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Iron Man: War of the Iron Men


By Fred Van Lente, Matteo Casali, Steve Kurth & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4730-5

First conceived in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis at a time when the economy was booming and “Commie-bashing” was an American national obsession, the emergence of a new and sexy young Thomas Edison using Yankee ingenuity, wealth and determination to safeguard the Land of the Free and better the World seemed an obvious development. Combining the then-sacrosanct faith that technology and business in unison could solve any problem with the universal imagery of noble knights battling evil, the Invincible Iron Man seemed an infallibly successful proposition.

Of course whilst Tony Stark was the acceptable face of 1960s Capitalism – a glamorous millionaire industrialist and a benevolent all-conquering hero when clad in the super-scientific armour of his alter-ego Iron Man – the turbulent tone of the 1970s soon relegated his suave, “can-do” image to the dustbin of history, and with ecological disaster and social catastrophe from the myriad abuses of big business the new zeitgeists of the young, the Golden Avenger and Stark International were soon confronting a few tricky questions from the increasingly politically savvy readership.

With glamour, money and fancy gadgetry not quite so cool anymore, the questing voices of a new generation of writers began posing uncomfortable questions in the pages of a series that was once the bastion of militarised America …

Arch-technocrat and supreme survivor Stark has had many roles in the Marvel Universe since his debut in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963) when, as a visitor to an East Asian war-zone, he was critically wounded and captured by sinister, cruel Communists. Put to work building weapons with the dubious promise of medical assistance on completion, Stark instead created the first Iron Man armour to keep himself alive and deliver him from his oppressors.

Since then the inventor and armaments manufacturer became a liberal capitalist, eco-pioneer, space pioneer, Federal politician, Statesman and even Director of the world’s most scientifically advanced spy agency, the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate.

…And, of course, one of the world’s most prominent superheroes with the Mighty Avengers…

At this time in the mainstream Marvel universe, the perpetually shell-shocked citizenry of the planet are still recovering from an interminable series of major and almost annual catastrophes such as the Civil War and a Secret Invasion by shape-shifting Skrulls, and technical wizard and billionaire weapon-smith Stark has been publicly revealed to the world as the armour-clad superhero Iron Man – or at least one of them…

In this brief but decidedly back-to-basics compilation (collecting from 2010 the first 5-part story-arc of the on-going series Iron Man Legacy, plus a tale from the one-shot Iron Man: Titanium), Stark has cut himself loose from all his Governmental affiliations and returned to the life of a maverick entrepreneur, happily endangering the profits of global energy interests with his new, clean and cheap Arc Reactor technology.

Even as Iron Man is quelling rioting “environmental activists” – actually saboteurs in the pay of “Big Oil” – ancient ethnic strife in the Balkan country of Transia is turning into a very one-sided genocidal bloodbath as the Muslim Romani are targeted by Slavic death-squads calling themselves Zmaj and wearing old versions of Stark’s Iron Man armour.

It is the inventor’s worst nightmare come to life again. As the son of America’s greatest munitions maker, Tony is tormented by the generations of innocent blood spilled by the Stark dynasty’s genius, but whereas his father Howard always looked for more effective methods of carrying out combat, his heir has always believed his own inventions saved more lives than they cost. However, night after night the news shows helpless men, women and children slaughtered by barbaric travesties of his greatest creation…

With Russiaand China- both protecting illegitimate energy interests in the region – stalling the debate, the UN is locked in interminable useless argument over the situation and Tony is ordered by the American authorities not to interfere. But ignoring the advice – and commands – of the powers-that-be and his closest friends and allies, the tormented inventor goes undercover, invading the blood-soaked combat zone masquerading as one of his own bodyguards, leaving an android Tony Stark in charge of his company, programmed to placate the press and deter Federal gadfly Henry Peter Gyrich of the Metahuman Affairs Commission.

Utilising all his latest upgrades and innovations and with the aid of old Romani woman Nina, Stark begins hunting down and destroying the Iron Man knock-offs but soon discovers some are equipped with tech and kit that hasn’t even made it off his drawing board yet. Somehow, the rabid killers have a pipeline into the most secure crannies of Stark Enterprises…

Moreover, Transia’s neighbour Latveria is eagerly offering the assistance the UN is unable to expedite, but Doctor Doom never does anything for anyone but himself…

Still believing himself to have the upper hand, Iron Man is unexpectedly overwhelmed in blistering battle against his purloined creations and becomes a prisoner of the Zmaj leader Darko and his armourer Svarog, a being claiming to be the Slavic god of blacksmiths…

Once more put to work building weapons for bloody monsters, Stark meets fellow prisoner Dragana, a mutilated Romani genius forced into building and repairing the unstoppable Iron Warriors, knowing full well they are being used to exterminate her own people.

Those oppressed folk have a champion of their own now: Stark’s old foe Dreadknight has come to save the Romani at the express command of Doctor Doom, but what the Master of Latveria really wants is the pod of Stark Tech the infuriated but too-trusting inventor left in Nina’s barn…

History repeats itself as Stark again builds himself a weapon suit to escape his captors. But as he blasts free promising to return for the wheelchair-bound psychologically broken Dragana, the American is intercepted by Dreadknight…

Despite overwhelming odds Stark is victorious, but in Americahis deception has been discovered and his trusted assistant Pepper Potts arrested by Gyrich. Moreover Russiaand Chinahave dispatched super-powered assets to the region to clean things up quickly and quietly, but such ruthless agents as Crimson Dynamo, Titanium Man and the Radioactive Man are chronically incapable of doing anything subtly, especially when their oldest enemy is there to muddy the waters and stubbornly resist their unmatchable nationalistic might…

The Iron Dictator, meanwhile, has incorporated the stolen Stark Tech into his latest generation of Doombots and moved to his long-planned endgame: annexing Transia and all its unimaginably secret untapped resources at the request of its endangered minorities, making it an autonomous Protectorate of Latveria…

As Iron Doombots invade the conflicted country, only Stark’s erstwhile enemies and a newly minted-national champion forged in this moment of final crisis are able to protect Transia until the original and genuine Iron Man finally triumphs over Doom…

Even then there’s that traitor to find at Stark and a hidden American instigator behind all the bloodshed to expose and punish…

Short, sweet, shocking and surprisingly engaging, this compelling Fights ‘n’ Tights thriller by Fred Van Lente & Steve Kurth offers breakneck pace, astounding action and superbly suspenseful global realpolitik underpinnings that will satisfy any fan who likes their fantasy tinged with a touch of contemporary hyper-authenticity.

This book also includes a stunning cover-gallery displaying the artistic talents of Francis Tsai, Brandon Peterson, Salvador Larroca, Pascal Alixe, Bill Pressing, Ryan Meinerding and a photographic movie variant cover-spread, as well as finding time and space for a blockbusting brief encounter between the Golden Avenger and a giant alien robot in ‘Heavy Rain’ by Matteo Casali & Kurth, originally seen as part of the Iron Man: Titanium one-shot.

Gritty, clever and hard-hitting, this is another explosively entertaining yarn that will delight regular fans, with the rare added bonus of being self-contained and readily accessible to new, returning or casual readers.
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Superman: the Action Comics Archives volume 5


By Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, Don Cameron, Ed Dobrotka, Sam Citron, Ira Yarbrough, John Sikela & others (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1188-2

It’s almost incontrovertible: the American comicbook industry – if it existed at all – would be an utterly unrecognisable thing without the invention of Superman. His unprecedented adoption by a desperate and joy-starved generation quite literally gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form.

Within three years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of eye-popping action and social wish-fulfilment which hallmarked the early Man of Steel had grown to encompass cops-and-robbers crime-busting, socially reforming dramas, science fiction, fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East embroiled America, patriotic relevance.

In comicbook terms at least Superman was master of the world, and had already utterly changed the shape of the fledgling industry. There was the phenomenally popular newspaper strip, a thrice-weekly radio serial, games, toys, as much global syndication as the war would allow and the perennially re-run Fleischer studio’s astounding animated cartoons.

The Golden Age greats herein reprinted from issues #69-85 of the groundbreaking anthology Action Comics begin their mind-warping wonderment after a fond Foreword reminiscence from Silver Age scribe and comicbook International Treasure Roy Thomas

Co-creator Jerry Siegel was finally called up in 1943 and his prodigious script output was curtailed, necessitating greater contributions from the ingenious and multi-faceted Don Cameron and others, whilst Joe Shuster – increasingly debilitated by failing eyesight and tied up producing the far more prestigious newspaper strip – had to leave the bulk of the artwork in the hands of the trusty, ever-changing stalwarts of the Superman Studio who were drawing most of the comicbook output at this time.

By this time though the quality of the source material began to suffer slightly as Siegel & Shuster’s rotating band of artistic stand-ins were themselves continually called away to serve in the armed forces, but the three magazines supplying the Metropolis Marvel’s core readership (Action Comics, Superman and World’s Finest Comics) always adapted and always came through with more and greater spectacular thrills, spills and chills to cope with the relentless demands of the growing legion of fans.

Superman was definitely every kid’s hero, as confirmed yet again in this classic compendium which saw the Man of Tomorrow and the avid audiences through the last weary days of World War II.

