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Joost Swarte’s Modern Art


By Joost Swarte, translated by Martin Beumer (Real Free Press Int. Foundation)
No ISBN:

Joost Swarte is national treasure of the Netherlands: a Dutch New Master whose too-rare forays into comic art have always produced challenging and stunning work which manage to be simultaneously forward looking and aggressively retro and nostalgic.

He has won awards and acclaim as a writer, artist, illustrator, printmaker, graphic designer, stained glass and mural creator and furniture/architectural designer.

Born on Christmas Eve 1947, Swarte grew up in Heemstede in North Holland Province, before studying Industrial Design at the Academy for Design in Eindhoven. He gravitated to the comics field in the late 1960s, becoming adept in the classical ligne laire style of illustration favoured by Belgian star artists such as Hergé, “Bob” (Robert Frans Marie) De Moor and E.P. (Edgard Félix Pierre) Jacobs, producing children’s strips for magazines such as Tante Leny Presenteert and Jippo whilst also working as a newspaper illustrator.

In 1971 he began his own magazine Modern Papier and over the years created many evocative, stylish and memorable series such as Jopo de Pojo, Katoen en Pinbal, Anton Makassar, Dr. Ben Cine, ‘De Blauwe Berbers’, ‘Caesar Soda’, ‘Toon en Toos Brodeloos’ and Niet Zo, Maar Zo– Passi, Messa.

With his works translated into many foreign languages, including storming appearances in Art Spiegelman’s seminal Raw magazine, Swarte formed his own publishing house Oog & Blik in 1985 (a distinguished and prominent source of many superb books and albums) and in 1992 was the co-founder of the Haarlem Stripdagen, Holland’s International Comics Convention. In 2004 he was knighted by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

He first gained international prominence in 1980 when he was a guest at the prestigious Salon International de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême, France and from that year comes this superb celebratory collection of translated past works in a full-colour, board-backed signed and numbered edition which is as much objet d’art artefact as book.

From 1973 and scripted by “Willem”, ‘Enslaved by the Needle’ is a dark, extremely adult and fantastic Art Deco tribute to American gangster movies set in the metafictional 1930s wherein dissolute Parisian thug Fred Fallo becomes accidentally involved with the deadly Mr. Skunk – a Yankee criminal so crazy-dangerous that all the other mobs pay him to stay out of America.

Soon however, the lethal gang-lord has manipulated Fallo into sneaking him back into the USA, where the deranged mastermind begins a campaign of terror by flooding the streets with a horrifying new narcotic. As the city reels, Skunk then turns on his own confederates…

Unique style icon and bored hard-luck kid Jopo de Pojo stars in ‘Imago Moderna’ (1974, and with a clever cameo from Anton Makassar); pestered by ennui, a street missionary, subversive organisations and wicked women before being sucked into a madly paranoid midnight world whilst ‘A Second Babel’ from 1976 focuses on Nazis in Paris and a fantastic plan to build a colossal tower under the city…

Jopo de Pojo returned in ‘Une Chance sur cent Mille’ (A Chance in a Million from 1975), falling ignominiously and ineffectively into a bizarre kidnap plot whilst ‘Goodbye’ from 1977 finds inept detective Tony Priggles in well over his head investigating a string of seriously ludicrous suicides after which this beguiling tome ends with unconventional scholar Anton Makassar similarly all at sea as he tries to make his mark in the uncompromising arena of ‘Modern Art’ (1978)…

These captivatingly dark, deceptively witty and staggeringly beautiful yarns are magnificent examples of a master storyteller at his playful best and even if this particular volume is hard to find – but still well worth every effort – Joost Swarte’s work is something every mature art-lover should see.

Lucky for you then that a few other collections have been released in the last few years…
© 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1978, 1980 Joost Swarte. This edition © 1980 Real Free Press Foundation. All rights reserved.

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Legends of the Stargrazers Book 1


By Cynthy J. Wood & David Campiti, Matt Thompson, Tom Yeates & various (Innovation)
No ISBN:

It’s hard to deny or justify, and sometimes a little embarrassing to explain these days, but for a goodly proportion of readers, comics have always been a source of low-level, innocent titillation.

In the far-off days when comicbooks were expressly for kids, scantily clad, perfectly sculpted exemplars of the human form – female and male – were perhaps the first introduction to innocent psyches of the turbulent world of sex and relationships and sex and hormones and sex, so it’s not surprising that there’s a whole fan sub-culture dedicated to Cheesecake (also, to be fair and to a lesser extent, Beefcake) collectively known as Good Girl Art.

From the late 1980s onward with internet porn and far more explicit (photographic) publications readily accessible to youngsters, you would have thought that the simple allure of drawn hotties and totties would have waned but you’d be wrong. Some folk just seem to prefer illustrated hormonal icons to “real” (albeit implausibly airbrushed or photoshopped) ones…

Artists skilled in delineating these impossibly perfect visions number amongst our most celebrated but the stories generally took a back-seat as the characters posed and strutted in beguiling, distracting and generally improbable fashions and stances, so it’s nice to be able to cite a rare occasion when plot and dialogue were as well developed as the stars’ physical characteristics…

The Legends of the Stargrazers was created by Cynthy J. Wood and Innovation publisher David Campiti as a light-hearted space-opera in 1989, running six issues and almost immediately collected as two of the industry’s earliest trade-paperback graphic novels.

The premise is both simple and enchantingly beguiling: in the future humanity has spread throughout the galaxy, bringing commerce and advancement to many races: and of all the independent traders plying the space winds the strictly female crews of vessels calling themselves Stargrazers are the most successful.

