expression. Whether in his own Angry Youth Comix, or the many commissions for such varied clients as Nickelodeon, Hustler, Mad, LA Weekly and elsewhere, his job/mission is to create laughter. Depending on your point of view, he is either a filth-obsessed pervo smut-monger or a social iconoclast using the same tactics as Lenny Bruce or Bill Hicks to assault the worst and most hidebound aspects of society.

His wild, loose cartoon drawing style is deceptively engrossing, and his seeming pictorial Tourette’s Syndrome of strips and gags involving such grotesque signature characters as Boobs Pooter (world’s most disgusting stand-up comedian), Loady McGee, Sinus O’Gynus and especially the incredible Blecky Yuckeralla (originally weekly from 2003 in The Portland Mercury and Vice Magazine before switching to Ryan’s own on-line site) will, frankly, appal many readers, but as with most questions of censorship in a Free Society, they are completely at liberty to neither buy nor read the stuff.

Ryan dubs his stinging graphic assaults on American culture ‘misanthropic comics’ and one of the most effective and honestly engaging is a simple riff on kids and fighting…

Ryan is a cartoonist with an uncompromising vision and an insatiable desire to shock and revolt whenever he wants to. In his ongoing Prison Pit series he perpetually pushes the graphic narrative envelope and the outer limits of taste with a brutal, primitive cascade of casual violence that has sprung, fangs bared, claws extended and arcanely barbed genitalia fully brandished, from his apparent obsession with casual ultra-violence, social decay and the mythology of masked wrestling. He is also a delighted devotee of the “berserk” manga strips of Kentaro Miura…

In the first volume criminal grappler Cannibal F***face (my asterisks not his) was banished to an extra-dimensional purgatory where the most violent felons from all over creation were dumped to live or die by societies which had outgrown the need for them. This barren hell-scape was littered with grotesque monsters, vile organisms and the worst specimens of humanity ever captured by the forces of civilisation. The masked wrestler was dumped there to fight and die, but his indomitable spirit and brutally battered body became bonded to a ghastly parasite, and together they thrived by killing everyone – and thing – they encountered…

In this fourth fearsome monochrome tome – which opens with the eighth uncanny episode of the unflinching epic – C.F. and his savage, semi-sentient new left arm awake in a crystalline cell and are informed they are imprisoned within the psychic confines of the insidious Caligulon. When the parasite abandons and attacks the wrestler, the result is an even more horrific monster and a temporary alliance which sees the brutal end of the mental wizards who form the ‘Brain Bitch’.

After demolishing, destroying and even consuming their foes and then dealing so-very-harshly with still more perilously paranormal priapic horrors, C.F. and his erstwhile ally turn on each other in ‘Slugstaxx’. After a horrendous clash which sees the unruly parasite devolved and returned to his rightful left arm-stump, the mighty masked wrestler then totally – and literally – screws with the massive computer behind his latest trials and returns to the Hadean wilderness where he then meets a roving band of marauding killers and proves to their juggernaut leader ‘Undigestible Scrotum’ that he was nothing of the kind…

Suddenly a strange flying machine begins to rain down devastating terror from above…

To Be Continued – and you can’t stop it…

In this non-stop welter of exceedingly excessive force, vile excrescences, constant combat challenges, scatological salvoes and sheer unadulterated graphic carnage, the never-ending Darwinian struggle of C.F. – forever beyond the reach of hope or rescue but never, ever contemplating surrender – is a macabre yet beguiling, loathsomely intriguing miracle of cartoon exuberance.

Man’s oldest gynophobic horrors and most simplistic delight in sheer physical dominance are savagely delineated in this primitive, appalling, cathartic and blackly funny campaign of comic horror. Resplendent, triumphant juvenilia has been adroitly shoved beyond all ethical limits into the darkest depths of absurdist comedy. This is another non-stop rollercoaster of brain-blistering action, profound, profanity and pictorial Sturm und Drang at its most gorge-rising and compelling: a never-ending battle delivered in the raw, frenetically primitivist ink-stained stabbings of an impassioned, engrossed child…

Not for kids, the faint-hearted or weak-stomached, here is extreme cartooning at its most visceral and pure.

