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Mac’s Year: 1984 – Cartoons from the Daily Mail


By Mac – Stan McMurtry (Sphere)
ISBN: 978-0-7221-5798-5

“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner” – James Bovard

If you live long enough you’ll experience the pop culture keystones of every definitive era of your life at least twice more. The base, tasteless and utterly superficial aspects of the 1980s are currently doing the rounds again as the current generation – which was too young to remember them – get all nostalgic for the good bits and blithely ignore all the bad stuff: same as it ever was…

For us Brits it was Union-Bashing, Loads-a-Money, Yobs and Yuppies, poverty, excess, Royal Weddings, daft hair and Thatcher, whilst America endured trickle-down Reaganomics, insider dealing, illicit warfare and poodle rock – so nobody really got off lightly either side of the Pond – and then all the money ran out…

The truly amazing – and most depressing – realisation is that the issues never go away. The names and faces of the political or industrial scoundrels and mountebanks may change, but the mistakes they make and problems they create just keep going, so it’s always a wearisome, disturbing but oddly topical exercise to examine news cartoons this long after the fact and discover how distressingly familiar the hot topics still are. Same as it ever was…

So here’s another little dip into the vast forgotten annals of cartoon comedy generated by Britain’s greatest natural resource (and still un-privatised so it belongs to us all for the moment) – Clever Folks What Make Us Laugh…

Oftentimes our industry is cruel and unjust and frequently prone to guilt by association. This collection of cartoons is by Stan McMurtry – perhaps unfairly attributed a cartoon champion of the Populist Right – who, as “Mac”, has worked for nearly 40 years as social and political cartoonist for The Daily Mail.

Cartooning is a hard, demanding, mercurial job and a regular gig is every brush-monkey’s dream. Although it’s fair to say that most artists who settle in one place have an affinity for a periodical’s positions, stance and core politics, there will always be friction between creative expression and the Editor’s own inclinations and prudence…

The precociously artistic Mac was born inEdinburghin 1936 but raised inBirminghamfrom 1944. His father, a travelling salesman, never supported his son’s dreams of a career in art, but Stan persevered, attending Birmingham College of Art from 1950-1953, after which his 2-year National Service saw him serve in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps until 1956.

On demobilisation he entered the animation industry (at Henley-On-Thames), producing short films for the newly-launched commercial broadcast company ITV. Two of his efforts were prize winners at Cannes. Like so many other artists he also began contributing to the huge and broad cartoon market, selling his first job to Today in 1961. He became a full-time freelancer in 1965, drawing comics strips for a number of Odhams/IPC kids’ periodicals such as Wham! and Buster whilst selling gag panels to Punch, The London Evening News and others.

When Norman Mansbridge retired in 1968, Mac was offered his spot as topical cartoonist on the Daily Sketch, a centrist paper whose politics the artist generally agreed with.

In 1971 the paper was absorbed by the Daily Mail, a broadsheet which was repositioning itself as a tabloid. The once-posh paper had for years favoured the use of two staff cartoonists but was letting the revered Wally “Trog” Fawkes go (to The Observer). Offered the vacant chair, Mac alternated with the venerable John Musgrave-Wood – who signed his beautiful but so savage visual blasts against the Left “Emmwood” – until the senior partner retired in 1976.

From then, although other cartoonists appeared, the paper was Mac’s playground. Despite Editor David English constantly urging McMurtry to be “more politically minded”, Mac felt happiest employing sarcasm and gentle mockery, regarding his job as making “the dreary news-copy of the daily paper brighter by putting in a laugh”.

Mac has always been adamant that he was more a social than political animal. Even whilst spending decades turning last night’s newsflash into this morning’s mirth, McMurtry has always pursued other lucrative creative pursuits: working in advertising, straight illustration and greetings card design. In 1977 he wrote and drew children’s book The Bungee Venture and negotiated it into a Hanna-Barbera animated feature. With writing partner Bernard Cookson he also wrote TV scripts for comedians Tommy Cooper and Dave Allen. He was awarded an MBE in 2003 and remains at large and comically active to this day…

Artists like Mac who were commenting on contemporary events are poorly served by posterity. This particular volume (re-presenting a selection of single panel-gags from August 9th 1983 to June 8th of the politically and culturally front-loaded year 1984), like all of these books, was packaged and released for that year’s Christmas market, with the topics still fresh in people’s minds.

Decades later the drawing is still superb and, despite perhaps the wry minutiae escaping a few, the trenchant wit, dry jabs and outraged passion which informed these visual ripostes are still powerfully effective. And obviously human nature never changes and there’s nothing new under the sun…

Many of the blasts in this book deal unkindly – but rather hilariously, I’m forced to admit – with the fallout from the Greenham Common protest (and I’m speaking as someone who lost his then-girlfriend to that clarion call to arms, and marvels that today’s Occupy movement is so marvellously Co-Ed), underage sex and contraception, industrial turmoil and business closures, Health scandals and the NHS under attack whilst the Police themselves were increasingly Under The Cosh: same as it ever was…

There’re also episodes of Royal embarrassment and unwise escapades caught on film, doping and gender testing at major sporting events, the outrages of racist football thugs and players, vacillating doctors’ advice on booze and smokes, turmoil as opposition leaders were judged inadequate and heartfelt tributes to entertainment giants who had passed away…

Then as now, the overwhelming rain and horrendous climate often seized our attention, as did Irish Republican killers, the threat of Iran, illegal American wars, Arab Oil, celebrity love cheats, Airline blues, tacky TV Magicians, Judges with no grasp of modern life, holiday horrors, Parliamentary scandals (sex and money) and mouthy maverick cricketers causing trouble, all while the battle for equal pay for women was raging…

We kept annoying the French, there were Olympic surprises, welcome pops at privileged Toffs and posh-boys, wry Anniversary celebrations of WWII, the Scots were revolting, we all thought the Chancellor was inept or crooked, there were Papal gaffes and the Press was obsessed with Princesses…

My absolute favourite gag is a panel from February 23rd 1984 in which an ambitious couple behind a tree aim a little tot at the pram carrying the baby William Windsor and urged her to ‘Think of your career, kid – just saunter up to the Prince William and say “Hello gorgeous’”…

Thankfully some progress has occurred. Less perennial topics included pops at the PM’s idiot children (give it time), the prejudices shown to returned and wounded servicemen, body-issues and diet Nazis, arrogant and paranoid Yankee Presidents, insane African dictators, out of control school kids and… Hey, wait a minute…

Despite being often and usually unfairly targeted by factions of the Left and Right – and even accused of racism on one occasion – Mac is one of most celebrated and lauded cartoonists in British history: his energy, creativity, perspicacity and grasp of the public mood generating thousands of unforgettable gags and acres of brilliant cartoons.

His comical commentaries, produced on a punishing daily deadline, were appreciated if not feared by Peers and plebs alike and were all created with a degree of craft and diligence second to none. Even now, decades later, they are still shining examples of wit and talent… and still bitingly funny too.

It’s a terrible shame that the vast body of graphic excellence which topical cartoonists produce has such a tenuous shelf-life. Perhaps some forward-looking educational institution with a mind to beefing up the modern history or social studies curricula might like to step in and take charge of the tragically untapped and superbly polished catalogue of all our yesterdays.

Clearly they’re all short of a bob or two these days and I’m pretty sure these cartoon gems could find a willing market eager to invest in a few good laughs, or even market them as social history books that students might actually enjoy absorbing. Same as it never was…

© 1984 Stan McMurtry. All rights reserved.

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Brought to Light – Thirty Years of Drug Smuggling, Arms Deals, and Covert Action


By Alan Moore, Bill Sienkiewicz, Joyce Brabner, Tom Yeates, Paul Mavrides & others (Eclipse Books/Titan Books)
ISBNs: 978-0913035672 (Eclipse),                978-1-85286-154-4 (Titan)

“It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind” – Voltaire

There’s no more painful truism than Politics is Dirty Business, but as information has become more readily obtainable and widely disseminated from the 1980s onward, scandal after scandal has surfaced everywhere men of power play their games, seemingly impossible to cover up by administrations and regimes all over the planet.

This was never more common than in Ronald Reagan’s America.

No matter what else you may think of the Land of the Free, that’s one supreme advantage that their Inalienable Right to Free Speech gives them over so many other cultures. Still, that’s nothing a few judicious Plutocratic backhanders and dedicated lobbyists won’t one day fix, I’m sure…

As always us proud, dirty Liberals in comics got into the exposé act early and often, hopefully opening many young complacent eyes at just the right developmental moment…

While I’m unsure of the exact and total effect of comic condemnation as opposed to legal sanctions and official reprimands, I am utterly certain that politicians eventually have to listen to the people who vote them in and out, so the power to arouse Joe Public is one I completely appreciate and respect – even if these days there’s an apparent campaign of legalised disenfranchisement being steadily carried in the once-civilised west…

During the Reagan Era, many of the poisonous pigeons of previous administrations finally came home to roost and a high-profile legal case involving a CIA operative accused of blowing up journalists in South America first cast a very unwelcome light on US covert operations in sovereign nations.