Due to the exigencies of periodical publishing, although the terrific tales collected in this fabulous fifth hardback tome putatively take the Man of Steel from February 1944 to June 1945, since cover-dates described return-by, not on-sale dates they were all prepared well in advance, and real-world events and reactions took a little time to filter through to the furious four-colour pages, so some of the stories have a tinge of uncertainty and foreboding that was swiftly fading from the minds of the public as the far more immediate movie-newsreels showed an inexorable turning of the tide in the Allies’ favour.

As the months rolled by however, mention of the conflict declined as the characters got on with the business of battling for Truth, Justice and the American Way, unencumbered by the dwindling threat of real-world monsters and tyrants…

There’s no greater evidence of that fact than the simple realisation that only one of the stunning covers included in this compilation (#76, by Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye) has a war theme – and that’s directly pertinent to the tale within – whilst the rest by Boring, Kaye, Jack Burnley, Joe Shuster & John Sikela, all feature more general themes of calamity, comedy and criminality, augmented by the then-new notion of using the first image seen by readers to actually highlight the Superman story inside…

Action Comics #69 offered ‘The Lost-and-Found Mystery!’ (credited here to Sam Citron but more likely Ed Dobrotka illustrating a Siegel script) wherein pernicious plunderer The Prankster returned with a wily wrangle that involved using bogus small ads to extort money from prominent people with something to hide.

Issue #70 saw ‘Superman Takes a Holiday!’ (Cameron & Citron) when a criminal spree by the brilliantly insidious Thinker proved the villain had the Action Ace’s number. However the Gangster Genius couldn’t outwit merely mortal crimebuster Clark Kent, whilst a calamitous comedy of errors in #71’s ‘Valentine Villainy!’ (Cameron & Ira Yarbrough) saw Kent, Superman, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and a bold jewel thief all collide and inadvertently trade their lovers’ lagniappes with heartbreaking, hilarious, catastrophic and near catastrophic results.

Although Action #72 saw the Man of Steel uncover Nazi spies in ‘Superman and the Super-Movers!’ by Siegel, Shuster & George Roussos, they were merely a throwaway sidebar to the gripping tale of a construction company performing big jobs for a clandestine criminal purpose, after which ‘The Hobby Robbers!’ (#73 by Siegel, Citron & Roussos) predicted today’s modern-day collector mania in an astute tale about the lengths enthusiasts will go to if their treasured possessions are pilfered. Oddly comicbooks were not one of the collections under threat…

Even today the authors of many early tales are still unknown to us, as with the delightfully daft romance illustrated by Yarbrough in #74. ‘The Courtship of Adelbert Dribble!’ saw a Jack Benny look-alike wimp lure the Man of Tomorrow into an ingenious trap simply so the sap could play Superman for a day and woo his far-from fair maid. Of course it all went awry but the Metropolis Marvel was eventually there to save the day and see true love victorious.

Also anonymous are the Yarbrough-limned ‘Aesop’s Modern Fables’ which pitted the Man of Steel against a cunning gangster who planned his capers along classical Greek lines, and the unconventional Dobrotka chiller ‘A Voyage to Destiny!’ wherein Superman’s early days were revisited as a spoiled trust-fund brat became a reluctant sailor in 1939, shipping out solely to secure his inheritance. However, after battling thugs and confronting Japanese soldiers – with the covert assistance of a Kryptonian Guardian Angel – wastrel Roger Carson had become a man Superman could be proud of, and a credit to the US Navy…

Action #77 – credited to Cameron & Dobrotka but possibly scripted by Siegel – saw the Prankster on his uppers until the rotund reprobate began scamming greedy but technically honest citizens with ‘The Headline Hoax!’ Happily Superman showed everybody the error of their ways before aiding ‘The Chef of Bohemia!’ (by Alvin Schwartz & Yarbrough in #78) whose simple diner supported many starving artists but stood in the way of murderous property speculators…

Micawber-like conman Wilbur J. Wolfingham reared his unscrupulous head in #79’s ‘The Golden Fleece!’ by Cameron & Yarbrough, attempting to con sheep-farmers into re-purchasing their own gold-salted properties until Lois and Superman again proved honesty was his best policy, after which zany pixy and madcap mystical gadfly ‘Mr. Mxyztplk Returns!’ found the aggravating elf driving Superman batty in a brilliantly bonkers yarn from Cameron & Yarbrough.

Action #81’s seasonal thriller ‘Fairyland Isle!’ (the first of two anonymous tales drawn by Yarbrough) saw Superman and a millionaire Santa Claus join forces to give deprived kids a free holiday, despite the worst efforts of two of the rich man’s greedy nephews, whilst a small town with big plans was plagued by a seemingly supernatural killer called ‘The Water Sprite!’ determined to scotch plans for an artificial lake until Lois and Clark did a little digging of their own in issue #82.

Siegel & Shuster reunited in #83 to introduce a team they clearly had high hopes for. ‘Hocus and Pocus… Magicians by Accident!’ saw affable chumps Doc and Flannelhead, mistakenly believing themselves to have gained magical powers, threatened into committing miraculous crimes: luckily an ever-vigilant Man of Tomorrow was invisibly at their sides to set things right… Hocus and Pocus – and their indomitable bunny pal Moiton – set themselves up as consulting detectives at the end and would return to complicate Superman’s life again and again…

Joe Greene & John Sikela concocted the crafty crime tale ‘Tommy Gets a Zero!’ wherein a lovelorn little boy writes a report on gangsters for school and accidentally becomes Superman’s sidekick. Of course his teacher didn’t believe him but Tommy had a higher authority to appeal to…

This stellar collection concludes with the reappearance of another lethal old lag as the mercilessly murderous Toyman resurfaced, attacking apparently poor targets whilst secretly attempting to solve ‘The Puzzle in Jade!’ (by Cameron & Dobrotka). Happily Superman was there to keep casualties to a minimum and put the Ghastly Gamesman back in his prison box…

These vintage vignettes offer irresistible and priceless enjoyment at an affordable price and this superbly robust and colourful format has inestimably advanced the prestige and social standing of the medium itself as well as preserving a vital part of American popular culture.

Still some of the very best action adventures any fan could ever find, these tales belong on your bookshelf in a place of easily accessible honour you can reach for over and over again…
© 1944, 1945, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Klaws of the Panther


By Jonathan Mayberry, Shawn Moll, Gianluca Gugliotta, Walden Wong & Pepe Larraz (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5118-0

Long lauded as the first black super hero character in American comics and one of the first to carry his own series, the Black Panther’s popularity and fortunes have waxed and waned since the 1960s when he attacked the Fantastic Four as part of an extended plan to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father. He was also the first Negro superhero in American comics, debuting in Fantastic Four #52 (cover-dated July 1966).

Time passed and T’Challa, son of T’Chaka was revealed as an African monarch whose hidden kingdom was the only source of a vibration-absorbing alien metal upon which the country’s immense wealth was founded. Those mineral riches – derived from a fallen meteor which struck the continent in lost antiquity – had enabled him to turn his country into a technological wonderland. The tribal wealth had long been guarded by a cat-like champion who derived physical advantages from secret ceremonies and a mysterious heart-shaped herb that ensured the generational dominance of the nation’s warrior Panther Cult.

In recent years the Vibranium mound had made the country a target for increasing subversion and incursion and after an all-out attack by the forces of Doctor Doom, culminating in the Iron Dictator seizing control of Wakanda, T’Challa was forced to render all Vibranium on Earth inert, defeating the invader but leaving his own homeland broken and economically shattered.

During this cataclysmic clash T’Challa’s flighty, spoiled brat half-sister Shuri took on the mantle of the Black Panther and became the clan and country’s new champion whilst her predecessor struggled with the disaster he had deliberately caused…

This slim, unassuming but extremely engaging Costumes Drama outing collects pertinent portions of the portmanteau Age of Heroes #4 and the guest-star packed Klaws of the Panther 4-part fortnightly miniseries from 2010-2011, and follows Shuri’s progress through the Marvel Universe as she strives to outlive her wastrel reputation, serve her country and the world and – most importantly – defeat the growing homicidal rage that increasingly burns within her…

The story starts with ‘Honor’ by Jonathan Mayberry, Shawn Moll & Walden Wong as the latest Panther Champion brutally repels an invasion by soldiers of AIM, merely the latest opportunist agency attempting to take over the decimated country of Wakanda. With her brother and Queen Storm absent, Shuri is also de facto ruler of the nation but faces dissent from her own people, as embarrassing reports and photos of her days as a millionaire good-time girl are continually being unearthed to stir popular antipathy to her and the Panther clan. So when opportunist G’Tuga of the outlawed White Gorilla sect challenges her for the role of national champion, Shuri almost sees the ritual combat as a welcome relief from insurmountable, intangible problems; but has badly misjudged her opponent and the sentiment of the people…

The main event by Mayberry, Gianluca Gugliotta & Pepe Larraz  opens with ‘Savage Tales’ as Shuri is lured to the fantastic dinosaur kingdom dubbed the Savage Land, where she hopes to purchase a supply of the metal-eating Vibranium isotope, but instead uncovers a deadly plot by Advanced Idea Mechanics and sentient sound-wave Klaw.

The incredible fauna of the lost world has been enslaved by the Master of Sound – who years ago murdered Shuri and T’Challa’s father in an earlier attempt to win ultimate power – and the villain has captured the region’s protector Ka-Zar whilst he strives to secure all the Savage Land Vibranium for his nefarious schemes.