…And now that we’ve placated the intellectual/moral imperative inside us all, I’ll also confirm that this book is another, all-out, over the top, indisputably hilarious hoot. Buy it and see if you’re broad-minded, fundamentally honest and purely in need of ultra-adult silliness…
© 2012 Johnny Ryan. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Johnny Hazard – The Gold of Thal


By Frank Robbins (Pacific Comics Publications)
No ISBN

Johnny Hazard was a newspaper strip created in the style and manner of Terry and the Pirates, but in many ways the steely-eyed hero most resembles – and indeed presages – Milton Caniff’s second magnum opus Steve Canyon.

Unbelievably, until 2011 this stunningly impressive and enthralling adventure strip was never comprehensively collected in graphic novels – at least in English – although selected highlights had appeared in nostalgia magazines such as Pioneer Comics and Dragon Lady Press Presents.

However, sporadic compendiums of full-colour Sunday pages have popped up over the years, such as this gloriously huge (340 x 245mm) landscape tabloid produced by re-translating a collected Italian edition back into English, courtesy of the Pacific Comic Club.

Frank Robbins was a brilliant all-around cartoonist whose unique artistic and lettering style lent itself equally to adventure, comedy and superhero tales, whilst his expansive raconteur’s gifts made him one of the best writers of three generations of comics.

He first came to fame in 1939 when he took over newspaper strip Scorchy Smith (from the astounding Noel Sickles), creating a Sunday page for the feature in 1940. Robbins was then offered the high-profile Secret Agent X-9 but instead created his own lantern jawed, steely-eyed man of action.

A tireless and prolific worker, even whilst producing a daily and Sunday Hazard (usually a separate storyline for each), Robbins freelanced as an illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post, Look, Life and a host of other mainstream magazines.

In the 1960s and 1970s he moved into comicbooks, becoming a key contributor to Batman, Batgirl, Detective Comics (where he created Man-Bat with Neal Adams) and The Flash, followed Michael Kaluta on The Shadow and contributed to humour mag Plop! as well as DC’s mystery anthologies. Moving to Marvel in the early 1970s, Robbins concentrated on drawing a variety of titles including Captain America, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Morbius, Human Fly, Man from Atlantis, Power Man and The Invaders, which he co-created with Roy Thomas.

When Johnny Hazard launched on Monday June 5th 1944, its star was an aviator in the United States Army Air Corps who, when hostilities ceased, became for a while a freelance charter pilot and secret agent before settling into the bombastic life of a globe-girdling trouble-shooter, mystery-solver and modern day Knight Errant babe-magnet.

The strip ended in 1977: another victim of diminishing panel-sizes and the move towards simplified, thrill-free, family-friendly gag-a-day graphic fodder to wrap around small-ads.

With the release at long last of a dedicated collection of the black and white Daily strips, I thought I’d spotlight a few of those fabulous landscape tomes which kept the Amazing Aviator alive in fans’ hearts in the years since it ceased publication.

In a previous review remarkably similar to this one, we saw the Rangoon-based World-Wide Airline head-honcho handle a madly muddled movie crew in Mammoth Marches On, battle a Japanese war-criminal with atomic aspirations in ‘The Hunted’ and bring to book a gang of highly sophisticated plane-wrecking ‘Scavengers’ in the jungles between Vietnam and Cambodia, before heading off on his next incredible adventure which barely began before that particular collection concluded. This particular tome re-presents sequences which first appeared in American Sunday Supplements between April 19th 1953 and July 4th 1954, and depict a time of wild globetrotting exploits and increasingly exhilarating fantasy frolics…

‘Ceiling Zero-Minus’ found Johnny and trusty pals Don and Cutout hired to take a new type of helicopter down into the deepest, widest hole on Earth in search of missing miners, and this sensational storyline continues with an astounding discovery as their vertical vehicle is trapped in a net nine thousand feet below the surface…

The unbelievable follow-up is even more amazing as the trio are taken prisoner by a Herculean giant and introduced to a fantastic subterranean civilisation built over eons by cavemen fleeing Earth’s last Ice Age.