However, even after very public hearings and a torrent of media scrutiny, nobody particularly high up was ever punished, and those middle-rankers actually convicted of crimes were soon Presidentially pardoned…

The Christic Institute, a “Public Interest” law firm which had successfully tackled the Nuclear Power industry on behalf of Karen Silkwood, the Ku Klux Klan, institutionally corrupt Police Departments and the American Nazi Party, finally met their match when they tried to use Rico (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) Laws to expose clandestine elements of the Administration which wilfully circumvented the Senate, Congress and the Constitution in pursuit of their own illegitimate goals.

Prior to that they had acted upon the behalf of American reporters Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey when they brought suit against the covert, unsanctioned CIA agents who had been working with right-wing terrorist groups – Contras – and even destabilising democratically elected socialist governments in Central America.

Devised as a “Flip Book” with two separate stories joined back to back, I’ve decided to start with ‘Flashpoint – The La Penca Bombing’, constructed from legal affidavits and the journalists’ own accounts by editor/scripter Joyce Brabner and illustrated by Thomas Yeates.

Beautifully rendered with stylish aplomb, this tale of cynical, institutionalised malfeasance documents the growth of a clandestine wing of operatives designed to work beyond the oversight of Congress to make America safe by any means necessary. It opens by covering the fall of Cubato Castro and Vice-President Nixon‘s illegal formation of a Contra-revolutionary army to take the island back for the Mafia bosses who had previously run it. This led to the gradual growth of an illicit anti-communist “Secret Team” which would perpetrate and facilitate countless acts of terrorism across the continent and incidentally create most of the trade routes and contacts used by drug cartels for the next fifty years.

In 1980 President Reagan had authorised the CIA to fund, train and supply “Contras” in Honduras with the intention of unseating Nicaraguan revolutionary Eden Pastora – “Comandante Zero” – who had overthrown the regime of corrupt Right Wing reactionary President Anastasio Somoza in 1978.

When he refused overtures to work with the CIA, Pastora became a prime target for the Secret Team which consisted of obsessive American patriots, anti-communist thugs and career criminals. It was decided that assassination was the most expedient solution…

The focus then switches to Avirgan and Honey, whose latest overseas assignment saw them and their family transfer fromAfricatoCosta Rica. In 1984, as part of their news brief, Avirgan attended an international press conference held by Pastora in La Penca where the disillusioned Nicaraguan leader was stating his new aim and denouncing his erstwhile comrades who had abandoned their revolutionary principles and started cashing in…

Comandante Zero narrowly escaped death in a huge bomb blast which, according to figures at the time, killed 8 and brutally maimed another 28 journalists.

In the aftermath the recovering Avirgan and Honey began diligently investigating the hitman who caused the blast and overturned a can of worms which changed America’s conception of itself. Eventually they resorted to litigation, exposing key players to piercing public scrutiny in the groundbreaking case of Avirgan vs. Hull. The CIA agent was only one of more than twenty covert American operatives involved in the network and who would all figure prominently in the later Congressional Investigations and Tower Commission reports we know today as the Iran-Contra Scandals.

…And of course the Secret Team struck back in their own time-honoured and so-very effective ways…

“Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons” – Bertrand Russell

This documentary foray into the underprovided genre of graphic activism alternatively undertakes a sublimely surreal and devastatingly memorable tutorial as Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz transform the dry facts of redacted history into a masterful and impassioned satirical blast against the unsanctioned status quo with ‘Shadowplay – The Secret Team’.

A guy walks into a bar and cosies up to a smug, drunk and pompously bloated American Eagle. Soused and soured, the repellent fallen symbol begins to boast and babble of the things he and his guys at The Company have been proud to do to keep America Strong and Free since WWII…

Acerbic, biting and miraculously packed with astoundingly copious information, this is a visual tour de force which sublimely demonstrates the unmatched ability of comics to convey hard facts, inform by implication, and even shade tone and timbre. Translating the most dry and dusty detail to beguiling, unforgettable truths, the battered old bird reveals the complete history and exposes the many sins of the Central Intelligence Agency from Pinochet to Noriega, Vietnam to Iran and all over South America in a litany of horror too incredible to be made up…

A supremely evocative counter-attack against the unsanctioned dark forces which have committed innumerable atrocities in the name of the American People, this immorality play still has terrifying resonance to today’s world and remains one of the most bleakly lovely exhibitions of sequential narrative ever produced.

This striking chronicle also includes text pieces from attorney Daniel Sheehan and author Jonathan Marshall and extensive creator biographies plus a ferocious cartoon history – ‘Ailing World’ – of America and a world map of ’30 Years of Covert Action: Brought to Light’ from underground cartoonist and political activist Paul Mavrides, relating many of the CIA’s past “successes” in election tampering, drug trafficking, assassination and other less definable exercises in democracy.
© 1989 Eclipse Enterprises, Inc. Flashpoint: the La Penca Bombing © 1989 Joyce Brabner & Thomas Yeates. Shadowplay: the Secret Team © 1989 Alan Moore & Bill Sienkiewicz. Ailing World & Map of Covert Operations © 1989 Paul Mavrides. All other material © 1989 the respective creators/owners.

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Stabbed in the Front – Post-War General Elections through Political Cartoons


By Dr. Alan Mumford (Centre for the Study of Cartoons & Caricature, U of K,Canterbury)
ISBN: 978-1-90267-120-8

“True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else” – Clarence Darrow

From its earliest inception cartooning has been used to sell: initially ideas or values but eventually actual products too. In newspapers, magazines and especially comicbooks the sheer power of narrative with its ability to create emotional affinities has been linked to the creation of unforgettable images and characters. When those stories affect the daily lives of generations of readers, the force that they can apply in a commercial or social arena is almost irresistible…

InBritainthe cartoonist has held a bizarrely precarious position of power for centuries: the deftly designed bombastic broadside or savagely surgical satirical slice instantly capable of ridiculing, exposing and always deflating the powerfully elevated and apparently untouchable with a simple shaped-charge of scandalous wit and crushingly clear, universally understandable visual metaphor.

For this method of concept transmission, literacy or lack of education is no barrier. As the Catholic Church proved millennia ago with the Stations of the Cross, stained glass windows and a pantheon of idealised saints, a picture is absolutely worth a thousand words…

More so than work, sport, religion, fighting or even sex, politics has always been the very grist that feeds the pictorial gadfly’s mill. This gloriously informative book (sponsored by the marvellous Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature, University of Kent at Canterbury), offers a fantastic overview of political adaptability and cultural life as Britain moved from Empire to mere Nationhood in the latter half of the 20th century, examined through General Elections and the wealth of cunningly contrived images and pictorial iconography they provoked and inspired.

After an effusive Foreword by professional politician and celebrated cartoon aficionado (the Rt. Hon.) Lord Kenneth Baker of Dorking, author Alan Mumford – a specialist in management training – covers the basic semiology and working vocabulary of the medium in his copious Introduction.

Designating definitions and terms for the treatise, he subdivides the territory into ‘Origins’, ‘Criteria for Selection’, ‘Newspapers and Magazines’, ‘The Longevity of Political Cartoonists’, ‘References, Symbols and Metaphors’, ‘The Impact of Cartoons on General Elections’ and ‘Savagery in Political Cartoons’ as a very effective foundation course in how to best contextualise and appreciate the plethora of carefully crafted mass-market messages which follow.

The format is extremely ergonomic and effective. Thus Philip Zec’s iconic cartoon and caption/slogan “Here You Are. Don’t Lose it Again!” begins the Great Endeavour with historical background in The Run-up to the General Election of 1945, followed by Election Issues and the 1945 Campaign, major Personalities of the 1945 General Election, Results of… and finally a nominated “Cartoonist of the Election” whose work most captured the spirit of or affected the outcome of a particular contest.

This methodology then proceeds to efficiently and comprehensively recreate the tone of each time, augmented whenever possible by a personal interview or remembrance from one of the campaigners involved. These telling vignettes include contributions from Frank Pakenham/Lord Longford, Barbara Castle, Edward Heath, Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins, Kenneth Baker again, Jim Callaghan, Jim Prior, Margaret Thatcher, David Steel, Norman Tebbit, John Major and Tony Blair…

Each fact-packed, picture-filled chapter then dissects every succeeding campaign: 1950’s tame ‘Consolidation not Adventure’ which resulted in Labour and Clement Attlee’s second victory by the narrowest – practically unworkable – of margins, Churchill’s resurgence in 1951 as ‘The Grand Old Man Returns’ and a slow steady decline in fortunes and growth of a New Politics as Anthony Eden’s star rose for the 1955 General Election when ‘The Crown Prince Takes Over’…

In an era of international unrest Harold McMillan eventually rose to become Tory top gun and in 1959 was ‘Supermac Triumphant’, but domestic troubles – race, unionism and the always struggling economy – wore away his energies. In a minor coup he was ousted andSirAlecDouglasHome took over mid-term, consequently losing to glib, charismatic new Labour leader Harold Wilson.