Klaw however only thought he had fully compensated for the interference of Shuri and Ka-Zar’s wife Shanna the She-Devil…

Driven by a lust for vengeance, Shuri almost allows Klaw to destroy the entire Savage Land and only the timely intervention of mutant sister-in-law Storm prevents nuclear Armageddon in ‘Sound and Fury’, after which the impulsive Panther seeks out Wolverine on the outlaw island of Madripoor, looking for help with her out-of-control anger management issues. Once again however AIM attacks, attempting to steal the bandit nation’s priceless stockpile of Savage Land Vibranium but instead walking into a buzz saw of angry retribution…

Shuri is about to extract information from a surviving AIM agent in time-honoured Wakandan manner when Klaw appears, hinting at a world-shattering plan called “The Scream” which will use the mysterious device dubbed M.U.S.I.C. to totally remake the Earth…

After a deadly battle, the new Panther gains the upper hand by using SLV dust but squanders her hard-won advantage to save Wolverine from certain death…

With knowledge that the entire planet is at stake Shuri acknowledges the need for major-league assistance in ‘Music of the Spheres’ but unfortunately the only one home at Avengers Tower is the relatively low-calibre Spider-Man, Reluctantly she takes the wisecracking half-wit on another raid on AIM and finally catches a break when one of Klaw’s AIM minions reveals the tragic secret of the horrific M.U.S.I.C device…

All this time the Black Panther has had a hidden ally in the form of tech specialist Flea who has been providing intel from an orbiting spaceship. Now the truth is revealed and the heroes find that Klaw’s plans are also centred on an attack from space. The maniac is intending to destroy humanity from an invulnerable station thousands of miles above the planet and nothing can broach the base’s incredible defences. However Spider-Man and ex-Captain America Steve Rogers know the world’s greatest infiltration expert and soon ‘Enter the Black Widow’ finds Earth’s last hopes depending on an all-or-nothing assault by the icily calm Panther and the planet’s deadliest spy.

Cue tragic sacrifice, deadly combat, spectacular denouement, reaffirmed dedication and a new start for the ferociously inspired and determined Black Panther…

Slight but gloriously readable, this compelling thriller also comes with an impressive cover gallery by Jae Lee, Michael Del Mundo and Stephanie Hans, and also includes an information-packed text feature on Shuri’s life-history, career and abilities to bring the completist reader up to full speed.

If you don’t despise reboots and re-treads on unswerving principle and are prepared to give something new(ish) a go, there’s a lot of fun to be had in this infectious, fast-paced Fights ‘n’ Tights farrago, so why not set your sights and hunt this down?
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Northguard: Manifest Destiny


By Mark Shainblum & Gabriel Morrissette with Jacques Boivin and others (Caliber Press)
No ISBN, ASIN B00071Y8KK

The huge outpouring of fresh material which derived from the birth of American comicbooks’ Direct Sales revolution produced a plethora of innovative titles and creators – and let’s be honest – a host of appalling, derivative, knocked-off, banged-out trash too.

Happily I’m the boss of me and I choose to focus on the good and even great stuff…

The 1980s were an immensely fertile time for English-language comics-creators. In America an entire new industry had started with the birth of dedicated comics shops and, as innovation-starved specialist retail outlets sprung up all over the country, operated by fans for fans, a host of new publishers began to experiment with format, genre and content, whilst eager readers celebrated the happy coincidence that everybody seemed to have a bit of extra cash to play with.

Consequently those new publishers were soon aggressively competing for the attention and cash of punters who had grown resigned to getting their sequential art jollies from DC, Marvel, Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European and Japanese material began creeping in and by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Eclipse, Capital, Now, Comico, Dark Horse, First and many others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads.

Most importantly, by avoiding the traditional family-focussed sales points such as newsstands, more mature material could be produced: not just increasingly violent and sexually explicit but also far more political and intellectually challenging too.

Subsequently, much of the “kid’s stuff” stigma finally dissipated andAmericabegan catching up to the rest of the world, partially acknowledging that comics might be a for-real art-form.

New talent, established stars and different takes on the old forms all found a thriving forum desperate for something a little different. Even smaller companies and foreign outfits had a fair shot at the big time and a lot of great material came – and, almost universally, as quickly went – without getting the attention or success they warranted.

One of the most critically acclaimed and enthralling features was a bleak yet fearfully authentic-seeming interpretation of real-world superheroics from Canadian independents Matrix Books who launched another superb and too-soon-lost costumed crusader on an uncaring world in 1984 with the advent of New Triumph featuring Northguard #1-5. The black and white series for mature readers was sadly lost in a growing storm of black and white self-published titles of varying quality and folded in 1985.

In 1989, Caliber Press licensed the property and launched a general readership, 3-issue miniseries Northguard: the ManDes Conclusion to wrap up the interrupted storyline, simultaneously packaging the original Matrix issues as Northguard: Manifest Destiny, one of the industry’s earliest trade paperback collections.

Written by Matrix founder Mark Shainblum and illustrated by Gabriel Morrissette the story is one that will delight dyed-in-the-wool comics fans as one of their own finally lives the dream…

The volume begins with a fascinating potted history of Canada’s comics industry and love-affair with patriotic superheroes in John Bell’s Foreword after which ‘…And Stand on Guard…’ (lettered by Ian Carr and with an early plotting and art assistance credit for Geof Isherwood) opens with a grisly assassination and a tragic air disaster, before introducing young Phillip Wise ofMontreal.

Left at home whilst his parents vacationed, the young fanboy is just settling in with a stack of comicbooks when a knock at the door leads to his abrupt abduction…

Regaining consciousness in a palatial apartment, Phillip is introduced to billionaire inventor  Ron Cape, a single-minded, altruistic industrialist who runs P.A.C.T. – Progressive Allied Canadian Technologies – a company run by benevolent capitalists with a new world vision…

Capehas his own spy team “Unit 7”, used to protect company secrets and keep his rivals honest, but in the course of their investigations the team has obtained proof that an American company is planning to overthrow the Canadian government. Their only clue to the scheme is the enigmatic code-term “ManDes”…

Used to direct action, P.A.C.T. intended to use a uniquely gifted, trained operative and their latest prototype – a miraculous energy weapon dubbed the Uniband – to covertly counter the imminent threat, but that guy was just murdered and his deputy died in an air crash. Now the device needs months of calibration to a specific set of brainwaves before it can be used…

Without a new controller the Uniband, which taps into a whole, new set of physics, is just a very expensive piece of ugly jewellery, but after hacking all the medical records in Quebec, the P.A.C.T. team luckily found a near-match for their dead agent’s thought patterns…

As the awestruck kid ponders the offer of a lifetime, in America’s Deep South a Fundamentalist Christian and racist manic named Tyler who runs Ultra, one of the world’s most powerful corporations, takes further steps to thwart Cape and his inner circle…

After a pensive night Phillip reaches a decision. He will become P.A.C.T.’s human gun, but only on his own terms. Rather than a secret agent Wise wants the technologists to turn him into a real-life superhero – complete with mask and costume…

Over a barrel and against the advice of his subordinates and directors, Capecomplies and Phillip rapidly undergoes cybernetic surgery and radical physical training to enable him to use the miraculous Uniband. No one is aware that the boy is already a target of Dugan, the assassin who killed his predecessor.

In a bloody confrontation however, the barely-competent kid turns the tables on his coldly pragmatic attacker by thinking like a comic book character and not a rational, trained professional…

Northguard, as Phillip now calls himself, even manages to very publicly save the Premier of the province on live TV and foil the ManDes scheme to instigate an Anglo-French race war inQuebec…

‘Awaken the Dreamers’ (with Bernie Mireault helping out Morrissette on the art) finds the Jewish Phillip tormented by nightmares of racial atrocity and P.A.C.T.’s core team riven by doubt and dissent at the turn events have taken. Nobody signed on to become clandestine policemen and the consequent death toll has everybody rattled…

Meanwhile in the basement of their HQ, Dugan has broken out of custody and gone on a murderous rampage through the building. This time though, he’s ready for the kid with the wonder-weapon and easily defeats him, but then makes the horrific mistake of trying to use Uniband himself…

Frustrated by his constant failures “The Reverend” prays for guidance and hears the Word of God. Ultra has two years to wipe out the blasphemy that isCanadaor the Almighty will cleanse the entire Earth…

Inked by Jacques Boivin, ‘Target Red, Target Blue: Making Hate’ finds Phillip called to P.A.C.T. to be stripped of the Uniband he failed to protect, but absconding before they can remove it. Wandering the streets of Montreal, he finds himself at a dojo and watches a stunning display of martial arts grace and power. With thoughts of learning taekwon-do he chats with the devastating Manon DesChamps and before he even knows what he’s doing the lad has transformed into Northguard before her unbelieving, admiring eyes…

Meanwhile in Boston, Massachusetts, Vietnamvet Ed Holman gets a package from P.A.C.T. that will make his new job even easier. The corporation’s latest technological marvel, acting with the metal plate in his head, now enables him to change his appearance at the press of a button. The Steel Chameleon is ready to become P.A.C.T.’s only super-agent…

As Manon attempts to teach Northguard to fight, they are attacked by a mercilessly efficient squad of operatives led by a psychotic American woman named Valerie White and only Phillip’s overwhelming firepower and Manon’s skill allow them to escape alive…

‘Target Red, Target Blue: Never Surrender’ (with additional inking from J. Harpes & friends) finds Steel Chameleon being briefed by Cape as Phillip awakens at Manon’s apartment. Almost immediately a Russian operative codenamed Redstorm warns the youngsters that Valerie has tracked them down and offers to buy the Uniband for an astronomical sum…

Whilst Holman reviews Intel and realises Valerie – a ruthless USagent known as Eagle – and Redstorm are about to renew their mutually assured and long-running dance of sex and death on Canadian soil, his phone rings. Once again Phillip has done the unexpected in a crisis and simply called for help.

