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The Gods from Outer Space: Descent in the Andes


Inspired by the works of Erich von Däniken and freely interpreted by Alfred Górny, Arnold Mostowicz & Rosińskiego Bogusław Polch and translated from the German edition by Michael Heron (Methuen)
ISBNs: 0-416 87-150-X

In the West, Poland isn’t known for generating graphic novels or albums, although there has always been a thriving comics culture and many Polish creators have found fame in far-off lands.

As far as I can glean, this pithy, quirky science fiction speculation is the first of only four volumes to make a break across the borders and only then because of the notorious celebrity name attached to the project…

Once upon a time the ludicrous theories of Swiss author, convicted conman and fraudster Erich Anton Paul von Däniken captured the public imagination with his postulate that aliens had visited Earth in human prehistory and reshaped the destiny of our ancient ancestors.

Although mostly discredited these days, that tantalising kernel of an idea still persists in many places; and how different life might be if the imaginative and inventive writer had simply done what he should have with such a great notion and just made a cracking science fiction epic out of his “researches”…

Happily others have done just that and the result is a quirky yet enticing intergalactic generational saga that resulted in a mini-phenomenon in Poland which spread, despite it being the height of the Cold War, through Germany and thus on to a number of other nations in at least a dozen different languages.

In 1977, Alfred Górny, a publisher in the People’s Republic of Poland specialising in sports and tourism, contacted his counterparts at West German non-fiction outfit Econ Verlag with a proposition for creating a new and mutually profitable cartoon album series.

Górny wanted to produce the series in Poland and had lined up the superb Grzegorz RosiÅ„ski to draw it. Unfortunately the artist quit before the job began, instead accepting the job of illustrating sci fi barbarian series Thorgal for Jean Van Hamme in the prestigious French comic Tintin, after which the nation’s most prolific and popular comics artist, Jerzy Wróblewski (producer of over sixty albums and series including ‘Risk’, ‘Underground Front’ and ‘Captain Zbik’ between 1959 and his death in 1991: sadly there’s little chance of any of us seeing those state-sponsored Cold War classics these days, though) stepped in before dropping out.

Górny and scripter Arnold Mostowicz then settled on newcomer RosiÅ„skiego BogusÅ‚aw Polch – who later won a measure of international renown for sci fi/political/private eye thriller Funky Koval – to delineate their epic, if meandering, saga of alien civil war, primeval strife and the birth and destruction of a primordial lost civilisation as well as most of our world’s myths, legends and religions.

When finances and resources in the Warsaw Pact nation began to evaporate, Econ Verlag took on the international syndication responsibilities and the infamous strip took on a life of its own.

The result was eight original albums. ‘LÄ…dowanie w Andach’ (Landing in the Andes), ‘Ludzie i potwory’ (Men and Monsters), ‘Walka o planetÄ™’ (The struggle for the planet), ‘Bunt Olbrzymów’ (Giants’ Mutiny); ‘ZagÅ‚ada Wielkiej Wyspy’ (Great Island’s Doom), ‘Planeta pod kontrolÄ…’ (The Planet Under Control), ‘Tajemnica Piramidy’ (The Mystery of the Pyramid) and ‘Ostatni Rozkaz’ (the Last Command). The series was even rebound in two huge compilation volumes for Polish consumption: true collector’s items these days…

In 1978 British publisher Methuen Children’s Books (who also published Herge’s Tintin at the time) picked up the English language rights for the first four books and released them – complete with spurious fringe-science trimmings – to a largely unimpressed public.

Now, with time having stripped away the ludicrous faux facts and messianic furore underpinning the tales, I want to examine what is actually a pretty impressive and entertaining piece of speculative fiction dressed in a workmanlike and rather enthralling no-nonsense art style that will delight fans of illustrated storytelling…

The adventure begins millennia ago with Descent in the Andes, as a colossal flying saucer carrying hundreds of scientists from Delos in the Sagittarius Nebula establishes orbit above Earth.

The crewmen are all amnesiac, having had their memories wiped to better survive the rigours of a nine-year hibernation. Greeted by mission leader Ais and her subordinates Chat and Roub – an “Academy of Wise Rulers” – the space voyagers are swiftly re-educated; re-learning that the Great Brain of Delos has dispatched them all to find a new world, since their home planet is on the verge of annihilation. Moreover, although the voyagers have slept for nearly a decade, on Delos a thousand years have passed…

After a heated but fruitless debate about the possibilities of returning home, the men resolve to carry out their mission and colonise the blue planet below, using their incredible science to create a sub-species of themselves able to thrive on the alien world and propagate the culture and civilisation of Delos.

Once that is achieved the great ship will move on, finding more suitable worlds and repeating the procedure…

The Earth is a wilderness with abundant flora and fauna, teeming with potentially hostile micro-organisms, but the first explorers to make planet-fall discover that the true threat comes from lethal apex predators. Moreover, one of the apelike indigenous species has begun to make and master stone tools…

Tensions are high on the orbiting ship and Chat and Roub are increasingly at odds. Soon after a first land-base is established, the latter foments mutiny and forcibly attempts to make Ais his bed-mate. Not for the first time, the commander ponders the Great Brain’s wisdom in placing only one woman on the ship…

The colonists decide to create a labour force by domesticating the smart apes and chief scientist Zan discovers that they possess a close affinity to Delosian biology. With a little tinkering perhaps the primitives will be able to continue the legacy of Delos…

The mission begins to further unravel when the lonely, over-worked crewmen discover the primitives’ skill in fermenting alcohol and lapse into undisciplined fighting and cross-species fraternisation…

When Ais steps down hard on the drunken malcontents, Roub, who advocates scrubbing the mission and moving permanently to the welcoming world below, sees his chance to further undermine her. A crisis breaks when the fuel for the aerosondes – planetary transport shuttles – mysteriously runs critically low. Chat discovers and kills a saboteur at work and denounces Roub, but before they can come to blows a startling message announces the arrival of a second ship from Delos…

Meanwhile Zan’s experiments on the native females have concluded and his findings indicate that for the mission to succeed he will have to directly reconfigure the ape-beings’ genetic make-up, a step Ais is reluctant to consider…

As she and Chat supervise the construction of a vast landing field and base in a desolate mountainous region, complete with huge landing symbols carved directly into the terrain, Roub, determined to stay and control the new world, foments open rebellion. Intent on destroying the orbiting ship and forcing his people to settle on Earth, Roub rockets into space, with the determined Ais in hot pursuit. An horrific duel ensues and, driving him off the vessel, she follows the traitor back to Earth where Chat tracks him to his final fate in the deadly beast-filled jungles…

The colonists’ troubles are not over. The second expedition, under the command of Beroub, had set up operations on a far-distant continent, but when he unexpectedly arrives at the Nazca base, the leader of the back-up colony is dying from some unknown contagion. As Ais and Zan prepare to investigate, the master scientist notices that the natives are terrified, fleeing from some unseen, unsuspected phenomenon.