Moreover the ambitious super-scientific overlords of the sub-city state of Namron are in the final stages of a complex and long-planned invasion of the surface world. They already have spies and fifth columnists placed in the most unsuspected places…

With the upper lands exhausted by recent wars and divided by ideology the crucial day is fast approaching, especially as wicked dictator Nallor has captured the beautiful Princess Alba…

It transpires that the rival city of Justus has long held the subterranean tyrant’s insane ambitions in check, but with their ruler’s daughter now a hostage Nallor feels confidant enough to start his campaign, but hasn’t reckoned on the capable Hazard’s ability to make trouble. Soon the escaped surface-men are dashing the rescued Alba back to Justus through the underworld with all the unimaginably resources of the invaders at their heels, but they have not reckoned on the fact that one of them is a Namronian double-agent…

Fantastic and eerily spectacular, the fantasy epic ends with the heroes triumphant and Upper Earth saved, so seven days later it was back to rip-roaring adventure in a traditional vein with ‘Deadly Game!’ (August 30th 1953-January 24th 1954) as Johnny is chartered to ferry a chess master to a bizarre competition in the heart of the Burmese jungle. Little do the plucky pilot or Señor Professor Eduardo Estaban realise just how seriously enigmatic plantation owner Mr. Basil takes his games…

The first hint comes when the tea-farmer’s lovely young wife starts passing terrified notes, but the clincher is when Johnny discovers the bodies of previous players in the Room of Death…

Things come to a head when the pilot then finds out what Basil is really cultivating in his vast, isolated fields and leads to a deadly duel of wits …and bombs and bullets…

The furious finale finds Hazard, Estaban and Valerie Basil fleeing a scene of deadly devastation on the packet boat of corpulent rogue Captain Shark as ‘Monkey See…Monkey Do!’ (running from January 31st to May 9th 1954) draws the stunned survivors into an ancient feud. Whilst torturously returning to civilisation along the sluggishIrrawaddy, Hazard finds a stuffed monkey in the captain’s cabin – one bedecked with thousands of dollars worth of ancient jewellery…

Years ago Shark and his thieving colleague Peter “Three-Eyes” Lynch had fought over a treasure map which led to a lost city deep in the jungle. Ever since Three-Eyes went overboard with half the map and a bullet-hole in him, Shark has travelled the river as an itinerant courier searching in vain for his prize, but now the battle at Basil’s plantation has uncovered a hidden tributary and the unlucky passengers have no choice but to go along with the obsessed Captain…

Things take a terrifying turn when the boat is invaded by gun-toting monkeys who take them all captive and bring the vessel to that much-sought lost city…

Three-Eyes didn’t die that night. Instead he drifted to the ancient ruin and spent long months training the anthropoids to do his bidding. All this time he’s been waiting for somebody to find the desolated ruins and provide him with a means of transporting back to civilisation the tons of gold and gems he’s been impatiently sitting on…

Things are tense enough with the wanderers as simple captives of the crazy monkey- man, but when Three-Eyes realises just how long it’s been since he touched a human woman, the situation escalates…

Although the chivalrous pilot successfully defends Valerie, they and Estaban can only watch in horror as Shark and Lynch finally take their long-deferred dispute to its ultimate, foregone conclusion…

This volume – like its predecessor – then carries on into the next saga and ends on a tantalising cliffhanger as, after dragging his charges back to Rangoon and safety, Hazard is then hired by a climber who claims to have been the first person to actually scale Mount Everest. Surprisingly, Virgil Dale isn’t too fussed about not getting the credit for such an incredible achievement: he’s since hooked up with returning villainess/entrepreneur Baroness Flame who wants to fund an expedition to the High Himalayas and capture the beast he discovered there – ‘The Abominable Snowman!’

To be continued…

These exotic action-romances perfectly captured the mood and magic of a distant but so incredibly familiar time; with cool heroes, hot dames and exceedingly intemperate bad-guys encountering exotic locales and stunning scenarios, all peppered with blistering tension, slyly mature humour and vivid, visceral excitement.

Johnny Hazard is a brilliant two-fisted thriller-strip and even if you can’t easily locate these fantastic full-colour chronicles, at least the prospect of an eventual new Sunday strip collection is a little closer at last…
© 1953-1954 King Features Syndicate. © 1980 Pacific C.C.

Posted on

X-Men and Spider-Man


By Christos Gage & Mario Alberti with Roy Thomas, Werner Roth & Dan Adkins (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2459-7

After a shaky start in 1962 The Amazing Spider-Man quickly became a popular sensation with kids of all ages, rivalling the creative powerhouse that was Lee & Kirby’s Fantastic Four. Eventually the quirky, charming action-packed comics soap-opera became the model for an entire generation of younger heroes elbowing aside the staid, (relatively) old costumed-crimebusters of previous publications.