This initial volume opens with ‘Here be Dragons’ by Wood & Campiti, drawn by Matt Thompson and inked by Randy Elliott & Nestor Redondo, which introduced Captain Rachel Lacey, Sherree Rhys-Holm, Karry Vistaas and Carla Withers; the all-girl crew of Stargrazer merchant ship Crock of Gold, plying their trade across the galaxy and dreading the arrival of their latest recruit-replacement.

It’s a cut throat, hand-to-mouth life of boom and bust for the traders and the last thing they need is to be breaking in another star-struck newbie. Even after the appropriate winnowing process the successful candidate seems painfully typical: cute, perky, hyper-enthusiastic…

However apprentice trader Julie Green is a girl with an astonishing secret…

During her first voyage, after a fairly typical piece of business which ended up in the usual fire-fight and frantic flight, Julie witnesses an incredible sight – the first appearance in decades of the almost-mystical sun-feeding space dragons from which the Stargrazers took their name.

Enthralled she learned the voyagers’ secret history and the cosmic connection between the fantastic creatures and the fleets of star-wanderers who will do anything to protect the fabulous saurians from unscrupulous planet-dwellers…

‘The Smithfield Incident’ holds a story within a story as the crew rescue imperial super-spy Smithfield Cobb from certain death in deep space only to slowly fall under the sway of his irresistible manly charm and artificially-enhanced pheromone count. Cobb is the Empress’ secret weapon in an ongoing war against rebel forces and this tale is little more than a framing sequence for his solo story ‘Libretto’ (by Campiti, Tom Yeates & Rick Bryant, and looking suspiciously like a tale left over when early Indy pioneer Pacific Comics went bankrupt).

Rendered in the manner of classic Al Williamson’s EC sci fi thrillers, the flashback saga of Cobb’s clash with rebel agents and love affair with the soul of a planet adds a hint of stabilising tragedy to the flash-and-dazzle light-heartedness of the Stargrazers’ exploits, as he drags the neutral merchant maids into conflict with Rebellion forces. However his philandering tactics backfire and Cobb learns a salutary lesson when the girls switch his prized info tape for Julie’s diary… without her knowledge or permission…

‘Ghost Ship’ finds the girls enjoying a rare shore-leave when Lacey is framed for illegal trading, piracy and slave-taking. The furious Captain immediately takes off in pursuit of impostors using her name and discovers not only the secret of the mythic phantom star-trader Vanderdecken but also uncovers a race of men like angels who have an unsuspected connection to Julie…

This first collection concludes with ‘Gossamer’ as the origins of the winged men are revealed and the history of humanity’s expansion into space is disclosed.

To Be Continued…

Although certainly designed and intended as captivating but cheesy eye-candy, the broad scope of this fantasy saga and the light touch of authors Wood and Campiti, packing their scripts with wry humour and sci fi in-jokes, elevates Legends of the Stargrazers far above the usual “look, don’t think” level of Good Girl material and it’s a genuine pity the series died so young.
™ and © 1989 Cynthy J. Wood & Innovative Corp. Main story artwork © 1989 Matt Thompson. “Libretto” art © 1989 Tom Yeates. All rights reserved.

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The Adventures of Superman


By George Lowther, illustrated by Joe Shuster (Applewood Books)
ISBN: 978-1-55709-228-1

Without doubt the creation of Superman and his unprecedented reception by a desperate and joy-starved generation quite literally gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form. Within months of his launch in Action Comics #1 the Man of Tomorrow had his own supplementary solo comicbook, a newspaper strip, overseas licensing deals, a radio show and animated movie series, plus loads ands loads of merchandising deals.

In 1942 he even made the dynamic leap into “proper” prose fiction resulting in still more historic “firsts”…

George F. Lowther (1913-1975) was a Renaissance man of radio when sound not vision dominated home entertainment. He scripted episodes of such airwave strip adaptations as Dick Tracy and Terry and the Pirates as well as the Mutual Radio Network’s legendary Adventures of Superman show.

He also wrote episodes for Roy Rogers, Tom Mix and a host of other series and serials. In 1945 he moved into television with equal success as writer, producer, director and even performer, adding a string of novels for kids to his CV along the way.

With the success of the Superman radio broadcasts a spin-off book was a sure-fire seller and in 1942 Random House released a stunning, rocket-paced history of the Man of Steel, which fleshed out the character’s background (almost a decade before such detail became part of the comics canon), described the hero’s rise to fame and even found room for a thrilling pulp-fuelled contemporary adventure in a handsome hardback lavishly illustrated by co-creator Joe Shuster. The novel was the first Superman tale not scripted by Jerry Siegel and the world’s first novelisation of a comicbook character.

That book will set you back upwards of a thousand dollars today but in 1995, Applewood Press (a firm specialising in high-quality reproductions of important and historic American books) recreated that early magic in its stunning entirety in a terrific hardback tome which included a copious and informative introduction from contemporary Superman writer Roger Stern as well as the original Foreword by DC’s Staff Advisor for Children’s literacy, Josette Frank.

The art is by Joe Shuster at the peak of his creative powers and includes the dust-jacket and 4 full-colour painted plates (all reproduced from the original artwork), a half-dozen full-page black and white illustrations and 34 vibrant and vital pen-and-ink spot sketches of the Caped Kryptonian in spectacular non-stop action, gracing a fast and furious yarn that begins with the destruction of Krypton and decision of scientist Jor-El in ‘Warning of Doom’ and ‘The Space Shi’.

