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100 Bullets: Six Feet Under the Gun


By Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-662-0

Beginning as one of the best crime-comics in decades, 100 Bullets imperceptibly grew into a terrifyingly imaginative conspiracy thriller of vast scope and intricate, intimate detail. With this sixth volume (collecting issues #37-42 of the stunningly adult comic book) creators Azzarello and Risso seemingly paused for breath and a succession of single episodes, exploring the inner workings of a deadly half-dozen cast-members, but as always there’s far, far more going on than you might think, and now that the series has concluded it’s clear that what happened here was of vital importance to what came next.

Pay attention! Every beautiful panel on every thrilling page might hold clues to the epic saga unfolding before your eyes.

Soon after Columbus landed in America, thirteen European crime-families migrated to the New World and carved up the continent in perpetuity between them. As the country grew civilised and a new nation was born the Trust embedded themselves in every aspect of it.

To prevent their own greed and ambition from destroying the sweetest deal in history the Families created an extraordinary police force to mediate and act when any Trust member acted against the unity and best interests of the whole. They were called the Minutemen and were always led by the kind of peacekeeper needed to keep them honest and actively cooperating – a man uniquely honest, dedicated, smart and remorseless.

Not too long ago though, The Trust leaders decided they no longer needed overseers and acted with characteristic ruthlessness to remove them. Betrayed Minutemen leader Agent Graves didn’t take his dismissal well and has been slowly enacting a plan to rectify that casual injustice. For years he has been appearing to various betrayed and defeated people as a “Court of Last Resort” offering answers, secrets, an untraceable handgun and 100 Bullets…

The sextet of character studies herein opens with ‘On Accidental Purpose’ as Dizzy Cordova pays a nostalgia-tainted visit to the friends and ghetto neighbourhood she so happily escaped from (in 100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call) whilst Graves has a conversation with one-time Minuteman Shepherd – now sole facilitator for the Trust, before ‘Cole Burns Slow Hand’ sees the newly reactivated Minuteman settle accounts with the fiancé he abandoned once Graves came calling (100 Bullets: Split Second Chance), all set against the backdrop of a robbery/hostage situation gone painfully wrong.

Trust Heir Apparent Benito Medici experiences first hand a taste of the Old Ways and Good Old Days in the bloody ‘Ambition’s Audition’ whilst rogue agent and unstoppable Force of Nature Lono gets a visit from Shepherd, resulting in a situation even his barbarous methods can’t handle in ‘Night of the Payday’ and Graves himself features in ‘A Crash’ as overtures from the Families are rebuffed whilst a young couple’s brief dream of vast, unearned wealth falls foul of bad timing and their own consciences.

Wylie Times (100 Bullets: A Foregone Tomorrow) gets a visit from Agent Graves and a case, gun, bullets and dossier of his own in the final tale ‘Point Off the Edge’ – a tense thriller which reminds us that not all evil comes courtesy of secret criminal cabals whilst proving once more that even if it doesn’t Graves is always prepared to take advantage…

Even after this seeming break in the overarching narrative the unfolding saga remains astoundingly accessible and readable with the war against the Trust now openly declared and all participants anxiously choosing their side and crossing their fingers. Agent Graves has activated the final stage of his decades-long campaign and the endgame is approaching…

If there are still any entertainment-starved story fans – grown-up, paid-up, immured to harsh language and unshaken by rude, nude and very violent behaviour – who aren’t addicted to this compulsive classic yet, get out there and grab every one of these graphic novels at all costs! The best is still to come…

© 2002, 2003 Brian Azzarello, Eduardo Risso & DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Batman: The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul


By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-845-4

This fast and frantic collection presents another “final” clash between the Gotham Guardian’s extended gang-busting family and the immortal criminal mastermind: one which re-invents the eco-supremacist Ra’s Al Ghul.

This contemporary and more acceptable embodiment of the classically inscrutable “ancient foreign menace” was typified in a less forgiving age as the Yellow Peril or the threat of the Eastern races for the “civilised” West, embodied most memorably by Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu. This breed of alien archetype permeates the early days of popular fiction and is an overwhelmingly powerful symbol, although here the character’s Arabic origins, neutral at the time he was first created, seem to embody a different kind of ethnic bogeyman in today’s post 9/11 world.

The concept of a villain who has the best interests of the planet at heart is not a new one, but Ra’s Al Ghul, whose avowed intent is to cull teeming humanity back to ecologically viable levels and save the Earth from Mankind’s poisonous polluting madness, hit a chord in the 1970s – a period where such issues first came to the attention of the young. It was a rare kid who didn’t find a core of good sense in what “the Demon’s Head” planned.

The character is still best remembered for the O’Neil/Adams collaborations (see Batman: Tales of the Demon) but has come a long way since: arguably becoming more diluted and less impressive with each outing, but here an awesome assemblage of writers – Paul Dini, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Fabian Nicieza, Keith Champagne and artists David López, Jason Pearson, Tony S. Daniel, Freddie E. Williams III, Don Kramer & Carlos Rodriguez, Ryan Benjamin, David Baldeón, Alvaro López, Jonatham Glapion, Wayne Faucher & Bit, Saleem Crawford and Steve Bird revive “the Demon’s Head” in breakneck, high-octane fashion just as DC’s much-publicised plans to kill off Bruce Wayne were about to commence.