Since the 1970s the Astounding Arachnid and his hard-luck alter ego Peter Parker have become full-blown multi-media icons of the comics art form and survived every manner of seemingly insane reboot and upgrade to become globally real in the manner of Sherlock Holmes, Mickey Mouse, Tarzan, Superman, Batman and Harry Potter.

Then in 1963 The X-Men #1 introduced Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl and the Beast: very special young students of Professor Charles Xavier, a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and achieving integration between the sprawling masses of humanity and an emergent off-shoot race of mutants ominously dubbed Homo Superior.

After nearly a decade of eccentric, mind-blowing adventures, the masked misfits disappeared at the beginning of 1970 when mystery and supernatural horror themes once again gripped the world’s entertainment fields causing a consequent sustained downturn in costumed hero comics.

Although the title was revived at the end of the year as a cheap reprint vehicle, the mutants were reduced to guest-stars and bit-players across the Marvel Universe whilst the Beast was transformed into a monster to cash in on the new boom. A few years later, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas green-lighted a bold one-shot as part of the company’s line of over-sized specials…

Giant Size X-Men #1 (1975) detailed how the original team had been lost in action, forcing Xavier to scour Earth for replacements. Recruiting old foes-turned-friends Banshee and Sunfire and Hulk villain Wolverine, most of the savant’s time and attention was invested in newcomers Kurt Wagner, a demonic German teleporter who would be codenamed Nightcrawler, Russian farmboy Peter Rasputin, who could transform into a living steel Colossus, embittered, disillusioned Apache superman John Proudstar who was cajoled into joining the makeshift squad as Thunderbird and a young woman who comported herself as an African weather goddess.

Intrinsic to superhero comics is the “team-up” wherein costumed heroes join forces to tackle a greater than usual threat; a sales generating tactic taken to its logical extreme at Marvel wherein most early encounters between masked mystery men were generally prompted by jurisdictional disputes resulting in usually spectacular punch-ups before the heroes finally got on with allying to confront the real menace…

Combining Marvel’s biggest franchises and most massive movie successes, this slim slick tome collects the 4-issue miniseries X-Men and Spider-Man from January-April 2008 and includes both an introductory excerpt from X-Men #27 (December 1966) as well as all of X-Men #35 (August 1967) which detailed the harried heroes’ first full team-up together.

The story starts by returning to the days of the team’s first cancellation (chronologically 1970 but canonically merely a few years ago) for ‘The Strangest Teens of All’ and sees Spider-Man’s arch foe Kraven the Hunter court controversy by publicly declaring that the Web-spinner is a mutant.

Laying low to avoid the media-fuelled hysteria, the genuinely Homo Superior X-Men then encounter the Wall-Crawler when Kraven tracks his quarry to a coffee bar where Peter, Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson are, unknown to all, hanging out with some mutants in mufti…

When Kraven attacks, backed up by evil mutant The Blob, the battle is brief but brutal. The bad guys are easily defeated and driven off but there are wheels within wheels spinning here and a mystery mastermind has in fact hired the Hunter to secretly obtain cell samples from each X-Man…

The saga continues some time later in ‘Last Hunts’ set just after the Mutant Massacre which saw the X-Men’s first battle against the malevolent Marauders and Spider-Man: Kraven’s Last Hunt (that’s 1986 on our Earth) …

When the Wall-crawler finds clues to Kraven’s erstwhile employer during that long-ago coffee shop clash amongst the dead villain’s effects, he contacts the X-Men – now mostly a bunch of strangers – and inveigles himself into their recon mission into the subterranean tunnels where the massacre occurred. Seeking clues to the enigmatic Mr. Sinister, the wary heroes are attacked by a renewed team of Marauders and during a ferocious fight unearth a hidden lab containing warped and twisted clone cadavers.

These monstrous meat puppets have been grown from those covertly obtained cell samples. In ghastly broken glassine tubes moulder the horrific remains of things that might once have been the original X-Men…

Jumping forward again, ‘Clone Sagas’ sees the web-spinner sparring with B-list baddie Slyde, as another team of X-champions narrowly missed capturing their elusive target. Gene-bending Gepetto Mr. Sinister has been a major threat for many months, and this latest inconclusive foray has yielded some useful clues which necessitate contacting Spider-Man immediately…

For the uninitiated: Peter Parker was once cloned by his old biology teacher Miles Warren (AKA the Jackal) and had to defeat an alchemical double in a grim identity-duel, resulting in the copy’s apparent death. Years later the hero discovered that he was in fact the doppelganger and a grungy nomadic biker calling himself Ben Reilly was the true, non-artificial Spider-Man.