This entire era is one of aged and infirm Big Beasts passing away suddenly with too many lesser lights to succeed them; further complicated by both Labour and Conservative parties rent by infighting and jockeying for position with wannabe upstarts such as the Liberals cruising the room looking to pick up what scraps they could (so it’s not a new thing, OK?).

In 1966 “Labour Government Works” took Labour to a second term but social turmoil in the country, with unions demands spiralling out of control, enabled Edward Heath to lead the Conservatives into the most dangerous and turbulent decade in modern British history. The General Election of 1970 proved ‘Wilson Complacent, Heath Persistent’…

There were two General Elections in 1974.

A massive ongoing crisis in industrial relations and the growing racial tension caused by maverick Tory Enoch Powell’s continual cries to “end Immigration or face rivers of blood in the streets” forced Prime Minister Heath to ask in February ‘Who Governs Britain?’ He was informed by the disaffected electorate “Not you, mate.”

Even though Wilson and Labour were returned to power, the majority was miniscule and by October the people were compelled to do it all again and ‘Vote for Peace and Quiet’.

Although he’d again narrowly led them to victory, Wilson’s time was done and he abruptly resigned in 1976 to be replaced by deputy Jim Callaghan.

Heath too was reduced to the ranks and relegated to the Tory Back benches, replaced by a rising star from Finchley. As Britain staggered under terrifying economic woes in 1979, Callaghan called an election and lost to Margaret Thatcher who had famously said “No Woman in My Time” would ever be Prime Minister. I think that was the last time she ever admitted to being wrong…

Despite horrifying and sustained assaults on the fabric of British society – and great unpopularity – she enjoyed two more election victories: in 1983 “The Longest Suicide Note in History” and again in 1987 as ‘Thatcher Moves Forward’ before finally being turned on by her own bullied and harried cabinet.

The best political cartooning comes from outrage, and the Tory administrations of the 1980’s provided one bloated, bile-filled easy mark after another. Just look at TV’s Spitting Image which grew fat and healthy off that government’s peccadilloes, indignities and iniquities (as well as Reagan’sAmerica and the Royal Family) in just the way that millions of unemployed and disenfranchised workers, students and pensioners didn’t. The election cartoons reproduced here from that period, come from a largely Tory Press, and whilst contextualised and accurate don’t approach the level of venom she engendered in certain sections.

For a more balanced view one should also see Plunder Woman Must Go! by Alan Hardman, Drain Pig and the Glow Boys in Critical Mess,  You are Maggie Thatcher: a Dole-Playing Game or even Father Kissmass and Mother Claws by Bel Mooney & Gerald Scarfe, not to mention any collection of the excoriating Steve Bell’s If…

In 1992 the only thing stopping a Labour landslide was the party itself, which had so dissolved into factional infighting and ideological naval-gazing that not even the fiery oratory of Welsh Wizard Neil Kinnock could pull them together. Once again however the newspapers claimed the credit when Tory consensus/concession leader John Major pulled off a surprising ‘Triumph of the Soapbox?’

That Labour Landslide had to wait until 1997 and the ‘Teeth and Sleaze’ of Tony Blair (although at that time we all thought the latter term only applied to corrupt Tory MPs selling parliamentary time and attention to business interests) which brings this incredibly appealing tome to a close. Since then a whole lot has happened and I think it’s long past time for a new, revised and updated edition…

As well as making addictively accessible over half a century of venal demagoguery, hard work, murky manipulations, honest good intentions and the efforts of many men and women moved in equal parts by dedication and chicanery, this oversized monochrome tome is also literally stuffed with the best work some of the very best cartoonists ever to work in these Sceptred Isles.

The art, imagination, passion and vitriol of Abu, Steve Bell, Peter Brookes, Dave Brown, Michael Cummings, Eccles, Emmwood, Stanley Franklin, George Gale, Nick Garland, the Davids Gaskill and Ghilchik, Les Gibbard, Charles Griffin, Graham High, Leslie Illingworth, Jak, John Jensen, Jon, Kal, David Low, Mac, Mahood, Norman Mansbridge, Sidney Moon, Bill Papas, Chris Riddell, Paul Rigby, Rodger, Stephen Roth, Martin Rowson, Willie Rushton, Peter Schrank, Ernest Shepard, Ralph Steadman, Sidney Strube, Trog, Vicky, Keith Waite, Zec and Zoke are timeless examples of the political pictorialist’s uncanny power and, as signs of the times, form a surprising effecting gestalt of the never happy nation’s feeling and character…

None of that actually matters now, since these cartoons have performed the task they were intended for: shaping the thoughts and intentions of generations of voters. That they have also stood the test of time and remain as beloved relics of a lethal art form is true testament to their power and passion, but – to be honest and whatever your political complexion – isn’t it just a guilty pleasure to see a really great villain get one more good kicking?

Stuffed with astounding images, fascinating lost ephemera and mouth-watering tastes of comic art no fan could resist, this colossal collection is a beautiful piece of cartoon history that will delight and tantalise all who read it… and it’s still readily available through the University of Kent’s website…
© 2001. Text © 2001 Alan Mumford. All illustrations © their respective holders or owners. All rights reserved.

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The Adventures of Tintin – Breaking Free


By J. Daniels (Attack International/Freedom Press)
ISBNs: 0-9514261-0-9,      978-0-9514261-0-4,        978-1-90449-117-0 (Freedom Press)

“Freedom of the Press is only guaranteed to those who own one” – Abbott Joseph Liebling

Politics is always composed of and used by firebrands and coldly calculating grandees, but that’s the only guiding maxim you can trust. Most other people don’t give a toss until it affects them in the pocket and, no matter to what end of the political spectrum one belongs, the greatest enemy of the impassioned ideologue is apathy. This forces activists and visionaries to ever-more devious and imaginative stunts and tactics…

Crafted by the enigmatically anonymous J. Daniels and concocted and released by the anarchist faction Attack International in 1988, The Adventures of Tintin – Breaking Free is a perfect exercise in the use of Détournement (“turning expressions of the capitalist system and its media culture against itself”), using mimicry, mockery, parody and satire to counter the seductive subversion of the Monied Interests of the status quo.

It also reads rather well as social documentary and human drama, for all its earnest worthiness and fiercely dogmatic posturing…

The gimmick is this: the comforting cosy style and iconic images of Hergé’s immortal adventurers are removed into our pedestrian oppressive, corrupt world and co-opted to incite a revolution in thinking and action…

In Chapter 1, ‘We’ve Had Enough!’ has unemployed hothead, petty thief and disenfranchised youthful dole-queue outcast Tintin visit his uncle on the run-down-and-dying council estate where the once-vital man and his wife Mary now live on the breadline. The boy needs money and The Captain suggests a labouring job with him on the new building site. Although there’s work to be had, tensions are high there: dangerous working conditions, shoddy management practices and subsistence wages for the desperate men crafting luxury flats for more of the rich and gentrified types steadily pushing real people out of the community…

Another alienated faction joins the swell of discontent when squatters break in to the flat next door and the Captain helps them sort out the utilities. Everybody knows the council is letting the estate die of neglect so that the corrupt councillors can sell it off, so the lesbian activists are welcomed as fellow fighters against the powers that be.

Tensions mount as the National Front recruit in broad daylight, skinheads carry out racist attacks and yuppie winebars push out good old-fashioned working-men’s pubs. Soon Tintin is striking back whenever he can: vandalising posh cars and pickpocketing rich poseurs. All proper men need is jobs, beer, football and a decent life, but the boy soon has his eyes opened – if not his opinions changed – when he is made painfully aware of how even those lower class paragons treat their women…

Events come to a head when a worker dies on the building site and the supervisor is more concerned about lost time; even suggesting poor Joe Hill was drunk and not the hapless victim of negligent, non-existent safety procedures…

‘One Out, All Out!’ sees a wildcat strike seeking compensation for Joe’s widow escalate into a national furore after trade union officials strike a shady deal with the property developers and the incensed workers reject their useless official action for measures that will actually work.

Soon bosses and unions are conspiring together to break the unsanctioned, unofficial action as the ordinary people rally around the strikers, providing food, money and – most important of all – encouragement.

Soon the authorities resort to their tried and true dirty tactics: picket-breaking riot squads, undercover agent provocateurs, intelligence-led targeted arrests of “ringleaders” and general, brutal intimidation.