But even as Steel Chameleon rushes to their location, Northguard and Manon have moved to direct action, blasting the Soviet team’s car as a distraction before fleeing on a motorcycle. With Eagle and her squad in hot pursuit the young fugitives are trapped in a shopping mall by the relentless Cold Warriors as keen to kill each other as take the Uniband…

With bullets flying and bodies dropping everywhere Holman arrives just in time to push the rival agents into a horrific miscalculation…

And at Ultra, the Reverend rages at another scheme spoiled by the infernal P.A.C.T. unbelievers and decides to declare all-out economic war onCape’s company…

This terrific tome sadly stops – but doesn’t end – on a compelling low note with ‘Games of the Heart’ as the assorted cast-members are shown in poignant and telling vignettes. Reverend Tyler lays his divinely-inspired plans and marshals his religious zealots whilst the troubleCape loses his most trusted and intimate confidante and Phillip reels with unaccustomed jealousy after meeting Manon’s boyfriend.

The determined kid still holds it together enough to undergo his first explosive full training session under the supervision of Steel Chameleon, however…

Of course nobody expected Manon to show up in a costume of her own, so how could they expect the dazzling Fleur-de-Lys to be so exceptionally efficient and effective at the whole superhero thing…
© 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1989 Mark Shainbloom and Gabriel Morrisette. Northguard, Fleur-de-Lys and all prominent characters are ™ Mark Shainbloom and Gabriel Morrisette. All rights reserved. Steel Chameleon © 1989 and ™Richard Comely/Star Rider Productions. Used under license.

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Spirit of Wonder


By Kenji Tsuruta, translated by Dana Lewis & Toren Smith (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-288-7

Unlike many manga tales translated into English, acclaimed author and illustrator Kenji Tsuruta’s beguiling fantasy Spirit of Wonder, although carrying all the trappings of a blistering science fiction comedy romp, is a sweet romantic comedy with genteel, anything is possible, sentimental yearning as the driving force.

Set in a charming alternate time and place so like our own world, it follows the Byzantine trials and tribulations of feisty, beautiful tavern owner Miss China and her truly bizarre, indigent and obnoxious upstairs tenants – the genuinely mad Professor Breckenridge and his gorgeous, hunky assistant Jim Floyd…

Creator Kenji Tsuruta was born in 1961 and studied optical science, intending to pursue a career in photography before happily making the jump to narrative storytelling as manga artist, designer, book illustrator and anime creator.

A lifelong fan of “hard science” science fiction authors like Robert A. Heinlein and the comic works of Tetsuya Chiba and Yukinobu (Saber Tiger) Hoshino, after years of producing self-published dōjinshi whilst working as an assistant to established manga stars, Tsuruta began selling his own works in 1986 when his short fantasy serial Hiroku te suteki na uchÅ« ja nai ka (‘What a Big Wonderful Universe It Is’) was published in Kodansha’s Weekly Morning magazine.

Soon after, he began this enticing, enchanting scientific romance of gently colliding worlds which ran in both Weekly Morning and monthly magazine Afternoon between 1987 and 1996 before making the smooth transition to animated features and an award-winning TV series. This English edition comes courtesy of Dark Horse Comics who published the first few translated episodes as a 5-issue black and white comics miniseries in 1995-6.

In a comfortable faux-Victorian milieu, the exotic immigrant Lady Chinaruns the Ten-Kai Tavern in the sleepy yet cosmopolitan port-town ofBristol. The generally peaceful burg hardly ever-changes, but China’s life is one of constant struggle to make a comfortable living, especially as she rents her upstairs rooms to a couple of crackpot deadbeats who continually mess up the place with their idiotic contraptions and persistently fail to pay their rent.

The older guy is truly annoying and doesn’t care about anything beyond his latest weird invention but his assistant is a sweet and delightful young man who has capturedChina’s fast-beating heart…

The wonderment begins on another belated rent day with ‘Miss China’s Ring or Doctor Breckenridge and the Amazing Ether Reflector mirror!’ as the frustrated landlady is again forced to employ her formidable martial arts skills to get the insufferable Professor’s attention – if not the long-delayed and constantly accruing cash payable.

It’s not a good time, as Breckenridge is entertaining potential investors in his latest creation which promises safe travel to the Moon…

The meeting does not end well and both landlady and tenant depart unsatisfied, whilst in another part of town Jim – whose responsibilities include doing everything and somehow finding the money to pay for it – is picking up a vital component from pretty “florist” Lily (a girl with amazing connections able to procure anything wayward inventors might ever require).

UnfortunatelyChinasees the object of her desire spending what should be rent money on a very pretty flower girl and goes ballistic…

Floyd adoresChinatoo but as a typical guy is utterly unable to tell her. He can, however, thanks to his mad mentor Breckenridge and some astounding discoveries left by his own vanished father – another technological miracle man – give her the moon.

Literally…

Jim givesChinaa ring as a birthday present but she is too furious to care. She wants rent not trinkets from a flighty gadabout. If only she could calm down enough, she would see that the gift is carved from actual moon rock, but beaten into a strategic retreat, Jim realises he needs to make a somewhat grander gesture…

Heartbroken,Chinafalls asleep and is much calmer when she awakes. Bringing her troublesome tenants tea, she looks up into the sky and sees the message Jim has carved into the shining luminous lunar surface…

Stunned and troubled she moves through the days in a dream. Even with the evidence above his head Breckenridge still can’t get anyone to bankroll him and is driven to unwise acts. Soon the entire world is imperilled by his etheric meddlings and the moon is plummeting on a deadly collision course withBristol.

Luckily the uniquely physical and practical talents of MissChinaare of some use in averting disaster if not setting things totally aright…

‘The Flight of Floyd’ opens with the Mad Professor oafishly seeking to make amends by giving China a flying broomstick, before concluding that he will never understand women. The lovelorn landlady simply wishes she could make Jim pay attention to her, superstitiously wishing upon a shooting star, but the object of her infatuation is preoccupied with completing his missing father’s gravity disrupter and with off-handed tactlessness explains that she’s doing it wrong…

Once again the cause of increasingChina’s woes, the hapless Floyd decides to use his Gravitation Gate to make things right – by creating a permanent rain of meteors for the lovely landlady to wish upon, momentarily forgetting that whilst pretty in the evening sky a bombardment of incandescent rock packs a bit of a punch when hitting the Earth…

The marvellous merriment concludes with ‘China strikes Back parts 1 and 2, or Doctor Breckenridge and the Astounding Instantaneous Matter Transmitter!’ which finds times hard in Bristol as the town shivers under a blanket of snow and the cash-strapped, customer-starved Lady China forced to get increasingly heavy with her free-loading lodgers. She is also taking out her bad moods on the townspeople and the few customers still frequenting the inn for food and drinks

However when she once again busts in the upstairs door in search of her overdue payments, she finds the Professor and Jim have vanished, taking all their ludicrous junk with them.

They haven’t gone far, however. In fact they haven’t gone anywhere at all, but simply set up a system by whichChina’s entrances and exits teleport her to and from an empty set of duplicate rooms, leaving the unscrupulous tinkerers free to stay at the tavern without being bothered.

Sadly they hadn’t bothered to soundproof the floors of the upper rooms or warn black market tech dealer Lily of their latest innovation and when China discovers the scam – in the most embarrassing manner possible – Jim is forced into a fury of improvisation before he’s able to make things right…

This enchanting blend of Steampunk and gleeful science whimsy is a sharp, wry and fantastically ingenious human drama, filled with gentle good humour and warmth, rendered with such astonishing sensitivity and imagination that the most outrageous scenes appear thoroughly rational, authentic and real – although sadly some people might focus far too much on the innocent, unconscious and completely casual nudity rather than the superb story and characterisations on display.

Filled with extra cover illustrations, pin-ups and an engaging interview with the creator, Spirit of Wonder is a treat for every open-hearted, big-minded romantic and one no fantasy fan should be denied.
© 1996 Kenji Tsuruta. All rights reserved.

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Lost in Time:


By Jean-Claude Forest & Paul Gillon with an introduction by Alex Toth (NBM)
ISBN: 0-918348-18-8

France has had an ongoing love affair with science fiction that goes back at least to the works of Jules Verne and – depending upon your viewpoint – possibly even as far back as Cyrano de Bergerac’s posthumously published fantasy stories L’Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune (The Other World: or the States and Empires of the Moon) and Les États et Empires du Soleil (The States and Empires of the Sun) published in 1657 and 1662, and their comic iterations have always been groundbreaking, superbly realised and deeply enjoyable.

A perfect case in point is Les Naufragés du Temps (alternately translated as either Castaways in Time or, as here, Lost in Time) created in 1964 byJean-ClaudeForest and classical master-draughtsman Paul Gillon.