As the convoluted drama interminably played out, Parker – who had subsequently married Mary Jane during those intervening years when he had fought the good if unappreciated fight in mask and webs – eventually surrendered the Spider-Man persona. Now Reilly swung across the city battling a host of foes, and the happy couple settled down to await the birth of their first child…

Back at the team-up, the mutants have discovered files which link Sinister to Warrenand also hint at experiments using cell samples from Symbiote Slaughterer Cletus Kasady…

When Spider-Man narrowly avoided being absorbed by his own uniform, the strange invader (see Spider-Man vs. Venom and Spider-Man: the Saga of the Alien Costume) then bonded to a deranged and disgraced reporter named Eddie Brock. Becoming a savage, shape-changing dark-side version of the Amazing Arachnid, the adversaries eventually reached a brooding détente and Venom became a Lethal Protector, dispensing a highly individualistic brand of justice everywhere butNew York City.

However at one stage the semi-sentient alien parasite went into breeding mode, spawning a junior version which merged with a deranged psycho-killer. Totally amoral, murderously twisted and addicted to both pain and excitement, Kasady became the terrifying metamorphic Carnage: a kill-crazy monster which tore a bloody swathe through the Big Apple before an army of superheroes caught him and his deadly “family” of otherworldly killers. One of the most dangerous beings on Earth, Cletus now languished in a Federal lock-up.

What the X-Men don’t realise is that the current wall-crawler has never met them, and by the time the situation has been clarified, Sinister has sprung Carnage and struck an horrific deal with the crazed creature…

The heroes arrive in time to stop Carnage but even after another blistering, catastrophic but ultimately futile clash with Spider-Man and the X-Men, Sinister escapes with the last ingredient necessary for his ultimate unholy creation…

‘The Mutant Hunter’ brings the extended epic to a cataclysmic conclusion as, following a brutal decimation of Earth’s Homo Superior population by the Scarlet Witch on “M-Day”, a new threat is ruthlessly stalking the mere handful of survivors left after the holocaust. When Cyclops, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Kitty Pryde call in Spider-Man to help, the trail leads to a diabolical creature who combines all the abilities of the X-Men, Kasady and the long-dead Kraven. Unfortunately for everybody, after battling the assembled heroes to a standstill, the thing dubbed Xraven decides it doesn’t want to be Mr. Sinister’s lab rat either…

The frantic Fights ‘n’ Tights fun concludes with the aforementioned page 12 from X-Men #27, (by Roy Thomas, Werner Roth & Dick Ayers) wherein Iceman and the Beast, on a recruitment drive and about to battle the Mimic, offered the Amazing Arachnid membership in their mutant team (and you can catch the full story in Essential Classic X-Men volume 2 among other places), whilst issue #35 (inked by Dan Adkins) found the entire team in search of the abducted Professor X in ‘Along Came A Spider…’ with everybody’s favourite wall-crawler mistaken for a flunky of insidious secret organisation Factor Three by the increasingly desperate X-Men. The Webbed Wonder had to battle hard for his very life until the truth finally came out…

Most people who read comics have a passing familiarity with Spider-Man and the ever-changing X-Men franchises so, believe-it-or-not, newcomers and occasional consumers won’t have too much trouble following the backstory in this magnificently compelling and clever puff piece of Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy from scripter Christos Gage, rapturously rendered by the astounding Mario Alberti, whilst genned-up fans can revel in the crafty connect-the-dots secret history revealed herein…
© 1967, 2008 and 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Transposes


By Dylan Edwards (Northwest Press)
ISBN: 978-0-9845940-8-5

I don’t hold many unflinching beliefs; but one of the few is that I, you and certainly no church, government or pressure group has any damn right to dictate what consenting adults do with or to their bodies. I may reserve the right to privately snigger at some of the more ambitious things people get up to in order to get their rocks off, but I can’t help that: after all I’ve lived through Flower Power, Free Love, New Men, flares (twice) and an era when both religions and politicians tolerated gays and evolution, and believed women were equal to men.