Hypothesising the worst, the troubled technologist swiftly tricks Chat into returning to the orbiting saucer in the last working aerosonde, as Ais and Zan take wing in a jet-powered aeroglider piloted by Beraud’s pilot Eness, just as the ground erupts in a devastating volcanic eruption…

The entire colony is wiped out, Chat is trapped in space and Zan and Ais have no choice but to head for unknown peril on the distant continent dubbed Atlantis…

To Be Continued…

There’s a bucket-load of plot and plenty of action packed into this colourful, oversized (292x219mm) 52 page tome, and the comfortingly clunky but exceedingly effective art by Polch is beguilingly seductive and something no traditional science fiction connoisseur could resist. Maybe it’s time to revive this lost series and even go looking for a few more of those embargoed comics classics from the Land of the White Eagle…
© 1978 Econ Verlag GmbH, Dusseldorf. English translation © 1978 Methuen Children’s Books, Ltd.

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Suburban Nightmares: the Science Experiment


By Larry Hancock, Michael Cherkas, John van Bruggen & various (NBM)
ISBN: 978-0-91834-880-7

The huge outpouring of new comics which derived from the birth of American comicbooks’ Direct Sales revolution produced a plethora of innovative titles and creators – and, let’s be fair here – a host of appalling, derivative, knocked-off, banged-out plain and simple tat too.

Happily it’s my party 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-geared specialist retail outlets sprung up all over the country, operated by fans for fans, new publishers began to experiment with format 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 on-going picture stories 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.

New talent, established stars and fresh ideas all found a thriving forum to try something a little different both in terms of content and format. 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.

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

Moreover, much of the “kid’s stuff” stigma had finally dissipated and America was catching up to the rest of the world in acknowledging that sequential narrative might just be a for-real actual art-form, so the door was wide open for gosh-darned foreigners to make a few waves too…

One of the most critically acclaimed and just plain fun features came from semi-Canadian outfit Renegade Press which, spun out by a torturous and litigious process from Dave Sim’s Canadian Aardvark-Vanaheim publishing outfit, set up shop in the USA and began publishing at the very start of the black and white comics bubble in 1984, picking up a surprisingly strong line of creator-based properties and some genuinely remarkable and impressive new series such as Ms. Tree, Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire, Normalman, Flaming Carrot, the first iteration of Al Davison’s stunning Spiral Cage and the compulsive, stylish Cold War, flying-saucer paranoia-driven series The Silent Invasion amongst many others.

This stunningly stylish saga – which I simply must get around to soon – welded 1950s homeland terrors (invasion by Reds, invasion by aliens, invasion by new ideas…) with film noir and 20-20 hindsight and was a truly fresh and enticing concept in the Reagan-era Eighties, but of equal if not greater interest was the inclusion of ancillary back-up tales utilising the same milieu and themes which proved popular enough to springboard into their own short-lived title…

This first superbly oversized monochrome tome – a whopping 280 x 205mm – gathers that stand-alone material from The Silent Invasion and Suburban Nightmares with the three creators Larry Hancock, Michael Cherkas, John van Bruggen, and a few invited guests, playfully swapping jobs and pilfering/homaging other stylisations and forms to produce a delightful wealth of twisted tales and shocking stories that will, even now, astound fans of many classic genres such as sci-fi, horror, conspiracy theory, crime, romance and even comedy…

The 1950s in American was a hugely iconic and paradoxical time. Incredible scientific and cultural advancements and great wealth inexplicably arose amidst an atmosphere of immense social, racial, sexual and political repression with an increasingly paranoid populace seeing conspiracy and subversive attacks in every shadow and corner of the rest of the world.

Such an insular melting pot couldn’t help but be fertile soil for imaginative outsiders to craft truly incisive and evocative tales, especially when wedded to the nation’s fantastic –and ongoing – obsessions with rogue science, flying saucers, gangsterism and espionage…

In 1983 the temptation was clearly too much for the USA’s less panicky northern neighbours, and Hancock, Cherkas & Van Bruggen brilliantly mined the era for these stunning, stylish and clever yarns, subsequently pulling off the impossible trick of re-capturing a fleeting zeitgeist…

The macabre, mirth, mood and menace commences with the eponymous 4-part thriller ‘The Science Experiment’ (script by Hancock, pencils Van Bruggen, inks and letters from Cherkas) set in the early boom years of the 1950s, wherein an idyllic new town built on the edge of an operational government atomic bomb testing site slowly reveals its terrible dark secret…

In ‘Welcome to Green Valley’ the latest ultra-modern planned community in Nevada accepts new school science teacher Sam Donaldson and his wife Ruth with open arms. They’re the perfect nuclear family with son Rusty already making friends at Hoover High and another baby on the way. Soon they’re all getting on famously with everybody – or at least the adults are…

However, soon after flirtatious neighbour Theresa Morrow confides to Ruth that she’s also expecting, the poor thing has a minor fall. When the concerned Donaldsons warn the doctor, they receive the tragic but impossible news that Theresa has inexplicably died, but was “never pregnant”…

In the shadow of a fresh mushroom cloud, ‘An Ill Wind blows in Green Valley’ sees bereft Barry Morrow turning to drink whilst Sam meets Hospital administrator Dr. Stewart Carver; a keen fan and follower of the regular nuclear spectacle occurring fifty miles outside his office window…

Still unsettled, Sam checks out a few books about radiation from the local library, unaware that by doing so he’s made it onto a very special and secret list…

His concern increases when he inadvertently learns that his predecessor at Hoover High consulted the same tomes before mysteriously quitting and disappearing, but it’s Principal Daniels who panics when Donaldson finds that some of old Charlie Simmer‘s notes and school journals are languishing in a box at school secretary Madge‘s house…

Too busy and wrapped up to help his son Rusty with his science project, Sam goes to Madge’s house only to find she’s been burgled. Although the place has been ransacked the only thing missing is Simmer’s journals, but before he can process it all, Barry attacks Sam, accusing Donaldson of having had an affair with Theresa…

‘Dark Secrets of Green Valley’ finds Sam barracked by Principal Daniels, another atomic apologist who can’t contemplate any thought that radioactive fallout might be harmful. Whilst Ruth is having an ante-natal check-up, Carver confronts Sam and accuses him of scaremongering, confiding also that the hospital has been running a government-sponsored survey into radiation for years and that the atomic tests are categorically harmless…

Sam is unconvinced, especially as he has noticed how few young children live in the bustling town. Dwelling on the fact that the Hospital’s huge maternity unit has only one baby in it, he leaves with Ruth but all such thoughts are driven from him when Barry tries to run them down in the parking lot…

Horrific answers are forthcoming in the shocking conclusion when the now rational and repentant Barry meets the Sam and discloses his own part in a shocking conspiracy to cover-up what radiation does to foetuses and the outrageous and draconian steps taken by a panicking government desperate not to lose face…especially after spending so much money building the perfect City of Tomorrow…

The mysteriously low conception rate is explained at last but when Sam points out how Barry is still deluding himself and underestimating the lengths Carver has gone to, ‘The Fate of Green Valley’ inevitably culminates in a welter of blood and death…

After the compelling tension and trauma of the title tale, ‘Be Home Before it gets Dark!’ (scripted by Hancock and printed from Van Bruggen’s unlinked pencils) switches tone if not time-period as a little lad desperate to prove his bravery stays out late with the big kids and learns that sometimes there really are monsters in the night, after which ‘Buster Takes a Nap’ describes the problems that occur when a provident, prudent and friendly family promise too many friends and neighbours a place in their brand new bomb shelter. Of course they’ll never really have to honour those pledges, will they…?