The saga continues with the discovery of an incredible baby in a rocket-ship by farmer Eben Kent and his wife Sarah in ‘Young Clark Kent’ and the unique boy’s early days and first meeting with Perry White in ‘The Contest’.

Following ‘The Death of Eben’ the young alien refugee moved to the big city and became ‘Clark Kent, Reporter’ after which we switch to then present-day for the main event as investigative reporter and blockbusting champion of justice combine to crush a sinister plot involving spies, saboteurs, submarines and supernatural shenanigans in the classy conundrum of ‘The Skeleton Ship’ and ‘The Vanishing Captain’ which was resolved in the epic ‘Fire at Sea’, ‘Mystery of the Old Man’, ‘Attempted Murder’, ‘Enter Lois Lane’ and ‘Return of the Skelton Ship’, resulting in ‘The Unmasking’, the revelation of a ‘Special Investigator’ and an amazing ‘Underwater Battle’ before at last the wonderment ends with ‘The Mystery Solved’.

This magical book perfectly recaptures all the frantic fervour and mind-boggling excitement of the early days of action adventure storytelling and is a pulp fiction treasure as well as a pivotal moment in the creation of the world’s premier superhero. No serious fan of the medium or art-form should miss it and hopefully with another landmark Superman anniversary on the horizon another facsimile edition is on the cards. If not, at least this volume is still readily available…
© 1942 DC Comics. Introduction © 1995 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: Who is Miles Morales?


By Brian Michael Bendis & Sara Pichelli (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-503-1

When the Ultimate Comics Spider-Man died writer Brian Michael Bendis and Marvel promised that a new hero would arise from the ashes…

Marvel’s Ultimates imprint began in 2000 with a new post-modern take on major characters and concepts to bring them into line with the tastes of 21st century readers – apparently a wholly different market from those baby-boomers and their descendents content to stick with the precepts sprung from founding talents Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee… or simply those unable or unwilling to deal with the five decades (seven if you include the Golden Age Timely tales retroactively co-opted into the mix) of continuity baggage which saturated the originals.

Eventually even this darkly nihilistic new universe became as continuity-constricted as its ancestor and in 2008 the cleansing event “Ultimatum” culminated in a reign of terror which excised dozens of super-humans and millions of lesser mortals in a devastating tsunami which inundated Manhattan courtesy of mutant menace Magneto.

In the aftermath Peter Parker and his fellow meta-human survivors struggled to restore order to a dangerous new world.

Spider-Man finally gained a measure of acceptance and was hailed a hero when he valiantly and very publicly met his end during a catastrophic super-villain confrontation…

This collection (re-presenting the introductory teaser from Ultimate Comics Fallout #4 – August 2011 – and the follow-up Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: Who is Miles Morales? #1-5) introduces a new and even younger Arachnid Avenger and describes how, just like his predecessor, a troubled boy learned the painful price of misusing the unique gifts fate had bestowed…

The epic opens with a skinny kid having the poor taste to parade around town in a cheap imitation costume of fallen hero Spider-Man encountering and somehow defeating vicious super-villain The Kangaroo before the revelations begin by spinning back to the recent past where manic industrialist Norman Osborn repeats the genetic experiment which first gave Peter Parker his powers (see Ultimate Spider-Man volume 1: Power and Responsibility) via artificially-mutated spider bite.

Unfortunately the deranged mastermind didn’t expect a burglar to waltz in and accidentally carry off the new test subject as part of his haul…

When grade-schooler Miles Morales got into the prestigious and life-changing Brooklyn Visions Academy Boarding School by the most callous of chances, the brilliant African American/Latino boy quickly and cynically realised that life is pretty much a crap-shoot and unfair to boot. Feeling guilty about his unjust success and sorry for the 697 other poor kids who didn’t get a chance, he snuck off to visit his uncle Aaron.

The visit had to be secret since his uncle was a “bad influence”: a career criminal dubbed The Prowler. Whilst there, a great big spider with a number on its back bit Miles and he began to feel very odd…

For a start he began to turn invisible…

Suddenly super-fast and strong, able to leap huge distances and fade from view, Miles rushed over to see his geeky pal Ganke, a brilliant nerd already attending Brooklyn Visions. Applying “scientific” testing the boy also discovers Miles can deliver shocking, destructive charges through his hands. When Miles goes home Ganke did more research and deduced a connection to the new hero Spider-Man; pushing his friend towards also becoming a costumed crusader.

However, after Miles assisted during a tenement fire, saving a mother and baby, shock set in and he decided never to use his powers again…

Time passed: Miles and Ganke had been roommates at the Academy for almost a year when news of a major metahuman clash rocked the city. The troubled Miles headed out and was a bystander at the scene of Spider-Man’s death.

Seeing a brave man perish so valiantly, Miles was once more consumed by guilt: if he had used his own powers when they first manifested he might have been able to help; to save a truly great hero…

As part of the crowd attending Parker’s memorial Miles and Ganke talked to another mourner, a girl who actually knew Parker. Gwen Stacy offered quiet insights to the grieving child which altered the course of his life forever: “with great power comes great responsibility…”

Clad in a Halloween Spidey costume borrowed from Ganke, Miles took to the night streets for the first time and stopped the Kangaroo from committing murder…

His third night out the exhilarated boy encountered the terrifying and furiously indignant Spider-Woman who thrashed and arrested him, dragging him to Government agency S.H.I.E.L.D where Hawkeye, Iron Man and master manipulator Nick Fury coldly assessed him.