Scab labour is harshly dealt with in ‘Let’s Get Organised’ as the hard-working, underappreciated women increasingly take up the challenge. The movement is growing in strength and national support. Soon other cities are in revolt too, and The Captain is becoming an unwilling and unlikely figurehead. Tintin, ever impatient, finds like-minded hotheads and secretly begins a campaign of literally explosive sabotage…

It all culminates in ‘Getting Serious’ as everything kicks into overdrive when the Captain endures a punishment beating from unidentified thugs and his family is similarly threatened. Scared but undeterred, the old salt carries on, and planning for a national march continues unabated. With reports coming in of similar movements inPoland,Yugoslavia and other Warsaw Pact countries (the Soviet Empire was still very much in existence and continually crushing workers’ freedoms at this time) the local groundswell becomes a national expression of solidarity and the underclass consolidates under a mass rallying call to arms…

When the riot squads are again deployed it all turns ugly and the events go global, but in the aftermath The Captain has been “disappeared” or, as the authorities would have it, been “arrested for conspiracy”.

With half a million people on the streets of the city, the powers-that-be move to full military response but it’s too late…

The later edition, published by Freedom Press in 2011, also includes the infamous early adventures of this extremely alternative Tintin (as first seen in polemical pamphlet The Scum in 1986) from the scallywag’s days sorting out Rupert Murdoch from the picket line at Wapping during the legendary Printer’s Strike…

Passionate and fiercely idealistic, the initial release of Breaking Free unsurprisingly unleashed a storm of howling protest from the establishment, Tory Press and tabloid papers (especially News International) and by all accounts even Prime Minister Thatcher was “utterly revolted”.

Of course that only meant that the little guys had won: achieving a degree of publicity and notoriety such puny, powerless underdogs could only have dreamed of but never afforded by any traditional means of disseminating their message…

More a deliciously tempting dream than a serious clarion call to end social injustice, this is a wickedly barbed and superbly well-intentioned piece, lovingly capturing the sublime Ligne Claire style and utterly redirecting its immense facility to inform and beguile…

First released in April 1988 by Attack International. This book proudly proclaims that no copyright has been invoked unless capitalists want to poach it…

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Apes of Wrath


By Steve Bell (Methuen in association with The Guardian)
ISBN: 978-0-41377-450-7

For as long as we’ve had printing in this country we’ve had gadfly artists commentating on society and its iniquities, and visually haranguing the powerful, pompous, privileged and just plain perfidious through swingeing satire and cunning cartoons.

Even after many centuries of savage satirical Masters, we’re still throwing up brilliant firebrands and cruelly artistic geniuses whose political acumen, societal consciences and staggering graphic gifts irresistibly combine to make the powerful, unscrupulous and hypocritically venal sweat a bit in their own self-important juices whilst making we mere rabble of hoi-polloi and avowed plebs chuckle and smirk at their revealed discomforts…

Probably the most effective and dedicated of the modern crop of cartoonist champions of the underclass (or “the public” as I call them) is Steve Bell, who has been skewering the Great and the not-so Good since 1977.

Born in Walthamstow in 1951, raised in Sloughand North Yorkshireand educated at Teeside College of Art, the Universities of Leeds and later Exeter(where he obtained a teaching qualification from St. Luke’s Campus), he abandoned education for freelance art as both comics artist (the Gremlins in Jackpot) and cartoonist.

His strident, polemical strips ‘Maggie’s Farm’ (Time Out and City Limits) and ‘Lord God Almighty’ in The Leveller led to a commission from The Clash for the album Sandanista! and eventually his own regular feature ‘If…’ which began in national newspaper The Guardian in 1981 and is still going hard and strong…

It’s a controversial maxim of political cartooning that you’re only as good as the times you’re in and the targets on offer, but if so either Bell has been born into the End of Days or he’s particularly blessed in having a perpetually renewing procession of perfectly risible prime lampooning targets – or maybe that should be “suspects”…

After lambasting a succession of utterly ghastly Tory leaders and their appalling acolytes at home, and rabid Rightist rulers abroad for years, blow me if a global swing to the left didn’t seemingly leave Bell with nothing to shoot at. However it all soon proved to be a false alarm which offered a new American C-i-C with his own on-board, self-destructive arsenal of gaffes and a covert continuation of Conservative idiocy ideology at home with the election of Labour’s Saviour Tony Blair.

And then in 2000, the Nicedaysmerca and birthplace of Freem even found itself another Bush to hide in front of…

Collecting and repurposing comical cutlass-slashes, surgically sardonic scalpel-cuts, a riot of rapier-like witticisms and, when nothing else will do, the occasional bludgeon with the blunt-end of a cartoon cudgel, this crushingly hilarious  full-colour  – and often off-colour – compendium collects Guardian cartoons from 1988, 1991 and 1998-2004, tracing the rise of the Bush Dynasty in war and profit peace, without ever underplaying the key role played by dogged Little Britain in assuring a nice steady pace on the road to mutually-assured Armageddon…

The grand conceit of this savage little hardcover treat is that we get to peek beneath the hem of great men in a time of turrble crisis where Freeman Moxy were threatened and only the Curge of our leaders kept us all from  being wiped out by Slamic Fananimalism and Terrrsts. Moreover we get to hear it all in the humble words of George Dubya Bush as he recounts his role in countering the crisis…

Featuring 110 wickedly manic graphic salvoes against just about everybody and a few utterly damning moral condemnations as only arch cartoonists can concoct them, Apes of Wrath captures the true spirit of those troubled times with such standout pictorialised diatribes as ‘Bigtime for Bonzo’, ‘Electile Dysfunction’, ‘Al Who’da??’, ‘The Age of Irony is Dead…’, ‘Corporate Responsibility’, ‘The Humanitarian Thrust Continues’ and so many more…

Thoughtfully containing a comprehensive glossary of frequently-used terms such as “Morl Curge” (What you need to be a wurl class wurl leader), “Cladral damage” (What happens to pain in the ass innocent bystanders that don’t keep their heads down) and “Diplocrap” (talking to forners) which will help us all speak Presidentially and understand the complexity of high level negotiation, this chronicle of catastrophe is a perfectly guided missile of agonised, mordant mirth that no as-yet free-thinking individual should miss, especially as elections just keep on happening…
Text © 2004 Steve Bell. Illustrations © 1988, 1991, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Steve Bell. All rights reserved.

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Signal: 02 – A Journal of International Political Graphics


Edited by Alec Dunne & Josh MacPhee (PM Press)
ISBN: 978-1-60486-298-0

“A week is a long time in Politics” – Harold Wilson

I’m going to go all traditional here and offer a few on-line dictionary definitions before I head off on one of my own oblique and off-kilter diatribes.

Politics can be reduced to:

  • The art or science of governing – especially of a political entity such as a nation – and the administration and control of its affairs.
  • The activities or affairs engaged in by a government, politician, or political party.
  • The methods or tactics involved in managing a state or government.
  • Intrigue or manoeuvring within a political unit or group in order to gain control or power.
  • The often internally conflicting interrelationships among people in a society

I’d like to add my own codicil which translates as

  • “Getting large groups of people to do what you want by making them believe it’s their own idea; as perpetually practiced by advertisers, teachers in classrooms, rich folk, commercial organisations and special interest groups, trades unions, and organised religions”.

The early years of the 21st century were plagued with horrors and disasters exacerbated by a hideous global proliferation of lying, greedy, venal, demented and just plain stupid bosses and governments. These paragons finally succeeded in elevating politicians of every stripe to that phylum of generally useless tools and pimples on the butt of humanity once only occupied by lawyers and management consultants.

Since then so many apparently entitled and greedy types like bankers, astrologers, wedding planners, doorstep evangelists, CEOs, celebrity gossip columnists, newspaper editors, the shamelessly privileged and all types of psychics have joined their rarefied ranks, and I’m thinking I probably need to either cut down on coffee or refine my critical parameters…

The century before that wasn’t much better either, but it did spawn a global awareness of the sheer symbolic power of pictures to promote debate, action and change. The political image was used over and over again by the underdogs – and to be honest, the more savvy oppressors – in countless intellectual wars as an irresistible Weapon of Mass Deliberation…

When creative passions are aroused there is no more powerful medium of expression or tool of social change than graphic narrative working in seamless conjunction with a trenchant, targeted image. Whether it’s the swingeing satire of reformers such as Hogarth, the prose of Dickens illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne AKA “Phiz”, the publications of Mark Lemon and Henry Mayhew (founders of Punch), the questing explorations of Will Eisner, Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman and Marjane Satrapi or even the devastatingly deployed propaganda art of every nation on Earth, the incisive, excoriating or simply biting illustration wedded to the well-loaded word is an overwhelming force and Mass Communication’s only renewable resource: cheap, universally accessible and capable of extrapolating terrifying conclusions from the scarcest of supplied data.

Although not strictly a graphic novel, Signal: 02 was selected to begin this Week in Politics season because it embodies and celebrates the earliest and still most effective forms of mass communication; circumventing reason and language – often even literacy itself – by reaching through the eyes right into the heart and the gut of the viewer.