‘The Inheritance’, with Cherkas tackling all the art chores, recounts a little boy’s tale about the scary man next door. We all know about those grouches; shouting, cursing, destroying kid’s toys and digging the gardens in the middle of the night, but this one was really mean. Perhaps that’s why so many kids ran away from home and were never seen again…

Stanley Morrison was ‘Just another Joe’ (script by Hancock, pencils Van Bruggen, inks Cherkas); a decent, loyal American in suburban Apple Hill who sold insurance and spent his spare time denouncing colleagues and neighbours to the FBI for un-American activities. It was mere coincidence that they all just happened to be more successful or popular than him. Of course, a guy like that is really hard to live with, but his long-suffering wife was a decent, loyal American too…

Veteran inker Bob Smith joined Van Bruggen & Hancock for the paranoid tribute to the earth-shattering advent of Rock ‘n’ Roll as Mrs. Ellen Nelson ruminates on why her son is acting so weird. What makes him hide in his room for hours at a time? It might be Martian abduction, atomic mutation, government meddling, commie mind-manipulation or something even worse ‘For all we Know’…

Bob Nevin always took the 7:13 train to his job in the city but his tidy, happy life began to instantly and inexplicably unravel the day he caught ‘The Seven-Thirty-Three’ in a surreal and chilling homage to the Twilight Zone pencilled by Cherkas and inked by Van Bruggen, whilst the edgily sardonic ‘Suburban Blight’ saw the illustrators trade places to recount the all-out war between a man and the dandelions that desecrated his otherwise perfect lawn before this splendid initial collection concludes with the Hancock & Cherkas fantasy ‘June 1953’ wherein diligent and hard-working Larry Hillman doesn’t come home one night…

When he turns up the next day Larry is a changed man. Now happy, calm and friendly, he quits his job, ignores all his responsibilities and begs his family to come with him when the aliens who abducted him return in a month to take them all to the perfect world of Alpha Centauri…

Crafted in a boldly adventurous range of visual styles and long-overdue for a modern revival, these beguiling and enthralling Suburban Nightmares are an unforgettable gateway to a eerily familiar yet comfortably exotic era and one no fan of thriller fiction can afford to ignore.
Suburban Nightmares: the Science Experiment ©1990 Michael Cherkas, Larry Hancock and John van Bruggen. Other stories © 1986, 1987, 1988 Michael Cherkas, Larry Hancock and John van Bruggen. All rights reserved. NBM Publishing

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Video Clips


By Liberatore & various (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-015-4
(1985) ISBN-10: 0874160154 Dimensions: 8.5 x 0.2 x 11 inches

Italian arts superstar Gaetano “Tanino” Liberatore was born in 1953 in Quadri in the province of Chieti. He 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 iconoclastic writer, artist and publisher Stefano Tamburini in 1978 and 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.

Liberatore was rapidly developing 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 short complete 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.

Some of those aforementioned short fiction pieces comprise the contents of this bleakly disturbing, ultra-violent yet oddly philosophical exploration of the consuming effects of media and fashion.

When his great collaborator Tamburini died 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.

Still available but desperately in need of a modern re-release, Video Clips gathers seven short, sweet and sour, vitriolic, challenging thrillers by the stylishly abrasive young Liberatore beginning with the self-authored ‘Real Vision’ in which a young celebrity-fuelled punk commits atrocious acts of violence on a mother and child simply to commit “suicide by television” after which the Tamburini-penned ‘Earth versus Saturn’ turns a wickedly sardonic eye on movie mania as a scout party for invading aliens picks the wrong bar to begin their fact finding mission. Of course, it would have helped if they hadn’t used thirties movies stars as templates for their temporary Earth-bodies…

He also scripted ‘E.M.P.S.: Erotic Management for People’s Socialism’ – an outrageous spoof of psychology, political correctness and sexual repression in a hilarious and shocking science fiction setting, whilst the deeply disturbing ‘Shut-In’ by Bruce Jones might be familiar to older American readers as it first appeared in Twisted Tales #7, detailing the saucy, savage hidden hi-jinks of a babysitter and her abusive jock boyfriend as they mischievously tend to a stroke-paralysed senior citizen one night – and of course there’s a superb sting in this tale…

‘Bololy Folly’ is another Tamburini psycho-thriller as the latest technology to tame “wild chromosomes” and bad behaviour cataclysmically comes a-cropper on live television whilst ‘Watch Out for Hot Flashes’ – scripted by the enigmatic G. Setbon – offers a more traditional tale as the world’s greatest fashion model offers an exclusive chance to the photographers who made her famous. Sadly she’s the one doing the shooting but her murderous motives simply defy all logic…

This powerfully compelling collection ends with another Tamburini tale as ‘Tiamotti’ describes the trials of three bomb-making anarchists as they try to defeat a security system which can read their minds and deliver a fusillade of withering gunfire in the blink of an eye…

Crafted in a range of palettes from tension-wracked monochrome line-art to tantalising tonal washes, and even including three lush full-colour paint jobs, this sexy, severe and staggeringly violent tome is a superb introduction to the graphic genius and brutal worlds of Liberatore: places no adult fan of sequential narrative can see without being changed forever…
Art © 1985 Gaetano Liberatore. All stories © 1985 their respective authors. English language edition © 1985 Catalan Communications, All rights reserved.

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Rebel


By Pepe Moreno & others (Catalan Communications/IDW)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-020-8 (1986)      978-1-60010-495-4 (2009)

Born in 1954, Spanish creator Pepe Moreno began his comics career, illustrating for horror and adventure anthologies and children’s papers such as S.O.S., Pumby and Pulgarcito, Star and Bliz.

He moved to America in 1977, briefly working for Jim Warren’s Creepy, Eerie 1984/1994 and Vampirella titles, as well as humour magazine National Lampoon before gravitating to Heavy Metal where his short, uncompromising post-punk strips (collected in the album Zeppelin) caught the attention of Epic Illustrated editor Archie Goodwin.

The breakthrough strip Generation Zero led to the graphic novel Rebel, as well as successor’s Joe’s Air Force and Gene Kong, but ever-restless, Moreno’s growing fascination with technology led him first into animation (Tiger Sharks, Thunder Cats and Silver Hawks) and eventually into the budding, formative field of computer illustration, resulting in a return to comics for the high-profile computer-generated futuristic Batman thriller Digital Justice.

He created an early CD-ROM thriller with Hellcab in 1993 and, these days, spends most of his time working in high-end video games.