However, before they could reach a decision on Miles’ fate, the murderous Electro broke free of the building’s medical custody ward and went on a rampage.

Despite defeating all the seasoned heroes the voltage villain was completely unprepared for a new Spider-Man: especially as the boy had a whole extra range of powers including camouflage capabilities and an irresistible “venom-strike” sting…

As Miles considered the full implications of his victory, Fury imparted a staggeringly simple homily: “With great power…”

Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli have crafted a stirring new chapter which is both engaging and intriguing and the volume also contains a gallery of alternate covers by Marko Djurdjevic and Pichelli.

Tense, breathtaking, action-packed, evocative and full of the light-hearted, self-aware humour which blessed the original Lee/Ditko tales, this is a controversial but worthy way to continue and advance the legend that Fights ‘n’ Tights addicts will admire and adore…
A British Edition ™ & © 2012 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. and published by Panini UK, Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Cartoon Network 2-in-1: Ben 10 Ultimate Alien/Generator Rex


By Amy Wolfram, Jake Black, Scott Beatty, Eugene Son, Rob Hoegee, Aaron Williams, Jason Bischoff, Ethan Beavers, Mike Bowden, Min S. Ku & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3305-1

The links between kids’ animated features and comicbooks are long established and, I suspect, for young consumers, indistinguishable. After all, it’s just all-ages adventure entertainment in the end…

DC’s Cartoon Network imprint is probably the last bastion of children’s comics and has produced some truly magical homespun material (such as Tiny Titans, Batman: Brave and the Bold or Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam!) as well as stunning interpretations of such television landmarks as Scooby Doo, Powerpuff Girls, Cartoon Network Block Party and others.

This dynamic and fast-paced parcel of thrills gathers two of contemporary kids’ most popular TV sensations in back-to-back exploits taken from monthly periodical Cartoon Network Action-Pack (issues # 48-51, 54, 56, 57, 59) and opens with the further adventures of a boy who could become a profusion of extraterrestrial champions…

Ben Tennyson was a plucky kid who could become ten different alien super-heroes by activating a fantastic device called the Omnitrix. At first the young boy clandestinely battled fantastic foes with his eccentric Grandpa Max and obnoxious cousin Gwen but by the time of these tales Ben is a teenager, has gained global fame and his own power-packed teen posse including reformed super bad-boy Kevin Levin and romantic interest/techno-ninja Julie Yamamoto, all whilst struggling to master the far more powerful Ultimatrix device…

In short complete tales by Amy Wolfram, Jake Black, Scott Beatty and Eugene Son, illustrated by Ethan Beavers, Min S. Ku, Mike Cavallaro, Dan Davis & Luciano Vecchio, Ben and his hyper-charged avatars and BFFs tackle world-shaking threats and typical teen traumas beginning with ‘Fashion Victim’ wherein a sudden trend for kids to wear knock-offs of Ben’s signature jacket leads to mistakes and mayhem when short-sighted monsters and old foe Charmcaster attack, whilst ‘Going Viral’ finds an embarrassing defeat by a dragon posted on the internet by the young hero’s biggest fan.

There’s an impressive treatise on schoolyard bullying in ‘Dodge Ben!’ after which the indignities pile up when old foe Aggregor attacks during the cringe-worthy premiere of ‘Ben 10 on Ice’ and an alien journalist shares a day in the life of a galactic hero in ‘Breaking News.’

Ben’s notoriety almost leads to a tragic misunderstanding in ‘Star Chaser’ and Julie gets some unwelcome paparazzi attention in ‘Tabloid Trouble’ before this scintillating selection concludes with Ben’s persistent homework hassles in ‘The Monster at the End of this Book’…

The last half of the volume is dedicated to a new boy wonder struggling to be a hero in a post-apocalyptic world…

Generator Rex is an amnesiac lad with the ability to turn parts of his body into fantastic technological weapons as a result of a global catastrophe which seeded Earth with nanites and turned the world into a constantly mutating nightmare.

The nanites randomly turn humans – and other organisms – into Exponentially Variegated Organisms or “EVOs”: monsters that cause even more death and destruction. Their threat is combated by the secret organisation Providence…

Rex, who can actually cure EVOs of their mutational infections, and his gun-toting, talking monkey pal Bobo are the agency’s top operatives in battling the monsters’ attacks and hunting down the suspected cause of the initial disaster, a maniac named Van Kleiss…

The creators for these gripping yarns include Rob Hoegee, Eugene Son, Scott Beatty, Aaron Williams Jason Bischoff, Min S. Ku, Ethan Beavers & Mike Bowden.

The adventure begins in the EVO homeland of Abysus with ‘Distraction!’ as the boy and Bobo raid Van Kleiss’ castle on a seeming fool’s errand before tackling a forgotten enemy from the past in the epic length ‘Extra Baggage’…

‘Heart of Stone’ introduces a potential rival to Van Kleiss’ malign dominance in the sultry serpentines shape of Dr. Eden Williams, after which there’s a beguiling change of pace with the twisted love story ‘A Blank Canvas’.

‘The Unforgiving Minute’ poses an impossible quandary for Rex and a group of survivors as yet uncontaminated by the omnipresent nanite contagion whilst ‘Only a Game’ finds the entire horror-hunting team playing spy at a “Warworld of Warlocks” computer convention before the action spectacularly climaxes when the impossible happens and Rex is apparently infected by nanites in ‘Freak Out’…

Despite being aimed at TV kids, these mini-sagas are wonderful old-fashioned comics tales that no self-respecting fun-fan should miss, but if you still need further cajoling perhaps learning that both shows were devised by “Man of Action” might further persuade you.