Signal is produced by illustrator, historian and printmaker Alec Dunn and designer/artist Josh MacPhee, co-founder of the Interference Archive and organizer of Celebrate People’s History Poster Series. Their occasional periodical is dedicated to documenting and sharing political graphics, creative projects and cultural artefacts of international resistance and liberation struggles.

Utilising typography and design in the same bold exuberant manner as the British Vorticist Movement‘s manifesto Blast (which declared war on traditional art in its landmark edition of 1914) to disseminate and keep alive historic moments of global mass-movements, this edition opens with Judy Seidman’s ‘Malangatana’s Fire’: a comprehensive review of the life and achievements of legendary revolutionary painter and UNESCO Artist for Peace Malangatana Valente Nguenha.

The liberally-illustrated piece celebrates the Mozambiquan painter, poet, musician and intellectual whose life and haunting works spanned his rural upbringing under Portuguese colonial rule through revolution and years of civil war to the current national renaissance and his role as Mozambique’s Cultural Ambassador to the World.

The artist’s stunning, moodily symbolic works carried his people through the liberation, civil war, decades of political turmoil and savage brutality into the peaceful present by exalting the people’s age old roots and symbols…

This is followed by ‘Street Murals in the Portuguese Revolution’ wherein Phil Mailer details the guerrilla art and its factional creators who plastered the walls of the nation in a massive explosion of anonymous popular creativity during and after a military coup toppled the Fascist government which ruled Portugal in April 1974, after which Editors Dunn & MacPhee offer a fascinating typographical treat in ‘Selling Freedom’.

This glorious visual reminiscence reveals a riot of ‘Early Twentieth-Century Anarchist Broadsides’ – letterpress printed, broadsheet advertisements for the venerable (established in 1886 and still going) publication Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Communism. This entrancing example of the polemical power of the printed word is followed by ‘Cranking It Out Old School Style’ as Lincoln Cushing describes the age of Gestetner printers which first brought the process of mass communication into the hands of the people, long before photocopiers, faxes, computer printers, instant messaging and e-pages of every sort. In the hands of imaginative and determined artists visual miracles were made, from campaigns seeking to end violence against women to populist movements fighting prejudice and social injustice …

The ‘Art of Rebellion’ by Deborah Caplow then explores Oaxacan street art in context, recounting decades of internecine strife in Mexico, after which The Center for International Research on Anarchism: Japan describes the life of seminal printer, propagandist, anti-fascist, anti-militarist Esperanto advocate Taiji Yamaga who published radical periodical The People’s Newspaper and opposed the repressive militarist regime of the expansionist Warlords who were de facto rulers of Japan until the end of WWII. At the end of a turbulent life, the great thinker recreate key moments of his life in an autobiographical comic, and ‘Sketches from Memory’ is undoubtedly the star of this show, focussing a surmising light on ‘The Yamaga Manga and Japanese Anarchism’…

By captivatingly relating days and years of domestic intimacy, personal imprisonment, triumph, tragedy and turmoil under appalling political duress, Yamaga turns a spotlight on an aspect of Japanese history carefully glossed over and almost redacted from conventional histories…

‘A Heart of Concrete through Fire and Water’ by Kasper Opstrup Frederiksen explores the history and achievements of the Danish Røde Mor art collective 1968-78 which adopted showbiz techniques and public stunts to change the cultural landscape and mindset. After years of challenging, surreal events, the core of dedicated New Left surrealists in the “Red Mother” art collective gradually became subsumed into the national psyche, as a graphic workshop, a band, a circus and finally a fund to finance political art projects.

So was that a victory or a defeat?

Scholarly, challenging, utterly engrossing and intoxicating, this is a superb treat for everyone whose mind works in pictures and causes…

© 2012 PM Press. Individual copyright retained by respective contributors.

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Because its expedient, necessary and What The People Want, we’re cashing in on the current American exercise in demagoguery Democracy with seven days of politically-themed reviews.

Don’t Switch Off! It may well change your thinking or perhaps your leanings – forever.

Yeah, right… (and that’s a double positive, grammar checkers…)

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Came the Dawn and Other Stories illustrated by Wallace Wood


By Wallace Wood, Al Feldstein, Harry Harrison, Gardner Fox & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-546-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Sheer, seductive dark pictorial poetry in emotion… 10/10

EC began in 1944 when comicbook pioneer Max Gaines sold the successful superhero properties of his All-American Comics company – including Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman – to half-sister National/DC, retaining only Picture Stories from the Bible. His plan was to produce a line of Educational Comics with schools and church groups as the major target market. He then augmented his core title with three more in similar vein: Picture Stories from American History, Science and World History. The worthwhile but unsustainable project was already struggling when he died in a boating accident in 1947.

His son William was eventually convinced to assume control of the family business and, with much support and encouragement from unsung hero Sol Cohen and multi-talented associate Al Feldstein, transformed the ailing enterprise into Entertaining Comics, consequently triggering the greatest qualitative leap forward in comicbook history…

After a few tentative false starts and abortive experiments, Gaines settled into a bold and impressive publishing strategy, utilising the most gifted illustrators in the field to tell a “New Trend” of stories aimed at an older, more discriminating audience.

From 1950 to 1954 EC was the most innovative and influential publisher in America, dominating the genres of science fiction, war, horror and crime. The company even added a new type of title and another genre with the creation of parody magazine Mad …

This second volume of the Fantagraphics EC Library compiles a magical and groundbreaking omnibus of horrific tales and human dramas featuring the astounding artistic expertise of Wallace Allan Wood: one of the greatest draughtsmen our art form has ever produced.

Wood was actually a master of every aspect of the business. He began his career lettering Will Eisner’s Spirit strip, quickly moved into pencilling and inking and, latterly, publishing. After years working all over the comics and syndicated strip industries, as well as in legitimate illustration, package-design and other areas of commercial art, he devised the legendary T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents franchise and even created one of the first adult independent comics with Witzend in the late 1960s.

The troubled genius carried the seeds of his own destruction, however. Woody’s life was one of addiction (booze and cigarettes), traumatic relationships, tantalisingly close but always frustrated financial security, illness and eventually suicide. It was as if all the joy and beauty in his existence stayed on the pages and there was none left for real life.

Although during his time with EC Wood became the acknowledged and undisputed Master of Science Fiction art in America, he was equally adept, driven and accomplished in the production of all genres.

This powerfully effective collection concentrates on some of his best early horror, crime and suspense tales and includes all the evocative, emotionally-charged, controversial “Preachies” which Feldstein and Bill Gaines had devised to address hot-button issues and challenge the smugly hierarchical social status quo of post-war, triumphalist America.

These strident and still truly shocking morality plays viciously jabbed at the nation’s dark underbelly; attacking prejudice, police corruption, drug abuse, sexual attitudes, racism, institutionalised intolerance and all manners of hypocrisy. It’s no stretch to consider that these tales, more than any other childhood influence, probably shaped the resurgent liberal attitudes which blossomed as the future “Flower Power” generation reached their majority a decade later…

As with the previous Kurtzman volume, the stories are re-presented here in a lavish monochrome hardcover edition, with supplementary interviews, features and dissertations, beginning with ‘Come the Stories’ by Bill Mason, which appraises the yarns included with forensic discipline. Then the pictorial parade kicks off with a rather pedestrian scam caper which sees an innocent man convinced that he’s a ravening monster in ‘The Werewolf Legend’ scripted by the prolific and ubiquitous Gardner Fox, one of Gaines senior’s greatest assets and discovery.

The illustration is by Harry Harrison & inked by Wood from Vault of Horror #12 (April/May 1950). Although Harrison found his greatest fame as a prose author in later years, he was a major player in the comics biz during the 1950s and had worked with Wood as a jobbing production team since they’d met at the Cartoonists and Illustrators school in 1948.

For Haunt of Fear #15 the trio concocted a tale of lethal legerdemain in ‘The Mad Magician’, whilst the anonymously-authored enigma of ‘The Living Corpse’ (Crypt of Terror #18) moved closer to truly supernatural shenanigans as another illusionist took things too far in pursuit of his craft.