Forest(1930-1998) was a Parisian and graduate of the Paris School of Design who began selling strips while still a student. His Flèche Noire (Black Arrow) led to a career illustrating for newspapers and magazines such as France-Soir, Les Nouvelles Littéraires and Fiction in the 1950s, all whilst producing the Charlie Chaplin-based comic series Charlot and acting as chief artist for publisher Hachette’s science fiction imprint Le Rayon Fantastique, for whom he produced illustrations and covers for imported authors A. E. Van Vogt, Jack Williamson, and others.

In 1962 he created Barbarella for V-Magazine and the sexy icon quickly took the county and the world by storm, consequently generating an explosion of SF Bandes dessinées features. Forest never looked back, subsequently creating Baby Cyanide and more serious tales like Hypocrite; the Verne-inspired Mysterious Planet; La Jonque Fantôme Vue de l’Orchestre and Enfants, c’est l’Hydragon qui Passe.

He also found time to script for other artists: Ici Même for Jacques Tardi, occult detective series Leonid Beaudragon for Didier Savard and with Gillon on the subject of today’s review – a classic of both comics and science fiction inexplicably all-but-ignored by English language publishers since the 1980s…

Paul Gillon (1926-2011) was also born inParisand suffered from debilitating Tuberculosis in early life. After his full recovery the isolated shut-in became something of a brilliant wild child, being expelled from many schools including the prestigious Ecole des Arts Graphiques.

As a teenager he considered a career in film, theatre or fashion but slipped almost accidentally into the world of cartooning and caricature, working freelance for such arts magazines as Samedi-Soir, France Dimanche and Gavroche.

The end of the war created chaotic circumstances in France and gave birth to a whole new comics industry and in 1947 Gillon began illustrating for the popular weekly Vaillant, both on existing adventures strips such as Wango and Lynx Blanc (both written by Roger Lécureux) and Jean Ollivier’s Le Cormoran as well as the later spin-off Jérémie which Gillon also scripted.

In 1950 he created Fils de Chine (Sons of China) with Lécureux which ran for three years.

Working in a refined and highly classicist style as personified by the likes of industry giants Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff and Hal Foster, Gillon also wrote and drew shorter complete pieces for titles such as 34 Camera, Femmes D’Aujourd’hui, Reves and Radar but his big break came in September 1959 when he began illustrating a daily soap-opera strip for national newspaper France Soir.

He would render the stunningly beautiful human heartbreaks of ’13, rue de l’Espoir’ until the end of 1972, becoming a household name in the process…

Based on the American serial The Heart of Juliet Jones and scripted by Jacques and François Gall, the feature followed the fortunes of vivacious Parisienne Françoise Morel, and unfolding daily took the heroine and the Family Morel through some of the most tumultuous years of modern European social change in nearly 4200 strips which were naturally compiled into two collected Albums – something else which should be translated into English but probably won’t be…

Throughout that period Gillon continued in comics, producing Jérémie, working for the Disney comic Journal de Mickey and other magazines and trying out new venues and genres.

Les Naufrages du Temps first appeared in 1964, part of the line-up in short-lived French comic Chouchou. A decade after the periodical closed the strip was reprinted and completed in daily newspaper France-Soir before being released as 2 bichromic (two-coloured) albums from major publisher Hachette in 1974 and 1975.  Two further book full-colour volumes followed in 1976.

In 1977 the saga was serialized in groundbreaking Sci-fi magazine Metal Hurlant, prompting publisher Les Humanoides Associes to re-release the four albums (L’Etoile Endormie or The Sleeping Star, La Mort Sinueuse – The Creeping Death, Labyrinthes – Labyrinths – and L’Univers Cannibale – The Cannibal Universe) in colour, before continuing the series with Gillon scripting as well as illustrating until its end in 1989: a total of six further volumes.

Never idle, Gillon then created spy-thriller Les Leviathans (The Leviathans) for Les Humanoides and adult science fiction epic La Survivante (The Survivor) for L’Echo des Savanes, adapted literary classics such as Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and re-imagined the legend of Joan of Arc as the erotic  epic Jehanne. His later efforts included Processus de Survie (Survival Process) in 1984 and La Derniere des Salles Obscures (The Last of the Dark Rooms) in 1998.

He remains one ofFrance’s most honoured, celebrated and revered comics creators and just why so few of his incredibly illustrated tales have been translated is an utter mystery to me.

One that did make the jump was Lost in Time: Labyrinths, released as a spectacular hardback by NBM in 1987 and one of the few European imports to be seen “cold” in the USA (i.e. without first running as a serial in Heavy Metal magazine).

As I’ve previously mentioned Labyrinths was the third album of the French series and opened with a neceassry preamble…

So just to recap something we hadn’t actually seen: at the end of the 20th century humanity was imperilled by “the Scourge” – a plague of extraterrestrial spores and/or a global sickness of its own negligent making. Chris Cavallieri and Valerie Haurele were selected for a shot at survival and placed in suspended animation in individual space-capsules to preserve the best of our race and possibly reconstruct our lost glories in a newer age.

A thousand years later Chris was awakened into a bewildering but thriving multi-species civilisation in deadly danger. Earth was a derelict, plague world inhabited by mutant monsters, and a multi-species civilisation had abandoned it and grown to inhabit a hugely re-configured Solar system.

Helping the inhabitants of the patchwork “System” – ex-pat human, alien and genetically altered/hybridised animal-beings – to defeat an invasion by alien winged rats dubbed the Thrass, Chris fortuitously found Valerie’s lost capsule and revived her – but the longed-for happy event led to utter disaster.

Throughout their millennial slumber both ancient human lovers had dreamt of each other and their perfect reunion, but once they were together again in a furious new future they discovered that they could not stand each other…
This tale begins after the defeated Thrass have fled the System and Valerie, rejected by Chris, has disappeared. The resurrected Ancient and his new-found true love Mara (one of the scientists who first recovered and rehabilitated Christopher) are the topic of much discussion amongst his new friends Dr. Otomoro and military cyborg Major Lisdal, whilst Chris himself haunts morgues and seedy dives of the pan-cosmopolitan city of Roobo-ein-Sarra on System capital Limovan, unable to shake his destructive and obsessive fear for the fate of his millennial ex-lover…

Depressed, despondent and bitterly confused, Chris wanders the exotic streets and bazaars where hordes of newly-liberated beings manically celebrate their hard-won safety and security, unaware that he has been targeted by sinister plotters. An old “frenemy”, Morfina, accosts him and, past injuries and seductions forgotten, lures the old Earthman to the Mood Market, a vast, baroque area of bordellos run by legendary criminal overlord The Boar, a burly, erudite and unctuous humanoid with a Tapir’s head.

(In the original this major series villain is in fact the Tapir – I’ve no idea why he was so erroneously renamed but have a sneaking suspicion that it involves European prejudices about English and American educational attainment…)

Completely off-guard, Chris succumbs to sybaritic release and is framed for the murder of a diplomat and his companion whilst out of his head. Once awake and panicked by the corpses around him, the Last Earthman accepts the extremely costly aid of the Boar to escape…

Even Christopher believes himself guilty until he discusses the affair with Mara, Lisdal and Otomoro in the cold light of day. However, even as the wool is pulled from his eyes and he realises his precarious predicament, the bamboozled ancient is utterly unaware that The Boar is working with the compliant vindictive Valerie, who is briefing the crime-lord on all Chris’s secrets…

When Lisdal suggests seeking help from brilliant scientific maverick Saravon Leobart the friends are welcomed by the aged sage, but the Boar moves quickly, sending his gamin cyber-assassin Baby to quickly whisk Chris and Mara away under the pretext that the police have arrested Lisdal and Otomoro…

It’s all a colossal bluff: the Boar needs Chris to recover a deadly pre-Scourge secret weapon cached away at the time of humanity’s fall and all the data needed to find and operate it lies buried in the Ancient’s subconscious. Chris is completely unaware that the thing even exists: his mind was re-programmed before his hibernation and only the vengeful Valerie holds the secret of retrieving it…

Soon the Boar and his “guests” are hurtling deep into the outer system with Leobart, Morfina and Chris’ friends in hot pursuit. After a brutal clash in space Chris and Mara are rescued but the Boar is ready and willing to retaliate and even the benevolent Leobart is not all he seems…

To Be Continued…

This is a beautiful, stately and supremely authoritative adult fantasy thriller, tantalisingly teasing the reader with the promise of so much more. The second part was released in English as Lost in Time: Cannibal World in 1987, but even that only moved the saga forward without comfortably ending things. As far as I know the only other Gillon works to make it into English are the first two volumes of The Survivor…

Mature, solid science fiction with thoroughly believable and pettily human characters confronted with fantastic situations, lots of action and loads of nudity: how on Earth has this sublime series remained a secret French Possession for so very long?
© Les Humanoides Associes. © NBM 1986 for the English edition.

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Young Witches


By Francisco Solano López &Barreiro (Eros Comic/Fantagraphics)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-202-0

This book is intended to excite adults whilst simultaneously making them laugh, think, and hopefully feel frisky. If the cover image hasn’t clued you in, please be warned that the book contains nudity, images of sexual intimacy but, oddly, not the sort of language commonly used in the privacy of the bedroom (and playgrounds whenever supervising adults aren’t present). If this sort of thing offends you, read no further and don’t buy the thing. The rest of us will just enjoy one of the best graphic novel experiences ever created without you.

Whilst prolific scripter Ricardo Barreiro prefers to quietly let his prodigious works speak for him, his inimitable partner in this and many other comics classics is an unmistakable part of three generations of kids’ lives.