Man of Action is the working pseudonym for an entertainment-think-tank comprised of Duncan Rouleau, Joe Casey, Joe Kelly & Steven T. Seagle and whilst Ben 10 bears a striking – but surely superficial – similarity to two beloved and quirky 1960s DC second-string strips – Dial “H” for Hero and Ultra, the Multi-Alien – Generator Rex is actually based on Image Comic M. (Machina) Rex, which debuted in 1999 courtesy of Whilce Portacio & Brian Haberlin’s Avalon Studios, crafted and produced by Aaron Sowd, Kelly & Rouleau.

Accessible and entertaining for a broad range of thrill-seeking readers this terrific tome is a perfect, old fashioned delight. What more do you need to know?

™ and © 2011 Cartoon Network. Compilation © 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Stan Lee Presents Captain America Battles Baron Blood – a Marvel Illustrated Book


By Roger Stern, John Byrne & Josef Rubinstein (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-939766-08-6

Captain America was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby at the end of 1940, and launched in his own Timely Comics’ (Marvel’s earliest iteration) title. Captain America Comics #1 was cover-dated March 1941 and was a monster smash-hit. Cap was the absolute and undisputed star of Timely’s “Big Three” – the other two being the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner – and one of very the first to fall from popularity at the end of the Golden Age.

When the Korean War and Communist aggression dominated the American psyche in the early 1950s Cap was briefly revived – as were his two fellow superstars – in 1953 before they all sank once more into obscurity until a resurgent Marvel Comics once more needed them. When the Stars and Stripes Centurion finally reappeared he finally managed to find a devoted following who stuck with him through thick and thin.

After taking over the Avengers he won his own series and, eventually, title. Cap waxed and waned through the most turbulent period of social change in American history but always struggled to find an ideological place and stable footing in the modern world, plagued by the trauma of his greatest failure: the death of his boy partner Bucky.

After years of just ticking along a brief resurgence came about when creators Roger Stern & John Byrne crafted a mini-renaissance of well-conceived and perfectly executed yarns which brought back all the fervour and pizzazz of the character in his glory days.

This wonderful black and white mass-market digest paperback was part of Marvel’s ongoing campaign to escape the ghettoes of news-stands and find relative legitimacy in “proper” bookstores and opens with one of the most impressive tales of the comicbook’s lengthy run originally seen in Captain America #253-254 (January-February 1981).

A grave peril from the past resurfaced in ‘Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot’ when Cap was called to England and the imminent deathbed of old comrade Lord Falsworth who had battled Nazis as the legendary Union Jack in the WWII Allied superteam The Invaders. The picturesque village was undergoing a series of brutal serial murders and the aging patriarch suspected the worst. Of course nobody would take the senile and ailing old duffer seriously…

Steve found a brooding menace, family turmoil, an undying supernatural horror and breathtaking action in the concluding ‘Blood on the Moors’, which saw the return and dispatch of vampiric villain Baron Blood, the birth of a new patriotic hero and the glorious Last Hurrah of a beloved character: to this day still one of the very best handled “Heroic Death” stories in comics history.

That sinister saga is followed by ‘Cap for President’ from #250 (October 1980) as the unbelieving and unwilling Sentinel of Liberty found himself pressed on all sides to run for the highest office in the land. This truly uplifting yarn is still a wonderful antidote for sleaze and politicking whilst confirming the honesty and idealism of the decent person within us all.

If you’ve not read these tales before then there are certainly better places to do so (such as Captain America: War and Remembrance) but these are still fine super-hero tales with beautiful art that will never stale or wither, and for us backward looking Baby-boomers these nostalgic pocket tomes have an incomprehensible allure that logic just can’t fight or spoil…

© 1980, 1981, 1982 Marvel Comics Group, a division of Cadence Industries Corporation. All rights reserved.

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New Mutants: The Demon Bear Saga


By Chris Claremont & Bill Sienkiewicz (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-87135-673-4

New Mutants was the first regular X-Men spin-off series (unless the you count the brief but brilliant saga of The Beast in Amazing Adventures #11-17 (all six-and-a-half tales are reprinted in Essential Classic X-Men volume 3) and the return to grass roots of powerful alienated kids in training offered many opportunities for slightly different tales that resonated with teen-aged readers.

The team – or perhaps class – gradually expanded as scripter Claremont explored his twin pet themes of alienation and female empowerment and by the time of this collection (reprinting issues #18-21, August-November 1984) his original kid cast – Scottish lupine metamorph Rahne (Wolfsbane) Sinclair, Brazilian solar powerhouse Roberto (Sunspot)DaCosta, human Cannonball Sam Guthrie and projecting psionic Dani (Psyche) Moonstar – had been joined by two new pupils whilst the older Vietnamese Xi’an Coy Manh AKA Karma had been sidelined in the ensuing months.

New additions included Amara Aquilla, a living volcano codenamed Magma who hailed from a lost colony of the Roman Empire and Ilyana (Magik) Rasputin, little sister of Russian X-Man Colossus and recently returned after ten years trapped in a sorcerous, timeless nether-dimension…

With #18, iconoclastic artist Bill Sienkiewicz began a stellar and controversial run pushing the illustrative narrative envelope with his expressionistic, multi-disciplinary range of styles: a perfect place to begin a new kind of adventure for the mutant Next Generation…

‘Death-Hunt’ begins with a fearsome flash forward of horrors to come before Psyche reveals her own precognitive talents have been warning her of the approach of a legendary animal spirit inimical to her tribe. However, whilst training in the Danger Room she gains her first inkling that the threat might be more than myth…

Meanwhile in deep space, a young alien mutant technological organism is fleeing from a catastrophic threat… his own murderous paranoid father.