Imagined and executed in the politically contentious and conservative mid-Eighties when dystopian dreams of fallen empires abounded and post-apocalyptic survivalism was the prevailing zeitgeist, Rebel – conceived and illustrated by the Spaniard and scripted by English-speakers Robb Hingley, Pete Ciccone & Kenny Sylvester (with an additional tip of the hat to Charis Moe) depicted, in a blaze of pop-art style and colour a future that never came…

2002AD: when Rockabilly gangs, Mohawks, Asian Zeros, Skinheads and a dozen other fashion-punks tribes warred and raced weaponised Hot-rods amidst the fallen skyscrapers of New York, whilst the authorities in absentia used their draconian Sanitation Police to cleanse the streets of young scum…

After a second Civil War and the fall of American civilisation, “decent” men and women retreated to purpose-built Cosmo City and left the Big Apple to rot. Now, decades later, gangs scavenge the shambles for food, tech and fuel for their hybridised, customised vehicles whilst the new civilisation’s fascistic forces attempt to re-establish order. However Sanitation Police commander Major Kessler, working closely with decadent Skinhead overlord Doll, is hiding a dark secret: every deviant captured either ends up a gladiator in slave games or spare-parts for a thriving organ-legging racket to extend the worthless lives of the elite of Cosmo…

After another destructive drag race through the streets, a number of gangers are arrested under the spurious “Social Hygiene Act” but a hidden sniper quickly and efficiently despatches the smugly murderous cops. The grateful bad boys have been saved by a legendary urban warrior – Rebel…

The mystery man has built a close-knit team from his base in Brooklyn and, when a supply run to scavenge food, fuel and beer leads to a pitched street battle with rival Black Knights, the scabrous Doll points out the hero to his paymaster with a scheme to end the charismatic leader’s resistance.

Kessler, however, recognises an old friend and deduces Rebel’s true identity…

Even as the assorted gangs fruitlessly and perpetually battle each other, Rebel is trying to organise a concerted resistance to the Cosmo City invaders. As well he might, since years ago when they were an honest army of liberation, he was one of their greatest soldiers.

Once the war was over and the victors became as bad as the oppressors they had overturned, the disillusioned and dangerous Lt. Lawrence disappeared and Rebel was born…

As Kessler organises a massive armed response in New York to ferret out the traitor, Rebel springs a brilliant tactical attack and decimates the Sanitation Police forces. In the aftermath, subversives from Cosmo approach him, begging the forgotten warrior to return and overturn the corrupt government of the austere super-city…

However, when the troubled Rebel returns to his Brooklyn base, he finds a scene of torture and carnage. Doll and his savage minions have destroyed the citadel and taken Lawrence’s lover Lori hostage.

Chained naked to the spire of the single remaining tower of the ancient World Trade Center, she is helpless, tantalising bait which Rebel cannot resist. Even so, not only must the living legend storm a tower filled with brutal thugs who hate his guts, but unknown to all, Kessler has engaged an entire division of helicopter gunships to eradicate the inspirational leader’s threat forever…

But the Rebel has a plan. A bold, spectacular impossibly dangerous plan…

Mythical, ultra-violent and rather nonsensical in strictly logical terms, Rebel is a powerful and exuberant paean to the fashions, memes and visual tropes of that tumultuous era, moulding social fantasy and grinding realpolitik into a graphic rollercoaster ride that combines the grimy meta-reality of Mad Max and Escape from New York with the gaudy, glitzy flourish of Xanadu and the dour stylish pessimism of Brazil.

In 2009 IDW and Digital Fusion released a remastered and expanded edition in a reduced page size (260x165mm as opposed to the original’s 269x208mm album format) with computer-enhanced colour that sadly sacrificed much of the vivid, pinball and poster hues which made the original such a quirky treat, but as both are still readily available online, one quick look at the teaser art for each should enable you to pay your money and make your preferred taste choice…
© 1986 Pepe Moreno. English language edition © 1986 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

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Footrot Flats Book 7


By Murray Ball (Orin Books)
ISSN: 0156-6172

New Zealand’s greatest natural wonder and National Treasure is a comic strip. Footrot Flats is one of the funniest comic strips ever created, designed as a practical antidote to idealistic pastoral fantasy and bucolic self-deception and concocted in 1975 by cartoonist and comics artist Murray Ball after returning to his New Zealand homeland, from an extended work tour of the UK and other, lesser climes.

The fantastical farm feature ran for a quarter of a century, appearing in newspapers on four continents until 1994 when Ball retired it, citing reasons as varied as the death of his own dog and the state of New Zealand politics. Such a success naturally spawned a multitude of merchandising material such as strip compendia, calendars and special editions released regularly from 1978 onwards.

Once Ball officially ceased the daily feature he began periodically releasing books of all-new material until 2000, with a net yield of 27 collections of the daily strip, 8 volumes of Sunday pages dubbed “Weekenders”, 5 pocket books and ancillary publications such as “school kits” aimed at younger fans and their harried parents.

There was a stage musical, a theme park and in 1986 a truly superb feature-length animated film. The Dog’s Tail Tale became New Zealand’s top-grossing film (and remained so until Peter Jackson started associating with Hobbits) – track it down on video or petition the BBC to show it again – it’s been decades, for Pete’s sake…

The well-travelled, extremely gifted and deeply dedicated Mr. Ball had originally moved to England in the early 1960s, becoming a cartoonist for Punch (producing Stanley the Palaeolithic Hero and All the King’s Comrades) as well as drawing numerous strips for DC Thompson and Fleetway and even concocting a regular political satire strip in Labour Weekly.

After marrying he returned to the Old Country and resettled in 1974 – but not to retire…

Ball was busier than ever once he’d bought a small-holding on the North Island to farm in his “spare time”, which inevitably led to the strip under review.

Taking the adage “write what you know” to startling, heartbreaking and occasionally stomach-turning heights, the peripatetic pencil-pusher broke most of the laws of relativity to make time for these captivatingly insane episodes concerning the highs and lows – and most frequently “absurds” – of the rural entrepreneur as experienced by the earthily metaphoric Wallace Footrot Cadwallader: a bloke never too-far removed from mud, mayhem, ferocity and frustration…

Wal is a big, bluff farmer. He likes his grub; loves his sport – Rugby, Football (the Anzac sort, not the kiddie version Yanks call Soccer) Cricket, Golf(ish) and even hang-gliding; each in its proper season and at no other, since he just wants the easiest time a farmer’s life can offer…

Wal owns a small sheep farm (the eponymous Footrot Flats) honestly described as “400 acres of swamp between Ureweras and the Sea”.

With his chief – and only – hand Cooch Windgrass (a latter-day Francis of Assisi), and a verbose and avuncular sheepdog, Wal enjoys being his own boss – as much as the farm cat, goats, chickens, livestock and his auntie will let him…

Other persons of perennial interest include Wal’s fierce and prickly little niece Janice – known to all as Pongo, the aforementioned Aunt Dolly (AKA the sternly staunch and starched Dolores Monrovia Godwit Footrot), smart-ass local lad Rangi Wiremu Waka Jones, Dolly’s pompous and pampered Corgi Prince Charles and Pew, a sadistic, inventive, obsessed and vengeful magpie who bears an unremitting grudge against Wal…

When not living in terror of the monumental moggy dubbed “Horse”, teasing the corpulent Corgi or panic-attacking himself in imagined competition with noble hunting hound Major, the Dog narrates and hosts the strip.