For British and Commonwealth comics readers of a certain age, the unmistakable artistic style of Francisco Solano López always conjures up dark moods and atmospheric tension because he drew such ubiquitous boyhood classics as Janus Stark, Adam Eterno, Tri-Man, Galaxus: The Thing from Outer Space, Pete’s Pocket Army, Nipper, The Drowned World, Kelly’s Eye, Raven on the Wing, Master of the Marsh and a host of other stunning tales of mystery, imagination and adventure in the years he worked for Britain’s Fleetway Publications.

However the master of blackest brushwork was not merely a creator of children’s fiction. In his home country ofArgentinahe was adjudged a radical political cartoonist whose work eventually forced him to flee to more hospitable climes and far less dangerous times.

Francisco Solano López was born on October 26th 1928 in Buenos Aires, Argentina and began illustrating comics in 1953 with Perico y Guillerma for the publisher Columba. With journalist Héctor Germán Oesterheld (a prolific comics scripter “disappeared” by the Junta in 1976 and presumed killed the following year) Solano López produced Bull Rocket for Editorial Abril’s magazine Misterix.

After working on such landmark series as Pablo Maran, Uma-Uma, Rolo el marciano adoptivo and El Héroe, López joined Oesterheld’s publishing house Editorial Frontera and became a member of the influential Venice Group which included including Mario Faustinelli, Hugo Pratt, Ivo Pavone and Dino Battaglia.

López alternated with Pratt, Jorge Moliterni and José Muñoz on Oesterheld’s legendary Ernie Pike serial but their most significant collaboration was the explosively political and hugely popular allegorical science fiction thriller El Eternauta which began in 1957. By 1959 the series had come to the unwelcome attention of the authorities inArgentina andChile, forcing López to flee toSpain. Whilst an exile there he began working forUK publishing giant Fleetway fromMadrid andLondon.

In 1968 he returned to Argentinaand with Oesterheld started El Eternauta II for new publisher Editorial Records, produced sci-fi series Slot-Barr (written by Barreiro) and period cop drama Evaristo with kindred spirit Carlos Sampayo. In the mid-1970s López was once again compelled to flee his homeland, returning to Madrid where he organised the publication of El Eternauta and Slot-Barr with Italian magazines LancioStory & Skorpio.

He never stopped working, producing a stunning variety of assorted genre tales and mature-reader material and erotica such as El Instituto (the subject of this review under its American title Young Witches), El Prostíbulo del Terror (also by Barreiro) and full colour male-fantasy strip Sexy Symphonie.

More serious works included the bleak thrillers Ana and Historias Tristes with his son Gabriel and he also illustrated Jim Woodring’s adaptation of the cult movie Freaks. In recent times, safely home in Argentina he continued to work on El Eternauta with new writer Pablo “Pol” Maiztegui.

López even found time for more British comics with strips such as ‘Jimmy’, ‘The Louts of Liberty Hall’, ‘Ozzie the Loan Arranger’ in Hot-Shot and Eagle as well as ‘Nipper’ and ‘Dark Angels’ for Roy of the Rovers.

Francisco Solano López passed away in Buenos Aireson August 12th 2011.

Latterly his most famous English-language series (six volumes of stunning, shocking erotically charged graphic novels at the last count), The Young Witches debuted in the USA as a 4-issue miniseries from Fantagraphics’ Eros Comics imprint in 1990, the contents of which form the majority of this superbly seductive compilation.

In the winter of 1866, after a troubled labour which took her mother, Lillian Cunnington was born into a minor aristocratic house. When her father, barely married seven months, realised how he had been cuckolded and subsequently took his own life, the baby was sent to live with her maternal aunts Jessica and Agnes Moore inCoventry.

Lilian’s life was harsh and bizarre, growing up with the draconian spinsters who revelled in the era’s taste for corporal punishment and had an entirely unnatural and abiding affection for each other which they frequently indulged, uncaring if impressionable eyes were watching…

In the Spring of 1881 the wilful, self-reliant child was bundled off to a finishing school where she discovered the truth about her past and the secret history of the world…

The Institute was a forbidding edifice set in vast, isolated grounds that took only the most select young girls. After passing a terrifying and shockingly intrusive entrance exam, young Lilian discovered that the school was a haven and training ground for the last remnants of an ancient sub-race of humanity: women with astonishing supernatural abilities…

The other girls were alternately hungry to meet her and resentful – especially as her mother fled the order and abandoned their millennial principles – but when they forcibly subjected her to their own disturbing initiation rites Lilian repulsed them all with an explosive display of unsuspected arcane power…

In her decidedly unconventional classes she learned the history of her kind: how in time-lost Sumer the cult of Ishtar, the Female God was first born, a religion for women which bestowed great power and knowledge on its adherents.

As Aphrodite in Greece and Venus in Rome, the faith continued until the rise of monotheistic Male Christianity sought to enslave and humble women and wipe out the powerful, wanton deviants they termed witches…

Driven into hiding the witches were almost eradicated by the 18th century, when the solitary prophetess Diana had a revelation and began seeking out sister-survivors, believing them by the very fact of their continued existence to be superior beings, honed to a Darwinian fitness.

Drawing them together she devised a plan of conquest to take control of the world by manipulating men of power, wealth and influence, using their addiction to pleasure and the witches’ divine gifts. Through careful planning, judicious infiltration and sublime seduction, the women would subjugate their cruel oppressors…

The work of the institute was to train girls to be the perfect wives of the world’s rulers, using sex as a weapon and clandestinely controlling from the bedroom. Meanwhile the ultimate goal was to produce ever-more powerful witches by only breeding daughters. To accomplish their sacred plan however, the institute harboured two horrific secrets: a thriving trade in selling ideal brides to the debauched scions of theBritish Empire- and the lesser World – and a hideously inbred brood-male who covertly inseminated every girl before her wedding night, ensuring that wherever they ended up Ishtar’s bloodlines remained pure…

Lilian was a problem however. Although the daughter of a failed traitor to the cause, she was also the most powerful witch the school had ever encountered and her rebellious nature was seemingly impervious to reason, discipline or correction.

Moreover she was unwholesomely attracted to young men such as the gardener rather than her own sisters and kind, with no machinations the girls or their grotesquely conniving headmistress could devise able to dissuade her from her disobedient path…

Events came to a cataclysmic head when her rival and classmate Agatha was betrothed.

Ready to go forth and do the Cult’s bidding as bride of aged Lord Wellington, the dutiful disciple was appalled at her impregnation ceremony when confronted by the Institute’s shambling, brutish imbecilic stud male. Agatha baulked and broke down, refusing to commit the act and the enraged Headmistress compelled her with all the violence and brutality she has claimed to be the province of their male oppressors…

Lilian exploded in a display of outrage and indignation and with all the power of the elements the Young Witch lashed out against a lifetime of control, virtual slavery and injustice resulting in a deadly duel of magical will and an apocalyptic conflagration…

In the aftermath Lilian and Agatha fled the shattered Institute forever…

Let’s not stray from the point – these tales are primarily designed to honestly titillate and excite and there’s a huge amount of lavishly rendered nudity, love-making and fetishism on display here. However there is also a strong story, terrific suspense and a heartfelt attempt to say something about gender politics too, and all in a well-researched historical context.

In later tales Lilian and Agatha have encounters with iconic historical and literary figures including Robert Louis Stevenson, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Dr. Henry Jekyll (plus one), Jack the Ripper, Dorian Grey, Sherlock Holmes and others…

This deliciously saucy and salacious sex-and-horror yarn combines the bawdy, breezy, haunted ambiance of classic Hammer Films with sultry, lascivious supernatural suspense in a stunning black and white confection far more enchanting and compelling than any number of shades of grey, and this torrid tome also includes a luscious, full-colour extra erotic charge in the form of a silent, sexy Silly Symphony from Solano López…
© 1990, 1991, 1992Barreiroand F. Solano López. All rights reserved.

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Dee Goong An – Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee


Translated and with an Introduction and Notes by Robert van Gulik (Dover Press)
ISBN: 978-0-486-23337-5

I’m straying a little far from my customary path today and reviewing a prose book with traditional Chinese illustrations (only nine, but they are eerily effective) that impressed me mightily when I picked it up. That happy event was itself inspired after seeing the Hark Tsui movie Detective Dee: Mystery of the Phantom Flame on television – so don’t believe people when they say there’s nothing good on the box…

Both film and book are based on the fictionalised exploits of a genuine crime-fighter named Ti Jen-chieh (or maybe Di Renjie – we inexplicably called their capital city Peking for centuries so us westerners are playing safe these days with anglicised names…) who lived between 630-700AD during the early days of China’s Tang Dynasty (approximately 600-900AD).

The role of Regional Magistrate then encompassed the roles and duties of intelligence-gathering detective, enforcing policeman and prosecuting attorney as well as judge – although he was by no means the final arbiter, as all legal pronouncements had to be ratified by the Imperial Court and legislature – and this seemingly impossible conflict-of-interest and apparent rat’s nest of a legal system is engagingly and elegantly addressed in the ‘Translator’s Preface’ by Sinologist, diplomat, historian, musician, researcher and latterly dramatist Robert Hans van Gulik, who even provided the majority of the illustrations in this volume.