With Professor X absent and a blizzard hitting, Dani roams the snowy grounds of the school when an impossible ursine monster attacks…

The action switches to the local hospital for ‘Siege’ as Moonstar’s broken body is rushed into emergency surgery. Her personal bogeyman is terrifyingly real and not of this Earth; a magical foe of her people determined to invade this plane and convert Earth into a realm of dark spirits.

In space the alien fugitive flees unheedingly towards Earth, disastrously encountering the swashbuckling Starjammers, before plunging onward. In the hospital, doctors struggle to save Dani, and Magik gleans some useful information with her mystic powers. The Bear needs to destroy Psyche because she holds the secret of defeating it and preventing the poisoning of our world with its malign influence.

With her classmates desperately guarding her dying body during the operation, the Bear’s next attack transports the entire medical centre to its mystical dimension, the metaphysical ‘Badlands’…

On its home turf it is unstoppable, warping a cop and nurse into Native American archetypes to attack the kids whilst slowly tainting the soul of the planet with its evil. Fighting back with all they have, the valiant kids stumble onto a last-ditch plan of attack to defeat the Bear and when returned to Earth they discover a shocking secret about the permanently transformed nurse and policeman…

The book ends with the extra-long ‘Slumber Party’ as the girls of Xavier’s School indulge in a relatively normal part of growing up. With the boys – including new recruit Doug Ramsey – banished for the night, a group of girls from Salem Centre stay over for the time-honoured festivities, but when dying techno-organic parasite Warlock crashes the party – fleeing from his homicidally destructive sire The Magus – the frolics dissolve into planet-threatening horror…

With the introduction of the weirdly warped Warlock and down-to-Earth Doug, the New Mutants cast was relatively complete and an era of superb storytelling and sublime experimentation began…

Fast-paced, evocative, thought-provoking, funny and scary, this book epitomises the very best of Marvel’s second renaissance and these compelling tales are amongst the most impressive and enjoyable of the vast Mutant canon.
© 1984, 1990 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Legion of Super-Heroes: Archive Edition Volume 4


By Jerry Siegel, Edmond Hamilton, Otto Binder, Jim Mooney, John Forte, George Papp & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-123-9

Once upon a time, in the far future, a band of super-powered kids from a multitude of worlds took inspiration from the greatest legend of all time and formed a club of heroes. One day those Children of Tomorrow came back in time and invited their inspiration to join them…

And thus began the vast and epic saga of the Legion of Super-Heroes, as first envisioned by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino in early 1958, just as the revived comicbook genre of superheroes was gathering an inexorable head of steam. Since that time the fortunes and popularity of the Legion have perpetually waxed and waned, with their future history tweaked and rebooted, retconned and overwritten over and again to comply with editorial diktat and popular whim.

This sturdy, charm-soaked, action packed fourth full-colour deluxe hardback collection continues to re-present those early tales from the disparate Superman Family titles in chronological order: the sagas from their own feature spanning Adventure Comics #329-339, plus Legion-starring tales from Superboy #124 and 125, covering February to December 1965 cover-dates.

This period began the Tomorrow Team’s slow transformation from wholesome, imaginative, humorous and generally safe science fiction strip to a more dramatic and even grittily realistic combat force in constant peril and, after an informative Foreword from sometime Legion Editor KC Carlson, one of the last truly whimsical cases opens this collection.

The madcap merriment occurred when the heroes had to confront and outwit the topsy-turvy threat of their own imperfect doppelgangers in Adventure Comics #329’s ‘The Bizarro Legion!’ (by Jerry Siegel & Jim Mooney) after which a nefarious juvenile criminal infiltrated the LSH intending to destroy them all from within in ‘Secret of the Mystery Legionnaire!’ by the same creative team.

The dastardly plans proceeded without a hitch until the victorious Dynamo-Boy recruited the malevolent adult meta-criminals Lightning Lord, Cosmic King and Saturn Queen, consequently falling victim to ‘The Triumph of the Legion of Super-Villains!’ in #331.

Rescued and restored, the valiant young heroes were back in Adventure #332 to face ‘The Super-Moby Dick of Space!’ (Edmond Hamilton & John Forte) wherein the recently resurrected Lightning Lad suffered crippling injuries and an imminent nervous breakdown…

‘The War Between Krypton and Earth!’ in #333, (Hamilton, Forte & George Klein), had the time-travelling team flung far back into the our world’s antediluvian past and split into internecine factions on opposite sides of a conflict forgotten by history, after which ‘The Unknown Legionnaire!’ (Hamilton, Forte & Sheldon Moldoff) posed a perilous puzzle with an inadvertently oppressed and overlooked race’s entire future at stake…

The same creative team then introduced deadly super-villain ‘Starfinger!’ in #335 who framed a luckless Legionnaire for his incredible crimes before ‘The True Identity of Starfinger!’ (inked by Klein) was revealed, allowing the entire squad to focus on the real menace.