I’m more than happy for anybody to assign, clarify or reassign their gender identity as they see fit, and as for when “Life begins” and what you’re born as, I’m far more concerned by the fact that the most vocal advocates “know” exactly when, what and how it begins whilst it’s inside a human but feel no compunction or duty of care for any baby – or mother’s – wellbeing as soon as the (still developing until age 30) agglomeration of cells is out of the womb and into the world…

Whilst we’re sharing I also feel we should probably all pass an exam before we’re allowed to vote or voice an opinion…

There are a lot of acronyms here and I’m not going to play translator or decoder interminably, so if we miss linking any just use that search engine OK? This is comics, not University Challenge…

LGBT comics have long been the best place in the graphic narrative business to portray real romance: an artefact, I suppose, of a society that seems determined to establish sex and love as two utterly separate beasts. I’d still love to think that in the 21st century we’ve all outgrown the juvenile, judgemental bad old days and can simply appreciate powerful, moving and funny comics about people of all sorts without any kind of preconception…

Unless we’re talking girl/vampire/werewolf menageries a trois: that stuff is just plain wrong…

The very fact of being judged “different” now seems to be an increasingly common badge of courage in a world where fanatics and bigots become daily more rabid, and actual religious leaders can claim with straight faces that God so hates homosexuals and fornicators (or atheists or scientists or Ginger-haired, left-handed people) that in His wisdom He sends hundreds of tornados and tsunamis every year to wreck the homes of the faithful and worshipful – presumably because they ain’t doin’ nothin’ ’bout it…

Dylan Edwards, AKA NDR, is a graphic artist, cartoonist and sculptor: author of Politically InQueerect, sports strip The Outfield and many others, plus the creator of really cute monsters (as seen on his Feeping Creatures site), and in Transposes uses comics to celebrate the history of seven ordinary souls just living their lives as FTMs (females transitioning to males).

Dylan – who extensively interviewed each star before crafting these elucidating mini-epics – encapsulates their unconventional existences for the wider world with disarming candour and certified charm. Of course, all the “hot button issues” touted by a hypocritically moralising media (coming out, bullying, role models, gay identity, promiscuity vs. monogamy, childhood sexual abuse, risky sex and/or partners, STIs, parental approval and rejection) are present here – which only goes to show just how widespread and universal those perennial difficulties are…

Regardless of that, this collection comes off as a wonderfully positive and affirming chronicle celebrating determination and difference and, after an effusive and informative Introduction by Alison Bechdel (cartoonist, author of Fun Home and Are You My Mother? and deviser of the truly inspirational Bechdel test), there’s an engaging comic strip Foreword by storymaker Dylan Edwards explaining the process that led to the impressive pictorial reportage that follows.

Delivered with jokey aplomb, this savvy and smart ice-breaker gently eases the uninitiated into issues of transgender, cisgender and that subset-within-a-subset defined here as “queer-identified female-to-male-transpersons” before the terrific tale-spinning begins…

Over coffee ‘Cal’ tells of his trip to physically hook-up with an adventurously like-minded internet contact and how it all led to a few surprises, a whole new set of skills and a great story to dine off for months to come…

The gloriously hilarious ‘Henry’ scrupulously – even compulsively – recorded every aspect of his satisfyingly unconventional life and was quite content to share insights and horror stories from the astoundingMuseum ofNatural Henry…

Confusion and insecurity were a way of life for ‘Adam’ until he met Marni, who after an intense and nurturing time helped her beau discover that she really wasn’t the girl for him, whilst for ‘Blake’ an intoxicating brief encounter led to unexpected and life-long repercussions.

Scholarly, happily-in-control ‘Avery’ learned his greatest lessons early from an intolerant father and the wise, understanding and joyously gay uncle the family had ostracised, after which the cavalcade of human drama ends with a gloriously moving, entwined tale of two young outsiders simply destined for each other in the parallel-lives journey of ‘Aaron & James’ ending our odyssey on a fabulous, happy high note…

We are then comfortingly caught-up by a brief Epilogue in which all the participants are revisited and updated on life since their interviews to re-emphasise that feeling of pleasing continuance…

Comics as a medium is already a symbolically active one, honed and irresistibly one-step-removed from the mundane faux reality of film or photography. As such its powers to skin away confusing or misleading surface and reveal unalloyed intent and meaning are without parallel.