A cool, imaginative and overly sentimental know-all and blowhard, Dog is utterly devoted to his, for want of a better term, Master – unless there’s food about, or Jess the sheepdog bitch is in heat again. However, the biggest and most terrifying scene-stealer was that fulsome feline Horse; a monstrous and imperturbable tomcat who lords it over every living thing in the district …

One of the powerful and persistent clichés of life is that to make people laugh one truly needs to experience tragedy and, having only recently lost my own four-footed studio-mate and constant companion of 15 years, I can certainly empathise with the artist’s obvious manly distress as this otherwise magnificently hilarious collection is movingly dedicated to the uniquely charming real-world inspiration for the battered and bewhiskered juggernaut… which only makes the comedy capers contained within even more bittersweet and effective, beginning with the poem to his departed companion and the bluff, brisk photo tribute which opens proceedings…

Once again the funny businesses comes courtesy of the loquacious canine softie, taking time out from eking out his daily crusts (and oysters and biscuits and cake and lamb’s tails and scraps and chips and…) and alternately getting on with or annoying the sheep, cows, bull, goat, hogs, ducks, bugs, cats, horses and geese, as well as sucking up to the resolutely hostile wildlife and the decidedly odd humans his owner knows or is related to.

Dog – his given name is an embarrassing, closely and violently guarded secret – loves Wal but always tries to thwart him if the big bloke is trying to do unnecessarily necessary farm chores such as chopping down trees, burning out patches of scrub, culling livestock, or trying to mate with the pooch’s main rival Darlene “Cheeky” Hobson, hairdresser-in-residence of the nearest town. As is also the case with the adoring comradeship of proper blokes, Dog is never happier than when embarrassing his mate in front of others, which explains the pages extracted from Wal’s old albums, showing the man to be in various humiliating baby shots and schoolboy scrapes…

Following on is the epic adventure ‘The Invasion of the Murphy Dogs’ – barbaric hounds from a neighbouring farm only afraid of one thing…

This extra-large (262x166mm) landscape monochrome seventh volume again comes from Australian Publisher Orin Books and continues the policy of dividing the strips into approximately seasonal sequences, and after a few more all-original cartoons again opens with ‘Spring’ – the busiest season of the farmer’s year (apart from the other three) concentrates on Pew’s first attempts at avian home-making, Dog’s libido, horny farmers and hussy-hairdressers, loopy lambs, wild pigs, killer eels and cricket, as well as an extended sequence in which Wal and the Dog become involved in the local school’s curriculum and cuisine…

Once the long hot ‘Summer’ settles in, bringing fun with chicken-shearing, busy bees, a plague of carnivorous Wekas, thistles, Horse’s softer side(!) and his war with Pongo and Aunt Dolly, Hare infestations, river-rafting, Irish Murphy’s Pigs (far worse than his dogs), Cheeky’s picnic charm-offensive and the growing closeness of Rangi and Pongo…

‘Autumn’ brings piglets, scrub-burning, the revenge of dispossessed magpies, amorous bovines, fun with artificial insemination, fence-lining and back country cattle, honey-harvesting, darts and rugby, a confused ram who’d rather pursue Dolly than associate with eager ewes and Horse’s crucial role in the war against the magpies…

As ‘Winter’ again closes in, offering floods, the mixed messy joy of lambing season, mud, mad goats, whitebait fishing and footy, Wal unwisely agrees to take a class of schoolkids and their puritanical, prudish and priggish teacher on an eye-opening nature-lesson around Footrot Flats. Touched by the painful experience, the bluff cove then volunteers to coach the school’s sports and, after much humiliation, spends the rest of the book discovering how hard – and, for observers, funny – farming in a plaster cast can be…

As you’d expect, the comedy content is utterly, absolutely top-rate and the extended role played throughout by the surly star Horse all the more poignant…

Ball is one of those gifted few who can actually imbue a few lines on paper with the power of Shakespeare’s tragedy and the manic hilarity of jester geniuses such as Tommy Cooper or the Marx Brothers. When combined with his sharp, incisive yet warmly human writing the result is sheer, irresistible magic.

In the early 1990s Titan Books published British editions of the first three volumes and German, Japanese, Chinese and American translations also exist, as well as the marvellous Australian compendia reviewed here – as ever the internet is your friend…

Dry, surreal and wonderfully self-deprecating, Footrot Flats always successfully wedded together sarcasm, satire, slapstick and strikingly apt surrealism in a perfect union of pathos and down to earth (and up to your eyebrows) fun that was and still is utterly addicting, exciting and just plain wonderful.

Plant the seeds for a lifetime of laughs by harvesting this or indeed any volume and you’ll soon see a bumper crop of fun irrespective of the weather or market forces…
© 1981-1982 Murray Ball. All Rights Reserved.

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The Town That Didn’t Exist


By Enki Bilal & Pierre Christin, translated by Tom Leighton (Titan Books & Humanoids Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-85286-147-6 (1989)      978-1-93065-237-8 (2003)

Here’s a masterpiece of subtle moody comics storytelling criminally out of print and long overdue for rediscovery in the frankly incomprehensible modern English language comics marketplace.

Enes Bilalović AKA Enki Bilal was born in Belgrade in 1951 and broke into French comics in 1972 with Le Bal Maudit for Pilote. Throughout the 1970s he grew in skill and fame, and achieved English-language celebrity once his work began appearing in America’s Heavy Metal magazine.

Although best known for his self-scripted Nikopol Trilogy (Gods in Chaos, The Woman Trap and Cold Equator) this bleakly contemplative anti-capitalist fable always felt like a tale the socially-concerned and intellectually aware Serbian would like to be best remembered for; again scripted by old comrade Christin, and arguably Bilal’s most evocative and plaintive work.

In recent years Bilal returned to contemporary political themes with his much-lauded, self-penned Hatzfeld Tetralogy…

As if writing one of the most successful and significant comics series in the world (the groundbreaking and influential Valérian and Laureline series) was not enough, full-time Academician Pierre Christin has still found time over the years to script science-fiction novels, screenplays and a broad selection of comics, beginning in 1966 with Le Rhum du Punch with Valérian co-creator Jean-Claude Mézières.

The truly prolific Christin has produced stellar graphic stories with such artistic luminaries as Jacques Tardi, Raymond Poïvet, Annie Goetzinger, François Boucq, Jijé and many others, but whenever he collaborated with the brilliant Bilal, beginning in 1975 with their exotic and surreal Légendes d’Aujourd’hui or in other classic tales such as The Hunting Party or The Black Order Brigade, the results have never been less than stunning.

In this captivating, slyly polemical parable, aspiration, disdain, idealism and human nature have never been more coldly and clearly depicted…

Beginning and ending with a dream of something better, The Town That Didn’t Exist focuses on the recent past and the country’s depressed industrial North, where a strike at the cement works has prompted the death of the aged oligarch who has ruled the town and district of Jadencourt like a feudal baron for decades.