Superboy #124 (October 1965, by Otto Binder & George Papp) featured Lana Lang as ‘The Insect Queen of Smallville!’ who was rewarded with a shape-changing ring after rescuing a trapped alien. Naturally she used her new abilities to ferret out Clark Kent’s secrets…

Adventure #337 highlighted ‘The Weddings that Wrecked the Legion!’ by Hamilton, Forte & Moldoff as two couples resigned to marry. However, there was serious method in the seeming marital madness…

Long absent Bête Noir the Time Trapper at last returned in #338 when Siegel & Forte revealed ‘The Menace of the Sinister Super-Babies!’ with sultry Glorith of Baaldur using the Chronal Conqueror’s devices to turn everybody but Superboy and Brainiac 5 into mewling infants. When they turned the tables on the villains a new era dawned for the valiant Tomorrow Teens…

Superboy #125 (November 1965) signalled darker days ahead by introducing a legion reservist with a tragic secret in ‘The Sacrifice of Kid Psycho!’ (Binder & Papp), after which Hamilton, Forte & Moldoff told the bittersweet tale of disaffected and tormented Lallorian hero Beast Boy who turned against humanity in Adventure Comics #339’s ‘Hunters of the Super-Beasts!’ to bring this sterling collection to a solidly entertaining end.

The slow death of whimsy and move from light-hearted escapades to daily life and death struggles would culminate in tragedy and triumph in the next edition…

The Legion is undoubtedly one of the most beloved and bewildering creations in comicbook history and largely responsible for the growth of the groundswell movement that became American Comics Fandom.

Moreover, these sparkling, simplistic and devastatingly addictive stories – with full creator biographies and a glorious gallery of covers from the sublime art-team of Curt Swan & George Klein – as much as Julie Schwartz’s Justice League fired up the interest and imaginations of a generation of young readers and underpinned the industry we all know today.

These naive, silly, joyous, stirring and utterly compelling yarns are precious and fun beyond any ability to explain. If you love comics and haven’t read this stuff, you are the poorer for it and need to enrich your future life as soon as possible.
© 1964, 1965, 1992, 1993, 1994 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Best of Fat Freddy’s CAT books 1 & 2


By Gilbert Shelton with Dave Sheridan, Paul Mavrides & Lieuen Adkins (Knockabout)
ISBN: 0-86166-009-9 & 0-86166-014-5   Omnibus 978-0-86166-161-9

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers shambled out of the Underground Commix counter-culture wave in 1968; initially appearing in Berkeley Print Mint’s Feds ‘n’ Heads, and in Underground newspapers before creator Gilbert Shelton and a few friends founded their own San Francisco based Rip Off Press in 1969. This effective collective continued to maximise the madness as the hilarious antics of the “Freaks” (contemporary term for lazy, dirty, drug-taking hippy folk) captured the imagination of the more open-minded portions of America and the world (not to mention their kids)…

In 1971 Rip Off published the first compilation: The Collected Adventures of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers – which has been in print all around the planet ever since – and soon assorted underground magazines and college papers were joined by the heady likes of Rip Off Comix, High Times, Playboy and numerous foreign periodicals in featuring the addictive adventures of Freewheelin’ Franklin, Phineas T. Freakears and Fat Freddy Freekowtski (with his cat): simpatico metaphorical siblings in sybaritic self-indulgence.

Fat Freddy’s Cat quickly became a star in his own right: tiny “topper” strips (separate mini adventures which accompanied the main story) in the newspapers that supplemented the Freaks’ antics became single page gags and eventually bloomed during the 1970s into full-blown extended exploits of the canny, cynical feline reprobate in his own series of digest-sized comicbooks The Adventures of Fat Freddy’s CAT…

Much of the material consisted of untitled quickies and short strips concocted by Shelton (with assistance from Dave Sheridan, Paul Mavrides and Lieuen Adkins) and eventually the little yarns were collected by UK Publisher Knockabout as a brace of oversized – 297x212mm – black and white comic albums and as mass-market b-format paperbacks in their Crack Editions imprint. In 2009 the entire canon was collected as The Fat Freddy’s CAT Omnibus.

These tales are wicked, degenerate, scatologically vulgar, sublimely smutty and brilliantly funny in any format but perhaps their raw anarchic, sly hysteria is best enjoyed in the giant tomes I’m highlighting here.

Book one opens with a dozen or so six panel strips and a single pager produced between 1971 and 1978, before the hilariously whacky epic ‘Chariot of the Globs’ (written by Adkins with art by Shelton & Sheridan) reveals how the imperturbable puss saved alien explorers from a hideous fate, followed by another fifty shorts covering every topic from mating to feeding, talking to humans and especially how cats inflict revenge…

Shelton and Sheridan then disclose the horrors of ‘Animal Camp’ wherein the irrepressible feline was dumped by Fat Freddy in a Boarding Kennel run by Nazi war criminals where pets were converted into clothing and pet food or else used in arcane genetic experiments!

Naturally the brainy beast had to lead a rebellion and break-out…

Amidst the remaining sixty-plus shorts comprising talking cockroaches, drug-fuelled excess, toilet training and drinking, fighting, mating and outsmarting humans, lurks one last lengthy treat from 1980, ‘The Sacred Sands of Pootweet… or the Mayor’s Meower’, a splendidly raucous political satire based on the tale of Dick Whittington.