Don’t take my word for it. Check out any political caricature by Hogarth, Scarfe or Steve Bell…

It’s an admission of annoying embarrassment to me that I’ve felt compelled to put in so much equivocating background and bumph before coming to the meat of this review. In the final analysis Transposes is a subtly sensitive, evocative, romantic and humorously rewarding collection of “people stories” which any open-minded fan will adore. There’s not much fighting but plenty of punch, and in an ideal world this book would be readily available in every school library for any confused kid in need of inspiration, comfort, understanding, encouragement and hope.

Sadly because it deals openly with sex and gender, it’s probably going to be banned in more than half the United States and get pilloried in our free and impartial Press… Well, if nothing else the publicity will be very useful in ensuring that the folk who need to get to hear of it…
© 2012 Dylan Edwards. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Kennedy – the President Must Die!


By artists unknown, cover by Prieto Muriana (Morcrim International Publications)
No ISBN: 84-400-2535-1

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty” – John Fitzgerald Kennedy

We couldn’t possibly do a week of political packages without dipping into a little sordid scandal or tawdry muckraking and with Kennedy – The President Must Die! I think we’ve found an indisputably appalling candidate…

In the 1970’s Mercocomics were a short-lived Spanish outfit (1977-1978) that produced a number of violent and titillating adult soft-core shockers which were translated into English and unleashed on the British public just as that dire decade was lurching to a close and Punk Rock could be heard echoing out of every Sixth Form Common Room. Amongst their some 117 published monochrome digest issues were such eye-catching titles as Hitler, Che, Sade, Lucrecia, Don Juan – Tenorio Garcia, El Socialista, Cronica Negra, Quixote ’78 , Mussolini and a 6-part sleazy fictionalised expose of the events of the Kennedy Assassination.

Much of the material was picked up from other Shlock publishers – particularly Italian horror comics – and made it into re-translations all over Europe. As far as I know, the Kennedy series only turned up in French and the English edition under review here, and I’m assuming from the quirky pacing, non-stop hops into salacious nudity and Carry-On Movie sex and anonymous art style that it too was Italian in origin…

This first gratuitous episode opens as a Texasmillionaire “patriot” hires ex-CIA operative and dirty tricks specialist Michael Fairchild for a very special freelance job that will save the nation from ruin. Meanwhile in Washington DC, JFK’s FBI procurer informs the leader of New Camelot that his latest assignation is naked, willing and hot to trot downstairs. Perfect wife Jackie is not fooled by her husband’s half-hearted excuses either…

In Dallas, minor crime-boss and nightclub proprietor Jack Ruby is auditioning new “hostesses” when old associate Fairchild turns up looking for a credible patsy. Ruby thinks he knows just the guy: a loser named Lee Harvey Oswald…

The dirty tricks master knows Oswald is a double agent – actually a CIA man on the skids and trapped in a dead end surveillance mission – but with what he’s planning, that just makes him an ideal scapegoat…

When he was stationed in Russia, Oswald married Marina Prussakova, but since coming to America she’s been neglecting him for the devious, deviant Mrs. Payne…

Preparations for the mission continue in secret. Out in the desert beyond Dallas, two snipers hone their skills in complete privacy, whilst in DC Robert Kennedy again warns his brother of the dangers of visiting that city at this time. Sadly the President is more concerned with his latest dalliances than the details of his trip, and soon even his perfect First Lady can’t take anymore …

The plot inexorably progresses and on November 22nd 1963 the conflicted and nonplussed Oswald somehow finds himself in an office of the Texas School Book Depository overlookingDealeyPlaza with the Presidential limousine in his sights. Trapped by his own insecurity and isolation from his Federal superiors, the undercover American agent is about to become the most reviled killer in US history.

Two shots ring out in rapid succession but Oswald’s finger is not on his rifle trigger…

Packed with actual historical personages and always skating perilously close to libel, this is indisputably a sleazy, unintentionally hilarious conspiracy thriller, yet somehow it all manages to pull together the mythology of assassination with surprising power and conviction. I’ve read far worse stories and dafter theories on the subject from legitimate experts, but frankly the art isn’t that great here and quite honestly the sheer volume of voluptuous, naked – and poorly drawn – jiggy bits is something of an unwelcome distraction.

So bad it’s good or simply unforgivable? …You decide, after all, it’s only your vote that counts…
© Mercocomic 1977-1978