Generations of Hannard have run the web of businesses that put food on the table of the workers, but now that their first ever industrial action has killed the old man, tensions, passions, opinions and rumours are running wild…

With Hannard’s cronies and yes-men equally unsure of their futures, the Board of Directors gathers to determine who will lead the company in the trying times ahead and are compelled to accept that the old man’s solitary, long-sequestered invalid granddaughter has to take the helm – even if in name only…

With workers terrified of losing even their meagre subsistence livelihood and the comfortably installed fat-cats fearing the surrender of so very much more, the pallid, ethereal Madeleine Hannard is dragged from the bleak, rugged and lonely beach and house which have been her refuge for seven years and moves into the morass of boiling cauldrons, bubbling and brewing amidst the closed and grimy alleys of Jadencourt…

She soon proves to be as powerful a personality as her grandfather and by charm, duplicity and force of will manages to unite the perpetually warring and self-serving sides on management and labour in an incredible, groundbreaking, benignly doctrinaire project.

Ignoring cries to rationalise the companies, lay off workers and reorganise the corporation, Madeleine counters with an insane proposal: expansion, full employment and a retasking of every commercial and design resource into the construction of a fantastic, enclosed and self-perpetuating City under a dome – a utopian paradise where everybody will live in perfect harmony forever free from want and need…

The hardest people to convince are the downtrodden workers who have the most to gain, but once they are aboard the plan proceeds apace. Within a year Jadencourt is gone and an utterly unique paradise under glass is filled with the once hopeless and aspiration-deprived citizenry…

However, some people cannot be satisfied even when they have everything they ever dreamed of…

A telling and effective portrayal of greed, self-interest, disillusionment and the innate snobbery plaguing every class of modern society, this lyrically uncompromising examination of the failure of even the most benign tyranny is a mesmerising, beguiling and chilling parable which methodically skins the hide from an idealistic dream and spills the dark hot guts of guilt, arrogance and the pursuit of power in a sublime example of graphic narrative’s unique facility to tell a story on a number of levels.

In 1989 Titan Books released The Town That Didn’t Exist in a captivating softcover album as part of their push to popularise European comics classics, and in 2003  Humanoids Publishing published a sturdy oversized (315x 238mm) hardback edition for the US market, either of which will delight any fan in search of a more mature and thought-provoking reading experience.
© 1989 Dargaud Editeur, Paris by Christin & Bilal. English language edition © 1990 Titan Books. All Rights Reserved.

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The Sinners


By Alec Stevens (Piranha Press/DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-061-1

During the explosively expansive 1980s comics publishing exponentially enlarged with new companies offering a vast range of fresh titles and ideas. To combat this explosion of upstarts and Young Turks, Marvel and DC also instigated and created innovative material for those freshly growing markets, with the latter cartoon colossus especially targeting readers for whom old-fashioned comicbooks were anathema …or at least a long-abandoned dalliance.

DC created a number of new, more mature-oriented imprints such as Vertigo and Helix, but some of the most intriguing projects came out of their Piranha Press sub-division, which formed in 1989, floundered about for a few years and was finally re-designated Paradox Press in 1993.

When DC founded this mature-readers special projects imprint, the resulting publications and reader’s reaction to them were wildly mixed. It had long been a Holy Grail of the business to produce comics for people who don’t read comics and, despite the inherent logical flaw, that’s a pretty sound and sensible plan.

However, the delivery of such is always problematic. Is the problem resistance to the medium?

Then try radical art and narrative styles, unusual typography and talent from outside or on the margins of the medium to tell your stories. There were certainly some intriguing results but the product sadly did not reach a new audience whilst often simultaneously alienating those bold yet traditional comics readers already on board…

This eclectic and overwhelmingly effective tome was one of my favourites and, of course, simultaneously one of the least appreciated…

An American Air Force brat, Alex Preston Stevens was born in Salvador, Brazil in 1965, and grew up wherever his father was posted. A committed Christian, the junior Stevens was a professional illustrator by the time he was 20, working for The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Readers Digest, and musical periodicals Pulse! and Classical Pulse! Simultaneously he began selling comic strips, many of them adaptations of literary classics, to Fantagraphics, Kitchen Sink, Heavy Metal and Dark Horse’s Deadline: USA. After this particular all-original work and the companion piece Hardcore he moved on to work for Paradox Press and Gaiman’s Sandman before forming his own imprint Calvary Comics and dedicating himself to specifically spiritual graphic novels and pictorial biographies such as Glory to God, Sadhu Sundar Singh, E. J. Pace: Christian Cartoonist, Erlo Stegen and the Revival Among the Zulus and Clendennen: Soldier of the Cross.

The Sinners was created at a time when the industry was heading into a speculator-fed and gimmick-fuelled decline and deals adroitly – and with dreamlike meta-fictionality – the nature of a fall and road to redemption in its compulsive tale-within-a-tale…

An aged beggar travels from town to town, his hard life leavened by constant introspection. As he wanders he recalls his past, slipping further into dotage, abandoning and casting off snippets of  memory and personal history as he determinedly devolves into a blissful second childhood, free of doubt, worry or responsibility.

It was not always so.

As his life plays over in his head once again he sees the child he once was: small, lost in a large family and tormented by siblings who despised or ignored him. His father was an official in the Government, absent for long periods or at home and drunkenly inaccessible. Other than his dutiful mother, the boy was outcast, brimming with unexpressed love no one would acknowledge or reciprocate…

School repeated and intensified the situation: his only solace coming in the form of a passionate teacher who filled him with religious fervour. Years passed and he became a social leper. Nobody knew him or wanted to and as tensions grew in the household he became invisible even to his mother.

After a violent family confrontation he fled and was struck by a vehicle which propelled him into a world of joyous fraternity, a paradise of mannered elegance where the only directive was to be happy.

But even here his outsider’s gloom tainted everything…

When he awoke he was back in his room. He brother would no longer speak to him and his father had gone.

The shunned one left school after being blamed for torturing a simple-headed lad – a deed actually perpetrated by the most popular boy in class – and, forging graduating papers, attended a small obscure university. Even here he was an outsider, finding few friends or lovers and these only for the briefest of moments.

Leaving, he drifted, becoming ever more removed from a society that wouldn’t tolerate him, eventually falling into the distant and disassociated company of Absinthe drinkers. Eventually he returned to his childhood home, only to find it a charred ruin, just moments before his tormented father executed a harsh, self-imposed sentence for his life of cruel neglect and abuse…

Witnessing this act of self-immolation suddenly shattered the son’s brutally suppressed and repressed passions and, on a raging tide of emotion, the transformed outcast began a life of wandering, embracing each day and all people, eschewing plans and dreams and even anticipation, taking each day as it came until eventually they would come no more…

Wistful, playful, powerful and oddly elegiac, this moodily moving exploration of humanity and fate is a supremely effective and thoughtful parable for the unavoidable bad times in our lives, beautifully rendered and scarily evocative.

Challenging and strictly for mature readers, The Sinners offers a decidedly different comics experience for those readers in search of something beyond fights and frights and cosmic disasters…

© 1989 Alec Stevens. All rights reserved.

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W.E. Johns’ Biggles and the Golden Bird


By Björn Karlström, translated by Peter James (Hodder and Stoughton)
ISBN: 978-0-34023-081-7 (hb) 0-340-23081-9 (pb)

Although one of the most popular and enduring of all True Brit heroes, air detective Squadron Leader James Bigglesworth – immortally known as “Biggles” – has never been the star of British comics you’d reasonably expect.