Harrison probably scripted and certainly inked ‘The Curse of Harkley Heath’ from Vault of Horror #13, wherein a gothic triangle of greedy heirs came to unpleasant, untimely ends after a will was read, after which Wood began handling all the art chores with ‘Horror-Ahead!’ (Haunt of Fear #16, July/August 1950) when rival curio collectors’ jungle jaunt in search of shrunken skulls ended in the only way it possibly could…

The Noir-ish new era began when Al Feldstein began scripting for Woody. ‘Death’s Double-Cross’ from the sublimely mature Crime SuspenStories #1 (October/November 1951) offers the twisted tale of a woman cheating on her husband with his twin brother in a moody masterpiece reminiscent of James M. Cain. Naturally it quickly turned into a nightmare that couldn’t end pretty…

Fox offered one last hurrah in ‘The Man from the Grave’ from Haunt of Fear #4, which saw a dissolute artist commit gruesome murder for his art and lived to regret it in desperate luxury and a relentless, compulsive paroxysm of over-work, whilst Feldstein’s

‘Terror Ride!’ (Tales From the Crypt #21) found two young lovers who soon regretted being the last couple to ride the decrepit Amusement Park’s Old Mill boat attraction… Feldstein’s epic run of stories fill most of this tome and next appeared in Haunt of Fear #5, where Wood’s dark imagination and ability to render grotesques was expertly exploited in ‘Horror in the Freak Tent!’ wherein a cruel carnival owner who mercilessly mistreated his exotic employees eventually received a macabre measure of justice…

Crime SuspenStories #3 then provided a fearsome farrago of betrayal and vengeance when two fugitive bandits were ‘Faced With Horror!’ after picking the wrong plastic surgeon to sort out their public notoriety problems, whilst ‘So They Finally Pinned You Down!’ from Haunt of Fear #6 followed a troubled soul who couldn’t understand why he was always stumbling over dead women…

The macabre mayhem concluded with two tales from Tales From the Crypt #24 and 25, beginning with a classic philandering-murderer-gets-his-come-uppance tale in ‘Scared to Death!’ after which a baroque body-switching melodrama featuring a cunning crone and a lovely young thing forced a bewildered husband to conclude ‘Judy, You’re Not Yourself Today!’ …

The rest of this volume is comprised of those controversial polemical passion-plays and conscience-rending human dilemmas that Gaines dubbed Preachies, opening with ‘The Guilty!’ (from Shock SuspenStories #3, June/July 1952), which saw a typical small town enflamed by the murder of a young white girl. The Sheriff knew the black kid in his jail was guilty and was as keen as the mob to spare the state the cost of a trial. He took steps to ensure it too.

…And that’s when the girl’s white boyfriend confessed…

Although stridently moralising and perhaps heavy handed by contemporary standards, these stories are the very bedrock of EC’s well-deserved reputation as the crusading creators of America’s very first adult comics for mature readers. Moreover these ugly truths were gloriously draped in so very beautiful clothes, as Wood’s incredible illustration, inspired by the fiercely impassioned scripts, soared to unparallelled heights of sensitivity and gut-wrenching impact.

Shock SuspenStories #4 took the cultural campaign further in a sordid tale of the innocent witness relentlessly beaten into a ‘Confession’ by cops determined to capture a hit-and-run driver who’d killed their Lieutenant’s wife. So why then, was the grieving officer’s car all banged up and covered in blood…?

Old-fashioned anti-Semitism fuelled the ‘Hate!’ of a quiet little town and led to the death of a family too stubborn to be warned. Imagine instigator John Smith’s surprise when his appalled mother told the entire town that he was adopted… and what his true origins were…

‘Under Cover!’ in Shock SuspenStories #6 combined a campaign of punishment-floggings for miscegenation by the local Klan chapter with the end of a crusading reporter who tried to expose the scandal but tragically forgot that there might be almost anybody under those pointy hoods, whilst ‘The Bribe’ in #7 revealed how even the most honest and dedicated of civil servants could be pushed into abandoning his principles – especially with a loving daughter, her upcoming wedding and crushing society pressure hitting him so hard…

By today’s standards ‘The Assault!’ is potentially the most contentious tale here, revealing how a small town girl with salacious appetites callously protected her reputation by framing an old man for her “rape”. In typical tone for those times, her lie ultimately caused two deaths…

‘Came the Dawn!’ from Shock SuspenStories #9 is a marvellous example of Greek tragedy in modern dress, as a lonely backwoods hermit finds a beautiful naked woman in his cabin and, after a night of mutual passion with the girl of his dreams, discovers that an inmate has escaped from the nearby asylum. Only after he’s locked her out does he discover that she’s not the only mysterious blonde lost in the forest…

Far less emotionally loaded but equally devastating is the darkly introspective ‘…So Shall Ye Reap!’ (Shock SuspenStories #10) which finds a penitent, angry young man contemplating every hypocritical act of his pompously pious parents before reaching his own moment of judgement after which ‘In Gratitude’ launches a simply breathtaking attack on the nation’s double standards when a wounded soldier comes home to a hero’s welcome and turns on his friends and family when he finds out what they’ve done to the coloured man who saved his life…

More quirky crime-caper than social commentary, ‘Fall Guy’ (Shock SuspenStories #12) follows the doomed decade that saw decent guy Danny Jansen steal a fortune to please a greedy girl far out of his league and spend ten years in jail paying for it. Surprisingly she waited all that time for him, but wasn’t best pleased when he couldn’t remember how to retrieve his ill-gotten gains…

A campaign of hate to drive out a man who foolishly admitted to being part-Negro ended in suicide and a sense of smug satisfaction when the bigot-in-charge boasted of his success to the local doctor in ‘Blood-Brothers’ (Shock SuspenStories #13). Imagine the vile cross-burner’s surprise when the aged medic revealed the source of the transfusion which had long-ago saved the happy hate-monger’s life…

‘The Whipping’ (scripted by Feldstein or Jack Oleck from Shock SuspenStories #14) returned to scandal-mongering territory, when a dutiful daughter defied her racist father and started “dating” an Hispanic boy. The dad certainly didn’t call it that, and the outrageous steps he and his pure-white buddies took to end the affair horrifically backfired…

The last tale reprinted here is ‘The Confidant’ (Feldstein or Oleck again from Shock SuspenStories #15, June/July 1954) from a time when the public outcry against comics was just reaching its fevered peak. The story deals with mob-justice and sees an entire town baying for the blood of a newcomer who had murdered a young girl.

Then, when a dark stranger arrives searching for one of his children, the unofficial posse immediately jump to the wrong conclusion with tragic and irreparably consequences…

Please forgive any deliberate vagueness on my part here: the point is to make you want to read these still poignant and shocking stories and I don’t want to devalue their impact or spoil your otherwise assured enjoyment…

A detailed history of the flawed genius is then provided by historian S.C. Ringgenberg in the prose piece ‘Wallace Wood’ after which this truly beautiful book is closed by another set of ‘Behind the Panels: Creator Biographies’ by Arthur Lortie & and Bill Mason and Ted White’s ‘Crime, Horror, Terror, Gore, Depravity, Disrespect for Established Authority – and Science Fiction Too!: ‘The Ups and Downs of EC Comics: A Short History’ once more offers a comprehensive run-down of the entire EC phenomenon.

The short, sweet, cruelly limited EC back-catalogue has been revisited ad infinitum in the decades since its demise. Those amazing yarns changed not just comics but also infected the larger world through film and television to convert millions into dedicated devotees still addicted to New Trend tales.

Whether you are an aged EC Fan-Addict, just a nervous newbie, or simply a mere fan of brilliant stories and sublime art, Came the Dawn is a book no sane and sensible reader can afford to be without.

This edition © 2012 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All comics stories © 2012 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., reprinted with permission. All other material © 2012 the respective creators.

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Corpse on the Imjin! and Other Stories by Harvey Kurtzman


By Harvey Kurtzman & others (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-545-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: War is Hell – but never looked better or taught us more… 9/10

EC Comics began in 1944 when comicbook pioneer Max Gaines sold the superhero properties of his All-American Comics company to half-sister National/DC, retaining only Pictures Stories from the Bible. His plan was to produce a line of Educational Comics with schools and church groups as the major target market.

He augmented his core title with Picture Stories from American History, Picture Stories from Science and Picture Stories from World History but the worthy project was already struggling when he died in a boating accident in 1947.

As detailed in the final comprehensive essay in this superb graphic collection, his son William was dragged into the family business and, with much support and encouragement from unsung hero Sol Cohen – who held the company together until the initially unwilling Bill Gaines abandoned his dreams of a career in chemistry – transformed the ailing enterprise into Entertaining Comics…

After a few tentative false starts and abortive experiments, Gaines and his multi-talented associate Al Feldstein settled into a bold and impressive publishing strategy, utilising the most gifted illustrators in the field to tell a “New Trend” of stories aimed at an older and more discerning readership.

From 1950 to 1954 EC was the most innovative and influential publisher in America, dominating the genres of crime, horror, war and science fiction and, under the auspices of writer, artist and editor Harvey Kurtzman, the inventor of an entirely new beast: the satirical comicbook…

Kurtzman was hired to supplement the workforce on the horror titles but wasn’t keen on the genre and suggested a new action-adventure title. The result was Two-Fisted Tales which began with issue #18 at the end of 1959 as an anthology of rip-snorting, he-man suspense dramas. However, withAmerica embroiled in a military “police action” inKorea, the title soon became primarily a war comic and was soon augmented by another.