Van Gulik (1910-1967) was born in the Netherlands and, as the son of an Army medical officer, spent most of his early life in the Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia). Growing up in Batavia (modern Jakarta) he learned Mandarin as well as many other languages and after graduating from the University of Leiden in 1935 joined the Dutch Foreign Service, and was posted to Japan, China and other Far-Eastern nations. His studies at Leiden (1929-1934) encompassed Dutch Indies Law and Indonesian Culture, and the tireless young man was awarded a Doctorate for his dissertation on the “horse cult” of Northeast Asia, and even whilst working as a junior civil servant continued his researches, publishing privately and becoming an acknowledged European authority on Chinese Jurisprudence.

Van Gulik was actually in Tokyo when Japan formally declared war on the Netherlands in September 1941 and, after a brief period of diplomatic internment, was evacuated in 1942, spending the remainder of the war in South-West China as part of the Dutch Mission to the Chinese Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, based at Chongquing.

The scholar married Shui Shifang, daughter of an Imperial Mandarin of the Manchu Dynasty, and once the war ended lived with her and their four children as Dutch diplomatic personages in locales as varied as Washington DC, New Delhi, Kuala Lumpur and Beirut.

In 1965 he became Dutch Ambassador toJapan, a post he held until his death.

As if that wasn’t impressive enough, he also found the time to resurrect a venerable Chinese hero, reinvigorate a nearly lost art-form and create a fascinating cross-cultural genre…

Judge – or variously and as often, Detective – Dee‘s Tang Period exploits were recounted and largely fictionalised by many later Chinese authors (as were quite a few other historical figures), particularly during the Ming Period (1368-1644), and many of Dee’s cases – real and made up – were still being bastardised and rewritten as late as the 1920s, but he got his shot at global stardom thanks to the Second World War.

The conflict erupted through the Pacific East (beginning either withJapan’s invasion ofChinain 1931, its attack on French possessions in September 1940 or the infamous bombing ofPearl Harborin 1941, depending on which historian you read) and after Van Gulik’s detention and reposting toChinaserious research was impossible.

Constantly on the move during the war years yet with plenty of time on his hands, van Gulik famously began translating an old copy of Dee Goong An he had found in a second-handTokyo bookshop. The task occupied much of his time between 1941-1945 and, after privately publishing the result in 1949, the translator became deeply enamoured of the character and the potential of combining the deeply disparate disciplines of Western and Eastern crime fiction.

Fuelled by inspiration, he determined to combine the two poles-apart forms into something fresh, ancient and truly magical.

Soon van Gulik’s wholly original stories began appearing, starting with The Chinese Maze Murders in 1951 (originally only published for Japanese and Chinese speakers), promptly followed by The Chinese Bell Murders and The Chinese Lake Murders. Sales were strong and in 1957 the novels were at last released in English and thereafter English editions of successive books preceded Oriental iterations.

There were six more novels and a collection of short stories until his untimely death from cancer cut short the mythical mystery tour, but his hybridisation of Eastern and Western detection fiction into a wholly new species of story continues to capture the attention and imagination of readers everywhere…

The cases in this initial groundbreaking volume are historical ones – if not perhaps actual exploits – of the flesh-and-blood Imperial Magistrate of Chang-Ping, whose many brilliant successes led to his promotion to the Emperor’s Court, where Dee served as a valued and esteemed statesman for the remainder of his days. Thus, Van Gulik spends a generous amount of time setting the scene and providing invaluable background on the incredibly complex but astoundingly bureaucratic and hierarchical feudal society which Dee moves amongst, aided only by his crack team of servant/investigators, all fully described in the ‘Dramatis Personae’ section, as are the suspects, witnesses and guilty parties, whilst the ‘Translator’s Postscript’ at the back provides all the specific detail an enquiring mind could possibly need to know…

So as to the meat of the matter: the esteemed adjudicator Dee is a perfect servant of the Emperor: dutiful, diligent, hardworking and honest, spending his days keeping the complex human machinery of civilisation constantly working. His task is to settle disputes, root out endemic corruption at both humble and high levels and, when necessary, vigorously enforce the State’s laws, operating as both reactive Judge and proactive Agent of Enquiry. Some glaring differences you’ll need to know from the start: torture is legal and encouraged, no one can be convicted unless they confess, and evidence obtained from ghosts, magic or dream premonitions is usually true and fully admissible in court…

The drama, involving three separate cases which somehow become infuriatingly interwoven, begins with a ‘Double Murder at Dawn’ wherein two travelling silk merchants’ bodies are discovered and an innkeeper is framed for their deaths.

After some preliminary investigations it is found that one of the corpses is neither of the merchants but a complete stranger, leading to a vast manhunt across some of the region’s roughest territory…

Adopting a disguiseDeethen accidentally uncovers another killing: one which nobody even realised had been committed…

At almost the same time a prestigious retired Prefect seeks retribution for the motiveless assassination of ‘The Poisoned Bride’ on her wedding night, but the most troubling dilemma involves the formidable widow Mrs. Djou whose husband passed away from a mysterious malady a year previously. Dee is convinced a murder has been committed even though his own coroner can find no sign or means of murder upon ‘The Strange Corpse’ and the arrogantly wilful woman refuses to confess even under the most stringent interrogation. It will take guile, dedication and heavenly intervention to prove motive, means and opportunity, but Dee is prepared to sacrifice his own life, soul and honour to finally bring justice to a forgotten dead man …

Exotic, intriguing and absolutely addictive, these preliminary adventures of Judge Dee are a sheer delight that no fan of comics or fantasy fiction should miss…
© 1949, 1976 Robert van Gulik. No modern copyright invoked for this 2003 Dover Book Edition.

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Steve Canyon


By Milton Caniff & Dick Rockwell (Tempo Books/Grosset & Dunlap)
ISBN: 0-448-17058-2-150

Here’s another early attempt to catapult comics off the spinner racks and onto proper bookshelves; this time from 1979, part of populist publisher Grosset and Dunlap’s attempt to carve themselves a slice of the burgeoning cartoon and comic strip mass market paperback boom. Other company sorties had included Krazy Kat, Broom Hilda and a host of DC character collections ranging from Superman to Swamp Thing and Wonder Woman to the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Steve Canyon began on 13th January 1947, after a canny campaign to boost public anticipation following Milton Caniff’s very conspicuous resignation from his previous masterpiece Terry and the Pirates.

Caniff, master of suspense and well versed in the art of shaping reader attention, didn’t show his new hero until four days into the first adventure – and then only in a ‘file photograph’. The primed-and-ready readership first met Stevenson Burton Canyon, bomber pilot, medal-winning war-hero, Air-Force flight instructor and latterly, independent airline charter operator in the first Sunday colour page, on 19th January 1947.

Almost instantly Caniff was working at the top of his game, producing material exotic, familiar and – as always – dead on the money in terms of the public zeitgeist and taste.

Dropping his hero into the exotic climes he had made his own on Terry, Caniff modified that world based on real-world events, but this time the brooding, unspoken menace was Communism not Fascism. Banditry and duplicity, of course, never changed, no matter who was nominally running the show…

Caniff was simply being contemporary, but he was savvy enough to realise that with the Cold War “hotting up” inKorea, Yankees were going to be seen as spies in many countries, so he made that a part of the narrative. When Canyon officially re-enlisted, the strip became to all intents and purposes a contemporary War feature…

Over the decades the Steve Canyon strip honestly embraced the philosophy of America as the World’s policeman, becoming a bastion of US militarism and remaining true to its ideals even as the years rolled by and national tastes and readership changed…

Steve foiled plots and chased his true love Summer Olsen around the globe for thirty years – continually frustrated that fate cruelly kept them unhappily apart – until they finally wed in 1970. Steve had stayed a far-ranging agent of Air Force Military Intelligence even though by this time the Vietnam War had made the Armed Forces an extremely contentious issue…

Even after Mr. and Mrs. Canyon finally tied the knot, their lives were never easy. At the time of the two rather severely abridged tales in this digest-sized monochrome collection (spanning 1978-1979), Summer was missing, having inexplicably vanished from the family home without a trace. The stunned and heartbroken Steve spent even more restless years searching for her…

The action begins as the aging agent spots Summer in a newspaper photo showing survivors of a volcanic eruption and earthquake in distant far-eastern country Langapora. Almost immediately Canyon’s accommodating superiors have him on a plane to the hostile Asian nation and Steve’s own network of grateful friends and associates are ready to pitch in. Dissolute reporter Johnny Mink is waiting when he lands in the anti-American state, having made a number of discreet inquiries and told a few necessarily fantastic lies…

The National Office of Information has denied any disaster has occurred and there were certainly no blonde American women in that part of the country. Mink is unsurprised and has a cunning plan, blinding the starstruck government flack in charge of the Bureau with tales of secretly researching locations for a majorHollywoodmovie. It is a ploy that instantly beguiles the glamour-starved official, who clearly envisions a major role for herself…

Carrying spare papers and a passport for Summer, “film director”SteveCanyonromances the junior minister and by sheer chance spots a blonde in the back of a heavily fortified car…

Tracking down the vehicle Steve and Johnny get tantalisingly close but are rebuffed by private security guards belonging to a local ganglord. The woman is American but belongs to the truly baroque and deadly Ah Nu Mero Uno – a movie-mad warlord especially obsessed by Yul Brynner in The King and I…

After overcoming immense and utterly bizarre obstacles the determined Americans broach the walls and discover there is indeed a woman from Steve’s chequered past held captive therein, but it’s certainly not Mrs. Canyon…

Of course the gallant Steve has to quash his own desperate needs to rescue his old comrade in distress, countering staggering odds and deadly dilemmas before surrendering those fake papers to save the mystery miss, narrowly escaping in a fast commercial jetliner.