Whilst the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Dick Turpin, Sexton Blake, Dick Barton and others have regularly made the jump to sequential pictorials, as far as I can determine the only time Biggles hit the funny pages was as a beautiful strip illustrated firstly by Ron Embleton and later Mike Western for the lush, tabloid-sized photogravure weekly TV Express (issues 306-376, 1960-1962). Even then the strip was based on the 1960 television series rather than the armada of books and short stories generated over Johns’ 56-year career.

Much of this superb stuff has been reprinted in French editions but remains criminally uncollected in the UK. Indeed Biggles is huge all over the Continent, particularly Holland, Belgium and France, which makes it doubly galling that only a short-lived Swedish interpretation of Biggles has ever made the transition back to Blighty…

Created by World War 1 flying veteran and aviation enthusiast William Earl Johns (February 5th 1893-June 21st 1968), the airborne adventures of Biggles, his cousin the Hon. Algernon Montgomery Lacey AKA “Algy”, Ginger Hebblethwaite and their trusty mechanic and dogsbody Flight Sergeant Smyth ran as prose thrillers in the magazines Modern Boy, Popular Flying and Flying – periodicals which he designed, edited and even illustrated for.

Initially aimed at an older audience, the Biggles stories quickly became a staple of boy’s entertainment in anthology and full novels (nearly 100 between 1932 and 1968) and a true cultural icon. Utilising the unique timeless quality of proper heroes, Biggles and Co. have waged their dauntless war against evil as combatants in World Wars I and II, as Special Air Detectives for Scotland Yard in the interregnum of 1918-1939 and as freelance agents and adventurers in the Cold War years…

“Captain” W.E. Johns was one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century and wrote over 160 books in total as well as innumerable features and articles ranging from gardening to treasure-hunting, aviation, crime fiction, pirates and historical fact and fiction.

He created many heroic novel series which shared the same continuity as Biggles: 6 Steeley novels starring Deeley Montfort Delaroy, a WWI fighter ace-turned-crimebuster between 1936-1939, 10 volumes of commando Captain Lorrington King AKA Gimlet (1943-1954) and a 10 volume science fiction saga starring retired RAF Group Captain Timothy ‘Tiger’ Clinton, his son Rex and boffin Professor Lucius Brane who voyaged to the stars in a cosmic ray powered spaceship between 1954 and 1963.

Although much of his work is afflicted with the parochial British jingoism and racial superiority that blights much of the fiction of the early 20th century, he was certainly ahead of his time in areas of class and gender equality. Although Algy is a purely traditional plucky Toff, working class Ginger is an equal partner and participant in all things, whilst Flight Officer Joan Worralson was a WAAF pilot who starred in 11 Worrals novels between 1941 and 1950, commissioned by the Air Ministry to encourage women to enlist in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

In 1977, veteran Swedish author and cartoonist Björn Karlström returned to comics when publisher Semics commissioned him to produce four new Biggles adventures; ‘Het Sargasso mysterie’, ‘Operatie goudvis’, ‘De tijger bende’ and ‘Ruimtestation Aries’ (The Sargasso Mystery, Operation Goldfish, The Tiger Gang and Space Station Aries, respectively) which were picked up by Hodder and Stoughton in 1978, deftly translated by Peter James and released as Biggles and the Sargasso Triangle, Biggles and the Golden Bird, Biggles and the Tiger and Biggles and the Menace from Space.

Although deeply mired in the stylisation and tone of Hergé’s Tintin, to my mind the most authentic-seeming to Johns’ core concept was the second, which I’ve chosen for today’s international festival.

Swedish designer, author and aviation enthusiast Björn Karlström began working in comics for the vast Scandinavian market in 1938, producing scale-model plans and drawings for the magazine Flygning. In 1941 he created the adventure strip ‘Jan Winther’ for them before devising international speculative fiction hit ‘Johnny Wiking’ and followed up with another SF classic which closely foreshadowed the microscopic missionaries of (Otto Klement, Jerome Bixby and Isaac Asimov’s) Fantastic Voyage in ‘En Resa i Människokroppen’ (1943-1946), before taking over Lennart Ek’s successful super-heroine strip ‘Dotty Virvelvind’ in 1944.

Karlström left comics at the end of the war and returned to illustration and commercial design, working on jet fighters for Saab and trucks for Scania.

Whereas most of his earlier comics were rendered in a passable imitation of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, when he was convinced to produce the Biggles books Karlström adopted a raw, lean version of Hergé’s Ligne Claire style which adds a welcome sense of period veracity to the tales but often offends and upsets Tintin purists…

Biggles and the Golden Bird is set in the early 1930s and begins when the aerial paladins are asked to pilot a new super plane in an attempt to break the world long-distance flying record. Fact freaks might be intrigued to discover that the Fairview of this story is closely based on the record-smashing Fairey Long Range Monoplane, which stars in a cool plans and diagrams section at the back that also includes the DeHavilland C-24 Autogiro which also features prominently in this ripping yarn…

When mysterious intruders brazenly steal the Fairview, intelligence supremo General Raymond dispatches Biggles, Algy and Ginger to track them down and retrieve the prototype air-machine. A crashed light plane and a rustic witness point the trio in the direction of Scotland and dashing North in a ministry-provided autogiro (that’s a cross between a plane and an early kind of helicopter) they rendezvous with a fishing boat whose captain also witnessed strange sky shenanigans only to be attacked and overcome…

Their enigmatic adversaries had anticipated the pursuit and laid a trap, but with a typical display of pluck and fortune Ginger turns the tables and drives off the thugs. The real Captain Gilbert then imparts his information and the autogiro brings them to a desolate ruined castle on a rocky headland, where Ginger and Algy are captured by an armed gang whilst poor Biggles plunges over a cliff to certain doom…

Naturally the Ace Aviator saves himself at the last moment and subsequently discovers a sub-sea cavern and deep-sea diving operation just as his pals cunningly escape captivity. Fortuitously meeting up the trio follow their foes and find a sunken U-Boat full of gold…

The uncanny reason for the theft of the Fairview and the mastermind behind it all is revealed when arch-enemy and all-around blackguard Erich von Stalhein arrives to collect the recovered bullion and flee to a new life in distant lands, leading to a blistering battle and spectacular showdown…

Fast and furious, full of fights and hairsbreadth chases – although perhaps a touch formulaic and too steeped in the old-fashioned traditions for grizzled purists – this light and snappy tale would delight newer readers and general action fans and is readily available in both hardback and softcover editions, since the books were re-released in 1983 in advance of the star-studded but controversial British film-flop Biggles: Adventures in Time.
Characters © W.E. Johns (Publications). Text and pictures © 1978 Björn Karlstrm. English text © 1978 Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.

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I gather that there’s some sort of extended International Sports Day happening here in London over the next few weeks which its Corporate sponsors won’t allow me – or any other individual – to mention under pain of litigation.