Frontline Combat was also written and edited by Kurtzman, who also assiduously laid-out and meticulously designed every story – which made for great entertainment but was frequently a cause of friction with many artists…

Moreover, in keeping with the New Trend spirit, these war stories were not bombastic, jingoistic fantasies for glory-hungry little boys, but rather subtly subversive examinations of the cost of conflict which highlighted the madness, futility and senseless, pointless waste of it all…

Kurtzman was a cartoon genius and probably the most important cartoonist of the last half of the 20th century. His early triumphs in the fledgling field of comicbooks (especially the groundbreaking Mad magazine) would be enough for most creators to lean back on but Kurtzman was a force in newspaper strips (See Flash Gordon Complete Daily Strips 1951-1953) and a restless innovator, a commentator and social explorer who kept on looking at folk and their doings: a man with exacting standards who just couldn’t stop creating.

He invented a whole new format and gave America Popular Satire when he converted his highly successful full-colour baby Mad into a black and white magazine, safely distancing the outrageously brilliant comedic publication from the fall-out caused by the 1950s socio-political witch-hunt which eventually killed all EC’s other titles.

He pursued his unique brand of thoughtfully outré comedy and social satire further with the magazines Trump, Humbug and Help!, all the while still conceiving challenging and powerfully effective funny strips such as Little Annie Fannie (for Playboy), The Jungle Book, Nutz, Goodman Beaver, Betsy and her Buddies and many more. He died far too early in 1993.

This first volume of the Fantagraphics EC Library gathers a stunning selection of Kurtzman stories in a lavish monochrome hardcover edition, packed with supplementary interviews, features and dissertations, beginning with ‘The Truth’ by cartoonist and historian R.C. Harvey, who describes in stark detail the history of Kurtzman’s EC days.

Then follows a raft of stirring sagas solely from the master’s hand, beginning with ‘Conquest’ from Two-Fisted Tales #18, which with acerbic aplomb relates the rise and fall of Spanish conquistador Juan Alvorado, whose rapacious hunger for Aztec gold led inexorably to the downfall and doom of his entire expedition. Jivaro Death’ (#19) deals with modern-day greed as two duplicitous Yankees search for diamonds in the heart of the Amazon jungle whilst T-FT #20 revealed the fate of an amnesiac buccaneer who returned from certain death to obsessively reclaim his ‘Pirate Gold’ from the men who betrayed him.

From issue #21 comes ‘Search!’ which ironically combined an Italian-American’s search for family with the devastating US assault on Anzio in 1943, after which the first selection from Frontline Combat produces an uncharacteristically patriotic clash with the North Korean aggressors in ‘Contact!’ (#2, September 1951).

‘Kill’ from T-FT #23 also takes place in Korea and details a squalid encounter between a blood-thirsty knife-wielding G.I. psycho and his soulless Commie antithesis, whilst ‘Prisoner of War!’ (FC #3) highlights the numbing, inhuman brutality of combat when American POWs attempt an escape…

‘Rubble!’ (T-FT #24) boldly stepped into the “enemy” shoes by highlighting the war’s casual cost to simple Korean civilians whilst ‘Air Burst!’ in FC #4 goes even further by featuring the Communist soldiers’ side of the conflict.

The eponymous ‘Corpse on the Imjin!’ (T-FT #25) is one of the most memorable, moving and respected tales of the genre: a genuine anti-war story which elegiacally traces a body’s motion down the river and exposes the ruminations of the doomed observers who see it. The sentiment is further explored in ‘Big ‘If’!’ (FC #5) as G.I. Paul Maynard sits in a shell hole and ponders what might have been…

Kurtzman’s unique display of cartooning and craftsmanship is followed by the essay ‘Combat Duty’ wherein Jared Gardner discusses the background and usage of the other artists who worked on the author’s Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat scripts, after which ‘Marines Retreat!’ drawn by John Severin (and inked by Kurtzman from FC #1, July/August 1951) describes in microcosm the shocking American forced withdrawal from the Changjin Reservoir in December 1950 – an event which stunned and terrified the folks at home and shook forever the cherished belief in the US Marines’ invincibility – all told through the eyes of a soldier who understood too late the values he was supposed to be fighting for…

Kurtzman’s relationship with his artists could be fraught. Alex Toth, a tempestuous individualist who only drew three tales from his editor’s incredibly detailed lay-outs, famously produced some of his very best work at EC under such creative duress. The first and least was ‘Dying City!’ (T-FT #22) which found an aged Korean grandfather berating his dying descendent for the death and destruction he had brought upon his family and nation,

‘O.P.!’ was drawn by hyper-realist Russ Heath (FC #1) and once more ladled on the bleak, black irony during an annihilating trench encounter during WWI. After which Toth’s astounding aerial imagination produced in ‘Thunderjet!’ (FC #8) one of the most thrilling and evocative dogfight dramas in comics history.

This tale was an alarm-call to complacentAmericaas aUSpilot was forced to concede that his winged weapon was inferior to the ever-present Communist MIGs…

‘Fire Mission!’ (T-FT #29) was drawn by Dave Berg – an artist far better regarded for his comedy work – and lent his facility with expressions to a rather standard tale of courage discovered under fire in Korea, after which Gene Colan delineated the rift between military and civilians in the hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor in ‘Wake!’ from T-FT #30.

From the same issue ‘Bunker!’ was the first strip illustrated by Ric Estrada and described rivalry and tension between American units during a Korean offensive. Oddly enough for the times, the fact that one was comprised of Negro soldiers was not mentioned at all…

The Cuban artist then drew a chillingly macabre tale of Teddy Roosevelt and the Spanish American war of 1898 in ‘Rough Riders!’ (FC #11) after which master of comics noir Johnny Craig detailed the fate of a ‘Lost Battalion!’ in WWI (T-FT #32, March/April 1953).

‘Tide!’ was an EC debut tale for the already-legendary Joe Kubert from the same issue, and detailed a D-Day debacle and its insignificance in the grand scheme of things after which Toth’s magnificent Kurtzman-scripted swansong ‘F-86 Sabre Jet!’ (FC #12) revisited and even surpassed his Thunderjet job with a potent and beguiling reductionist minimalism that perfectly captured the disorienting hell of war in the air.

Due to illness and the increasing workload caused by Mad, Kurtzman’s involvement with war titles was gradually diminishing. Frontline Combat #14, (October 1953) provides his last collaboration with Kubert in ‘Bonhomme Richard!’, a shocking personalised account of American nautical legend John Paul Jones’ devastating duel with the British warship Serapis – as told by one of the hundreds of ordinary sailors who didn’t survive…

This master-class in sequential excellence concludes with a salutary tale from the Civil War special Two-Fisted Tales #35 (October 1953), illustrated by Reed Crandall.  ‘Memphis!’ blends the destructive horror of the Union’s River Fleet of Ironclad’s as they inexorably took control of the Mississippi with the irrepressible excitement of Southern kids who simply couldn’t understand what was happening to their parents and families…

Even with the comics extravaganza ended, there’s still more to enjoy as underground cartooning legend Frank Stack discusses the techniques and impact of Kurtzman’s astonishing covers for Two-Fisted Tales and Two-Fisted Tales in ‘Respect for Simplicity – the War Covers of Harvey Kurtzman’ which is superbly supplemented by a full-colour section representing all of them, even the seldom-seen Two-Fisted Annual 1952.

Also adding to the value is‘A Conversation with Harvey Kurtzman’  by John Benson, E.B. Boatner & Jay Kinney which transcribes two interviews from 1979 and 1982, as well as a full appreciation of the great man’s career in ‘Harvey Kurtzman’ by S.C. Ringgenberg.

Rounding everything off is ‘Behind the Panels: Creator Biographies’ a comprehensive run-down of all involved by Bill Mason and others, and a general heads-up on the entire EC phenomenon in ‘The Ups and Downs of EC Comics: A Short History’ by author, editor, critic and comics fan Ted White.

The short, sweet but severely limited output of EC has been reprinted ad infinitum in the decades since the company died. These astounding stories and art have changed not just comics but also infected the larger world through film and television and via the millions of dedicated devotees still addicted to New Trend tales. However, as far as I can recall nobody has produced collections faithfully focussing on the contributions of individual creators, and even though the likes of me know these timeless classics intimately, this simple innovation has somehow added a new dimension to the readers’ enjoyment.

I eagerly anticipate the advent of the other volumes in this superb series and strongly suggest that whether you are an aged EC Fan-Addict or nervous newbie, this is a book no comics aficionado can afford to miss…

This edition © 2012 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All comics stories © 2012 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., reprinted with permission. All other material © 2012 the respective creators and owners.

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Venom: Birth of a Monster – a Marvel Pocketbook British Edition


By Peter David, David Michelinie, Rick Buckler, Todd McFarlane & various (Marvel/PaniniUK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-052-4

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. Soon the quirky, charming action-packed comics soap-opera would become the model for an entire generation of younger heroes elbowing aside the staid, (relatively) old costumed-crimebusters of previous publications.