The rescued stray repays Steve generosity of spirit by leaving the plane – without those vital passport papers – at a stopover inSingapore, leaving Canyon free to continue searching for Summer. Disembarking atHong Kong, however, Canyon stumbles into a deadly comedy of errors when he is mistaken by Red Chinese agents for a Russian super-spy.

At that time tensions were high between the Soviets and their notional communist allies and Caniff, always up to the minute in terms of global geopolitics, saw a perfect opportunity to add a few funny thrills to the mix of tense soap-opera pathos as Steve searched for his missing mate…

Abducted, drugged and tortured, Canyon is only saved by the impressionable young female translator Comrade Jo, who sees the unconscious man as her ticket to a glamorous life as a Russian Spy-Queen. Of course the only reason he is unconscious is because Jo’s attempt to thwart the chemical interrogation and brutal torture have left a broken acupuncture needle in Steve’s brain, plunging the “Russian” spy into a deep coma…

On the run with the inert and hulking Steve, little Jo flees her masters only to be understandably rejected by the Soviet Trade Delegation who fear she might be a trap set by their own untrustworthy Party bosses. Soon everybody thinks it best if Jo and her mystery-man disappear quietly and forever, but luckily Steve has an enigmatic if mute guardian angel in the sinister shape of espionage legend Charlie Vanilla and his trusty band ofHong Kong gutter urchins and wharf rats…

Packed with wry action, pure belly laughs and terrific tension, this last tale proves again Caniff’s sheer bravura boldness and invention as the entire epic takes place with new and walk-on characters carrying the tale whilst the veteran lead spends the greater part of the as a mere prop and maguffin…

Steve Canyon is comic storytelling at its best. Beautifully illustrated, mesmerising black and white sagas of war, espionage, romance, terror, justice and cynical reality: a masterpiece of graphic narrative every serious fan and story-lover should experience. Most cartoonists – or workers in any field of artistic endeavour – go to their graves never attaining the giddy heights wherein they are universally associated with a signature piece of unequivocally supreme work. How incredible then when somebody achieves that perfect act of creation, not once but twice – and does so seven days a week for 64 years? …And that’s not to in any way disparage the astounding artistic contributions of Dick Rockwell who began assisting with the artwork in 1952 and, as Caniff’s health gradually failed over the years, invisibly assumed more and more of the strips visual aspect.

When Caniff passed away in 1988 Rockwell continued and concluded the final adventure ‘The Snow Princess’ before the series was finally retired with honour on Sunday, June 5th 1988.

Enticing, enthralling, exotic, action-packed and emotionally charged, Steve Canyon is a slice of the purest popular Americana and masterpiece of graphic narrative: a full-immersion thriller and a passport to the halcyon best bits of another age. Comics just don’t get better than this.

Moreover, I’ve always delighted in the particular buzz these paperback pioneers of the comics biz seem to instantly generate. If you’re in any way of similar mien, I can thoroughly recommend the sheer tactile and olfactory high that only comes from holding such a dinky digest item in your own two hands…
© 1978, 1979, Field Newspaper Syndicate.  All rights reserved.

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Liberatore Glamour Book


Edited by Vincenzo Mollica & Antonio Vianovi (Glamour International Productions)
No ISBN

A lot of people may find the graphic arts collections under review here to be shocking, unacceptably violent and even revolting or, worse yet, dirty.

If that’s you, please stop right here and come back tomorrow when there will something you’ll approve of but will almost certainly offend someone else.

Italy has a rich and varied comics culture with some highbrow classics and lots and lots of cheap, cheerful, cheesy and even sordid commercial filler – just like everywhere else. Italian illustration superstar Gaetano “Tanino” Liberatore, like most masters of the form, paid his dues and worked his way up the ranks until he eventually found stardom, infamy and his ideal working environment…

He was born in 1953 in Quadri in the province of Chieti. After the usual kind of artistic childhood the kid went to school in Pescara and studied architecture at the University of Rome before moving into the world of work as an advertising illustrator in 1975.

He first met his fellow philosophical seditionist and punk-soul brother (writer, artist and publisher) Stefano Tamburini in 1978 and, in conjunction with strident activist cartoonist Andrea Pazienza, they created ‘Rankxerox’ for the magazine Cannibale. The character evolved and moved to Il Male and eventually Frigidaire, fully realised now as the RanXerox we know today – every bit Libertore’s signature character the way Eisner has The Spirit, and Hergé Tintin…

Liberatore rapidly developed as both artist and writer, with strips ‘Bordello’ and ‘Client’ appearing in Il Male, but when the new, Tamburini-scripted, syndicated RanXerox became a star of French magazine L’Écho des Savanes in 1981, Tanino moved to Paris and began working simultaneously on tales for the more prestigious Gallic market in such magazines as Tranfert, Métal Hurlant, À Suivre and Chic.

A shocking hit in the US Heavy Metal magazine, RanXerox then led to Liberatore jumping the pond and producing material for Twisted Tales and men’s magazine Hustler.

When Tamburini died suddenly in 1986, Liberatore quit comics for nearly a decade. Returning to straight commercial illustration, he worked in movies and designed book and record covers. Eventually, comics captured his attention again, and he produced two new RanXerox tales in 1993 and 1996 (with Jean-Luc Fromental and Alain Chabat), and a piece in Batman Black and White, assorted covers, and illustrated Pierre Pelot and Yves Coppens’s mass-market paperback ‘Le Rêve de Lucy’. As the Nineties closed, he finally came storming back in stunning style with the brilliant, award-winning Lucy L’Espoir in 2007, in which he and writer Patrick Norbert freely adapted a life-story for the famous prehistoric humanoid Australopithecus Afarensis remains found by anthropologists Coppens, Donald Johanson and Maurice Taieb.

The early Liberatore is the unqualified master of shock tactics. His beautifully rendered work dwells with obsessive, aggressive fascination of the grotesque, both visually and thematically. Stylish elegance goes hand-in-hand with horrifying, blunt scarification, in-your-face casually acceptable deformity and abnormality as suave, raffish he-men readily range beside hideous human travesties, ugly children and wanton, fearsome under-age harlots and murderous junkies.

His worlds are not ones where anybody should feel safe or comfortable in visiting…

One fascinating fact often neglected is that the artist usually drew his stunning pages same-size or even smaller than the printed final work – a complete reversal of the regular way comics were produced – and used a huge variety of materials to achieve his artistic effects, from cheap felt pens to high quality pencils, paints or markers and even lipstick and found objects…

That spectacular facility for experimentation is perfectly displayed in the book under review here. In the early 1980s the Italian outfit which produced Popular Arts magazine Glamour Illustrated released a series of phenomenal art-books, collecting and cataloguing the extant works of many modern maestros of mature modern sequential narrative which had limited distribution in Britain – despite the best efforts of specialist importer Titan Distributors – and all those tomes are long past due for revision and reissuing…

This glorious collection of Liberatore’s early years, simultaneously transcribed in Italian, French and English, gathers hundreds of works and excerpts within its 204 pages (many of them full-colour high-gloss inserts), traces the artistic development and displays the incredible ability and versatility of this incomparable, iconoclastic stylist, divided as usual into early ‘Unpublished Works’, ‘Black and White’ – printed pieces and extracts ranging from comics pages and panels, pin-ups, ads, illustrations, posters and covers – and concluding extensive ‘Colour’ section.

The ‘Unpublished Works’ section here include masses of Liberatore’s superb pencil drawings and preliminary sketches, unfinished and self- rejected pages as well as commercial designs, calendars, and a ton of fanzine work dedicated to music sensations such as Frank Zappa, Paul McCartney, Grateful Dead and so on, choreographed fight scenes and designs for every aspect of his finished pieces and is capped by an extra ‘Donne’ chapter featuring a stunning sequence of pencil studies of women…

‘Black and White’ contains a wealth of work showing the artist’s fantastic versatility as seen in record jackets, magazine covers and illustration, satirical comics and cartoons plus loads of strips for publications as varied as Cannibale, Il Male, Frigidaire, Transfert, RanXerox and a host of others.

The ‘Colour’ section reveals, in a wealth of different hues and stylisations, his canon of covers for comics, magazines, books and records; posters, cartoons, works in progress, strips, stage art for theatrical performances, paintings, along with many pages and extracts from his strips produced in Italy and France, and American works for Hustler, Heavy Metal and Marvel’s Savage Sword of Conan.

The collection also contains impressively comprehensive checklists which detail in full Liberatore’s vast publication record to date in their ‘Chronology’ and ‘Bibliography’ sections.

As you would expect, there is a breathtaking amount of beautifully rendered flesh and deeply unsettling hyper-violence and subversive visual political polemic on display – and I’m sure I don’t know which is the most distressingly affecting – in an unrelenting series of lascivious situations and occasionally genuinely disturbing circumstances… and his brutally sly sense of humour.

Liberatore is another world-class storyteller English speakers have too long been deprived of, and books like this have never been more desperately in need of updating and re-release …
No copyright notice again so I’m assuming:
© 1972-1985 Gaetano Liberatore. All rights reserved. If anybody knows better please let me know and we’ll amend the entry.