Nevertheless, in what I perceive to be the true spirit of modern games – i.e. mercilessly cashing in for all you can get and exploiting the damned thing for all it’s worth – I’m going to dedicate the next couple of weeks to reviewing the works of international creators I might not have got around to for ages under normal circumstances.

As you’d expect, sometimes I’ve had to stretch a point to fulfil my own tacky criteria…

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The Rainbow Orchid Volume 3 (the Adventures of Julius Chancer)


By Garen Ewing (Egmont UK)
ISBN: 978-1-4052-5599-8

Plucky True Brit Julius Chancer and his fellow daredevil travellers began popping up around 2003 in self-published mini-comics and small press publications  – I wish there was a less loaded or pejorative term for magazines produced by devoted, if unpaid, creators – before migrating online (see www.rainboworchid.co.uk) to rapturous praise from industry and public alike.

Tintin publisher Egmont sagaciously picked up the series and in 2009 released the first part of the rousing trilogy which fabulously referenced old world fantasy romances for this new yarn of gripping globe-girdling, treasure-seeking derring-do, which has quickly become a notable addition to the ranks of magnificent all-ages full-colour adventure albums.

Splendidly extending the appeal of period dramas and classic adventures tales such as Rider Haggard’s safari sagas and Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger stories, and set in the fabled and fabulous Roaring Twenties, the first two books of the trilogy detailed how Chancer, young but capable assistant to renowned historical researcher and gentleman breeder of orchids Sir Alfred Catesby-Grey, undertook a mission to the wilds of the East in search of a legendary bloom mentioned in legends dating back to Alexander the Great.

Sir Alfred had been approached by Lord Reginald Lawrence, scion of an ancient and noble house, who was duped into an impossible wager by repellent entrepreneur Urkaz Grope. At stake was the “Trembling Sword of Tybalt Stone”; a priceless antique and the seat of the family’s honour since 1445, without which Lord Lawrence would have to surrender all his estates and titles…

To win the wager Lawrence needed an example of Iriode Orchino or the rainbow orchid, a mythical bloom last seen by Alexander over two thousand years ago. Although Catesby-Grey initially pooh-poohed the whole story, Julius was keen to investigate, perhaps as tempted by the prospect of adventure and a large fee as by the urgings of plucky Lady Lily, Lawrence’s daughter and a silent film actress recently returned from Hollywood to the heart of the Empire.

Grope had a highly secret agenda of his own and no principles at all, whilst the vulgarly intrusive journalist William Pickle had no scruples and definitely no fear as he sniffed out news and controversy like an obsessed bloodhound.

Moreover Lily’s Movie Publicity Agent Nathaniel Crumpole always seemed in the thick of whatever trouble was brewing – could even an American be that determinedly naive?

Chancer determined to risk all in tracking down the orchid and, despite a series of viciously calculated ploys by Grope and his gang of cutthroats, set off with Lily and Crumpole for Karachi and the fantastic flower’s last reported whereabouts…

Catesby-Grey once ran a very hush-hush government artefact-hunting department dubbed the Empire Survey Branch, but that ultra-discreet body had fallen upon hard times. When he pursued some enquires amongst his old clandestine colleagues, Sir Alfred found that lack of funding had placed them under the aegis of the military and twisted their working philosophy into a rabid hunt for ancient weapons of mass destruction…

After some deadly clashes with Grope’s murderous fixer Evelyn Crow and her hired thugs, Julius, Lily, Crumpole and pilot Benoit Tayaut reached India, narrowly escaping blazing doom as their aeroplane crashed. Rendezvousing with British Civil Servant Major Fraser-Tipping the explorers began the next stage of their trek with Crow and cronies in hot pursuit…

In England, Pickle, who had first broken the story of the orchid wager, was taken prisoner by an influential and affluent secret society, although his newshound colleague George Scrubbs diligently stayed on his trail whilst Grope’s plans to bully and buy his way into the upper echelons of English Society proceeded apace.

In India, after another brutal attack by Crow’s goons, the voyagers found an ally in Meru, manservant of incredibly aged missionary Father Pinkleton who claimed to have seen an actual rainbow orchid.

Heading into the wastes of Hasan Wahan, Julius and his enlarged party were unaware that they had a traitor in their group. After making one more incredibly lucky and fantastic discovery and nearing the end of their quest, Crow launched another murderous assault and one of our plucky heroes seemingly plunged to his death…

This final instalment opens with the survivors of Chancer’s party recuperating in a native village, when Crumpole – who hadn’t fallen far after hurtling over a cliff – wanders in, accompanied by Sir Alfred and Mr. Drubbin, an agent of the Empire Survey Branch. The pair have rushed to Asia in a desperate hope of finding something valuable enough to save the ESB from closure…

They are stalked by the remorseless Crow who, despite her wounds, is obsessively determined to complete her mission at all costs…

Following Pinkleton’s map the united expedition trudges off into the wilds and eventually reaches the mountainous region of Uskandagadri, from whence Meru originated years before. Drubbin then informs the explorers that they are being followed. Lying in wait, Chancer and Drubbin ambush and capture Crow as in England, Scrubbs – with the grudging assistance of Grope’s disgraced and discharged botanist Newton – infiltrates a meeting of the Black Lion secret society in a disastrous attempt to rescue Pickle and fellow prisoner Eloise Tayaut …

After seven days in the mountains, Chancer’s party find millennial clues left by Alexander and then stumble into a terrifying whirlpool before fortuitously washing up in a lost land of fantastic creatures and small levitating castles.

Unfortunately the warriors manning the flying fort recognise Meru and it’s clear that he is far from welcome…

Once the tragic hidden history of Meru and the incredibly ancient, super-scientific lost kingdom comes out, the explorers decide to escape but become embroiled in unrest caused by Meru’s return. Moreover, Evelyn is still trying to murder Julius. Drubbin, with an agenda of his own, takes the opportunity to pilfer knowledge and weapons from the city’s Great Library – secrets which caused the ultimate destruction of the magnificent civilisation eons ago…

As the explorers flee through subterranean caverns, Julius finally finds the rare bloom he’s been searching for and clashes with Crow one last time.

With the deadline for the wager fast-approaching and the Trembling Sword of Tybalt Stone seemingly lost to Lily and her father, the adventurers pile aboard a flying keep and head for Britain, unaware of the full scope of Grope’s plans.

Luckily Julius picked up a vital scrap of information in his climactic duel with Crow and after crashing to Earth at the British Empire Exhibition – and the moment of Grope’s ultimate triumph – delivers a nasty surprise which completely scuppers the monstrous usurper and resoundingly saves the day…

Enchanting, beguiling, astonishingly authentic and masterfully illustrated in the seductive Ligne Claire style, Garen Ewing’s stunning pastiche of the genre pioneered by Hergé and E.P. Jacobs places this magical yarn amongst the very best of graphic narratives, and in these books he has managed to synthesise something vibrant, vital, fresh and uniquely entertaining for modern readers of all ages.

Pure comics mastery – and where else could you get hot, fresh, thrill-a-minute nostalgia, just like your granddad used to love?

I can’t wait for more – and isn’t that the best test of a perfect book?
© 2012 Garen Ewing. All Rights Reserved.