You all know the story: Peter Parker was a smart but alienated kid bitten by a radioactive spider during a school science trip. Discovering he had developed arachnid abilities – which he augmented with his own natural chemistry, physics and engineering genius – Peter did what any lonely, geeky nerd would do with such a gifts: he tried to cash in for girls, fame and money.

Making a costume to hide his identity in case he made a fool of himself, Parker became a minor celebrity – and a criminally self-important one. To his eternal regret, when a thief fled past him one night he didn’t lift a finger to stop him, only to find when he returned home that his guardian uncle Ben Parker had been murdered.

Crazed with a need for vengeance, Peter hunted the assailant who had made his beloved Aunt May a widow and killed the only father he had ever known, only to find that it was the felon he had neglected to stop. His irresponsibility had resulted in the death of the man who raised him, and the traumatised boy swore to forevermore use his powers to help others…

Since that night the Wondrous Wall-crawler has tirelessly battled miscreants, monsters and madmen with a fickle, ungrateful public usually baying for his blood even as he perpetually saves them.

Although nominally a collection dedicated to the savagely driven, alien-infected vigilante who was amongst the Web-spinner’s greatest foes, Venom: Birth of a Monster only devotes a fraction of its content to the deadly dark double. Instead this Marvel Pocketbook compendium from 2007 collects the superbly powerful but barely relevant ‘Sin-Eater saga’ from Spectacular Spider-Man # 107-110 in 1985, and the contents of Amazing Spider-Man #298-300 (March-May 1988) which led to the actual debut of the Savage Symbiotic Sentinel…

The drama begins with chapter 1 of ‘Death of Jean DeWolff: Original Sin’ by Peter David, Rich Buckler & Brett Breeding, which begins with the eponymous lady cop who was Spider-Man’s only friend in the NYPD already murdered by a mystery assailant. In the stunned aftermath the department goes into cop-killer overdrive.

Meanwhile the Amazing Arachnid is savagely dealing with a trio of muggers who have robbed and brutalised a senior citizen. Ernie Popchik is a tenant at May Parker‘s boarding house and the senseless assault on the old man has enraged the hero to breaking point. His mood isn’t helped when the arresting cops inform him of Jean’s demise…

Forcing himself into the case, Spidey befriends lead detective Stan Carter, even as in a church across town a desperate young man attempts to expiate his recent sins in the confessional booth…

The next morning sightless crusader Matt Murdock (AKA Daredevil) is drawn into the affair when he successfully defends the three muggers and sets them back on the street. Peter Parker is in court and further incensed as justice again seems to be not only blind by indifferent. The controversial presiding Judge Horace Rosenthal is one of Murdock’s oldest friends, and when the lawyer later visits in his chambers, his super-senses detect a sinister presence…

Before anyone can react a ski-masked figure overwhelms Matt and blasts the judge point blank with a sawn-off shotgun…

‘Sin of Pride’ (with additional inks by Josef Rubinstein, Kyle Baker & Pat Redding) opens moments later in the street where Peter and his Aunt May are consoling the shaken and still-terrified Popchik, who can’t believe his attackers are free again. Suddenly the masked shooter erupts out of the courthouse and instantly provokes a panic. Ditching May and Ernie, Parker changes to Spider-Man and confronts the killer who casually blasts him. The hero’s incredible abilities easily enable him to dodge the shots, but in the heat of pursuit Spider-Man has forgotten that he’s in the middle of a crowded street…

Horrified, the wall-crawler attends to the collaterally injured, allowing the murderous Sin-Eater to make his escape. With no other choice, the badly shaken hero is forced to resort to plain old detective work to solve the maniacal mystery and finds that Jean DeWolff had indulged a secret passion for the Amazing Arachnid…

There are many mourners attending the murdered Police Captain’s funeral, but across the cemetery, only Matt Murdock and close family attend the interment of the killer’s second victim. However as the Rosenthal ceremony concludes Matt’s super-hearing detects the Sin-Eater’s distinctive heartbeat wafting from the gathered crowd of cops, politicians, clerics and celebrities across the still, green park…

The Daredevil in mufti is unable to isolate the source but now has a pool of suspects to track… which is reduced by one when, that night, the maniac kills the Reverend  Bernard Finn in the Confessional…

The tension shifts into overdrive in ‘He Who is Without Sin’ (David, Buckler & Breeding) when political opportunist Reverend Tolliver stirs up racial divisions and Peter learns that one of the bystanders he recklessly endangered has died. Pushed to breaking point, Spider-Man futilely tries to pry a lead from Wilson Fisk, New York’s Kingpin of Crime, but coincidentally discovers that Daredevil was there before him… The web-spinner, now nearing boiling point, then terrorises a local gang-boss and recklessly endangers a small child in his desperate urgency to find the Sin-Eater…

It all comes to a head at the Daily Bugle building later, when the scattergun killer comes looking for J. Jonah Jameson and is anticlimactically subdued by Peter Parker and other journalists. The malevolent vigilante is Emil Gregg, a simple schizophrenic driven by voices to do the Lord’s work, but when Daredevil confronts the captive at Police Headquarters, his hearing soon discerns that this Sin-Eater is merely a deluded copycat…

Meanwhile at Jameson’s mansion the authentic assassin is attempting to kill the absent publisher’s wife and Peter’s best friend Betty Brant-Leeds…

The shocking conclusion ‘All My Sins Remembered’ (Bucker and the inking army known as “M. Hands”) sees Spider-Man save the day and expose the real killer, but also explode in uncontrolled fury as his shock and betrayal erupts into a misguided, frustration-fuelled dust-up with Daredevil.

And in the subway, traumatised Ernie Popchik shoots three young thugs acting tough and intimidating defenceless passengers…

By way of background: During the Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars of 1984-1985, Spider-Man picked up a super-scientific new costume which was actually a hungry alien parasite which slowly began to permanently bond to its unwitting wearer.

After being discovered and removed by Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four “the Symbiote” ultimately escaped and, like a crazed and jilted lover, tried to re-establish its relationship with the horrified hero; seemingly destroying itself in the attempt.

During a stellar run of scripts by David Michelinie, the beast was revived with a new host and became one of the most acclaimed Marvel villains of all time, helped in no small part by the escalating popularity of rising star artist Todd McFarlane…

The action continues here with another only tangentially germane two-part thriller ‘Chance Encounter’ and ‘Survival of the Fittest!’ from Amazing Spider-Man #298-299, by Michelinie, McFarlane and Bob McLeod.

The story details how Spider-Man stumbles across a coterie of Survivalist millionaires covertly constructing a lavish high tech gated community in which to ride out the fall of civilisation in opulent splendour and lethally protected luxury. The scheme was only exposed when a series of weapons shipments went missing and Spidey’s old enemy Chance was kidnapped. Although a sharp action adventure in its own right – and very enjoyable – each of these tales concludes with a teaser showing a shadowy, bestial figure obsessing over clippings of Spider-Man…

The mystery is revealed in the anniversary issue #300 with the landmark introduction of ‘Venom’ wherein the monstrous shape-shifting stalker, having terrorised Peter’s new bride Mary Jane, begins a chilling campaign to psychologically punish Spider-Man.

Venom is a huge hulking, distorted carbon copy of the web-spinner: a murderous psychopath constituted of disgraced reporter Eddie Brock and the now eternally bonded bitter, rejected parasite whose animalistic devotion was spurned by its former ungrateful host. Parker had even tried to kill the faithful loving Symbiote…

Brock obsessively hates Parker for the craziest of reasons: when Emil Gregg was arrested, Brock was the first – and exclusive – reporter to reveal him as the Sin-Eater.

When the real killer was exposed hours later, Brock lost his job, his career and his grip on reality. As he hit the skids Brock blamed photo-journalist Parker for the debacle, but at his lowest moment, the rejected, starving Symbiote found him. As they merged, human and alien realised they hungered for vengeance on the self-same man…

The story is a stunning blend of action and suspense with an unforgettable classic duel between Good and Evil which famously saw Spider-Man finally return to his original Ditko-designed costume. It also kicked off a riotous run of astounding stories from a fresh generation of game-changing creators…

The savage, shape-changing anti-hero Рa perfect dark-side version of the Amazing Arachnid Рwent on to his own blood-drenched series and eventually the spidery rivals reached a tenuous d̩tente.

Although I’ve carped about this book’s incongruent and perhaps misleading title, Venom: Birth of a Monster does reproduce some of the most powerful, entertaining and cruelly forgotten tales of the hard-luck hero’s long and stellar canon. If it’s simply fantastic Fights ‘n’ Tights action and excellent comics enjoyment you’re after, this might well be a very pleasant way to while away your midnight hours…
© 1985, 1988, 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved. A British edition published under license by Panini S.p.A.