When a religious hard-liner overthrows the oil-rich nation and former US satellite of Pootweet, Fat Freddy attempts to scam the Supreme Hoochy-Coochy by using the cat to clean up kingdom’s rodent problem. Only trouble is that the pious and poor Pootweet populace have no vermin problem (even after Freddy callously tries to manufacture one), only sacred, unblemished, undesecrated sands which the cat – in dire need of a potty-break – heads straight for…

The second volume is blessed with another seventy-odd scurrilous, scandalous and supremely hilarious short gags ranging from half to two pages, intoxicatingly interlaced with longer comedic classics such as the untitled tirade against modern newspaper strips which “guest-stars” such luminaries as Mary Worth, Doonesbury, Kronk, Andy Capp, Peanuts and a heavenly host of cartoon cats from Garfield to Fritz to Felix…

Also included are the devious and satirical 1973 spy-spoof ‘I Led Nine Lives!’ recounting the days when the fabulous feline worked for the FBI, ‘Fat Freddy’s CAT in the Burning of Hollywood’ from 1978 wherein the sublimely smug and sanguine survivor of a million hairy moments regales his ever-burgeoning brood of impressionable kittens with how he and his imbecilic human spectacularly flamed out in the movie biz and a truly salutary tale for all fans and readers…

Following the innocent – but so enjoyable – shredding of Fat Freddy’s comic collection and the expiration of his ninth life, ‘Paradise Revisited’ (1983 and illustrated by Paul Mavrides) finds the Marvellous Moggy in heaven again: but even though the place is packed with famous felines it’s not all catnip and celebration…

Despite the hippy-dippy antecedents and stoner presentiments, Shelton is always a consummate professional. His ideas are enchantingly fresh yet timeless, the dialogue is permanently spot-on and his pacing perfect. The stories, whether half-page quickies, short vignettes or full blown sagas, start strong and relentlessly build to spectacular – and often wildly outrageous, hallucinogenic yet story-appropriate – climaxes.

Anarchically sardonic and splendidly ludicrous, the madcap slapstick and sly satire of Gilbert Shelton is always an irresistible, riotously innocent tonic for the blues and these tales should be a compulsory experience for any fan of the comics medium.
© 1983, 1984, 2009 Gilbert Shelton. All rights reserved.

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Outsiders volume 2: Sum of All Evil


By Judd Winick, Tom Raney, Will Conrad, Tom Derenick & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0243-8

Once upon a time superheroes, like firemen, sat around their assorted lairs or went about their civilian pursuits until the call of duty summoned them to deal with a breaking emergency. In the grim and gritty world after Crisis on Infinite Earths, the concept evolved with a number of costumed adventurers evolving into pre-emptive strikers…

After the deaths of a number of Teen Titan comrades, Arsenal convinced the heartbroken Nightwing to run a covert and pre-emptive pack of professed “hunters” to seek out and take down metahuman threats and extraordinary criminals before they could harm innocent lives or create chaos…

This second compendium collects issues #8-15 of the compelling and controversial Outsiders comicbook, ramping up the action and alienation even further as disaster and the tensions of living life outside the rules begins to take its inevitable toll…

This volume eschews individual issue titles but for your convenience and mine I’ve supplied them when applicable. The drama commences with the three-part ‘Devil’s Work’ by Judd Winick, Tom Raney & Sean Parsons as Arsenal, recovering from multiple gunshot wounds, calls in brutal vigilante The Huntress to bolster the team over the strident objections of Nightwing. Meanwhile Russian mobster Ishmael Gregor slaughters a bus full of people as the opening gambit in his scheme to steal the demonic powers of one-time super-villain Sabbac and bring about Hell on Earth…

The action continues in ‘Lightning from Above and Below’ (inked by Scott Hanna) as the new Sabbac (a supernatural super-being sponsored by devil-lords Satan, Any, Belial, Beeelzebub, Asmodeus and Craeteis in the way the ancient gods empowered Captain Marvel) trounces and severely wounds Jade, Thunder and especially Grace, prompting veteran hero Black Lightning to step in. Even with his aid the heroes are hard-pressed to stop Gregor and turn back an invasion of demons until Captain Marvel Jr. shows up in the concluding ‘A Family Matter’…

A dark change of pace is offered with ‘Scream without Raising Your Voice’ illustrated by Will Conrad & Sean Parsons, as Arsenal comes to terms with the psychological trauma of taking a machine-gun burst to the chest helped by different kinds of tough love from Grace and Nightwing…

The remainder of the book is taken up with a spectacular battle with a resurgent Fearsome Five beginning with the prologue ‘Out with the New, In with the Old’ (Winick, Tom Derenick & Kevin Conrad) as fugitive mad scientist Dr. Sivana recruits and manipulates murderous metahuman Gizmo, Psimon, Jinx and Mammoth by promising to resurrect their dead comrade Shimmer, whilst the Outsiders’ solidarity and resolve begins to crumble after Huntress quits.

‘Five by Five’ opens with ‘New Business’ (art by Raney) as the restored Fearsome Five begin raiding numerous LexCorp holdings for Sivana, forcing the heroes to break into smaller teams and chase them down.

‘Strength in Numbers’ sees the Outsiders thoroughly beaten and only narrowly escaping with their lives prompting the quintet of super-psychopaths to turn on their boss. Going their own way the manic villains concoct a plan to gain global respect by nuking Canada with twenty-three stolen nuclear missiles.

As the battered Outsiders race to stop them, neither side is aware that the whole thing is a warped, Byzantine plan by an outside party to make a real killing…

Razor-sharp, rocket-paced, action-packed and edgily affecting, Outsiders was one of the very best series pursuing the “strike first and strike hard” hero-concept, generating some of the most compelling Fights ‘n’ Tights action of the last decade. Still punchy, evocative and extremely readable, these thrillers will delight older fans of the genre.
© 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.