Gathering the crossover story-arc that featured in Batman Annual #26, Robin Annual #7, Batman #670-671, Robin #168-169, Nightwing #138-139 and Detective Comics #838-839 the tale follows Talia and her son Damian as he learns the secret history of his dead grandfather Ra’s Al Ghul as Batman roves the world hunting down the last ancient alchemical Lazarus Pits which have always resurrected the long-lived villain over the centuries.

Genetically perfect, young Damian, whose sire was (technically) the Dark Knight is a reluctant student, and suspects that there might be an ulterior motive for his latest lessons. Playing hooky in a Cantonese graveyard the boy experiences things that shake even his cocky, obnoxious bravado…

Old time Wonder Woman mentor I-Ching (see Diana Prince: Wonder Woman volumes 1-4) guest-stars in the unfolding saga as does the deadly Sensei, master of Al Ghul’s League of Assassins; all strands in a broader web of intrigue revolving around the son of Batman, a factional war to determine the eventual successor to the Demon’s globe-girdling organisation and the desperate hunt to find the mystical city Nanda Parbat; an utterly pure refuge from all earthly evil.

However it seems the Demon is not quite dead: his consciousness is trapped in a disintegrating animated cadaver and if he is to survive the immortal mastermind needs to transfer his soul into the body of someone young and who, preferably, shares his genetic structure…

Revolted and on the run Damian turns to the Batman Family to save him from this horrendous fate whilst his mother Talia is been ousted from leadership of the cult by the mysterious White Ghost, fanatical acolyte of Al Ghul and one who holds the secrets of reviving the undying eco-terrorist…

Perhaps a little short on mood, this all-out blockbuster epic might appear a little disjointed to newer readers, but the action is non-stop and absolutely mesmerising as the assorted heroes try to halt the villain’s inevitable return, prevent a far worse monster from taking his place and save an innocent city and potentially malign child from falling into undying darkness.

Dedicated fanboys will thrill to the return of low-key old baddies such as Merlyn the Archer, Silken Spider, Tiger Moth and Dragonfly, the heroes strut their martial stuff against hordes of ninjas, assassins and warrior death-cults and the settings range from lost world to hidden kingdoms with the ever-present treat of soul-stealing body-snatchers ramping up the tension page by page. Daft and joyous this is real treat for the extreme combat fans and lays the threads for much of what would follow in the days after the latest “Death of Batman”.

© 2007, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Brambly Hedge Treasury


By Jill Barklem (Carnival)
ISBN: 978-0-26167-207-9

Britain has always led the world in illustrated children’s books, from Beatrix Potter and Arthur Rackham to Raymond Williams, Roger Hargreaves and Quentin Blake. Carrying on that splendid tradition is Jill Barklem, who began in 1980 to produce stunningly beautiful rural, ecologically sound fantasy fables about a delightfully engaging tribe – or more correctly hamlet – of mice thriving in the resoundingly English thicket of a Bramble Hedge somewhere in this wonderful country of ours.

Beginning with Spring Story, Summer Story, Autumn Story and Winter Story Barklem’s gloriously enviable miniscule community presented a tiny world of huge rustic delights engrossingly reminiscent of the idealised environs of Alfred Bestall’s Rupert stories, with the land beneath the bushes easily the equal of Nutwood: placid, enticing, enchanting and when necessary, just hazardous enough to provide the element of mild danger necessary for all dramas – even small ones.

An instant global hit with children and their book-providers, the meticulous, miraculous artwork and wry, genteel tales spawned a number of sequels and spin-off tomes including a pattern book, (designs for making one’s own mouse household), a poster book, a collection of tunes for the recorder, address books and all the usual merchandise from shampoo to tableware (what I wouldn’t give for a Brambly Hedge Teacup…).

In 1999 County Books collected the fifth and sixth tales – ‘The Secret Staircase’ and ‘The High Hills’ into a large-sized, spectacularly printed compendium which included a stunning introductory section introducing the extended cast, (nearly two dozen distinctive and adorable mice), maps of the area, cutaway paintings and locations of interest all accompanied by Barklem’s beguiling prose.

The nominal stars of the stories are children Primrose Woodmouse and Wilfred Toadflax, and in ‘The Secret Staircase’ they are both eagerly anticipating the big party at Old Oak Palace, the sprawling stately mansion of Primrose’s father, Lord Woodmouse. As the adults pitch in to prepare the great hall for the evening’s festivities the kids go looking for costumes in the immense domicile and discover hidden passages and a wonderful secret ballroom…

This magical Christmas allegory is filled with incredible illustrations, poems and rhymes perfectly capturing the young’s fascination with discovery and exploration.

‘The High Hills’ features Wilfred in a rather thrilling exploit. Chafing in the Weaver’s house as they make blankets, he dreams of being a grand Explorer like the legendary Sir Hogweed Horehound. When his mother collects him Wilfred convinces her to let him accompany Mr. Apple when he delivers the finished blankets to the Voles who live in the distant High Hills.

The same hills first explored by Hogweed Horehound and where the great man discovered gold!

Filling his rucksack with all the paraphernalia listed in the Great Adventurer’s journal Wilfred looks forward to recreating the historic trip, but the lad has no idea that he’s headed for a unique experience all his own…

A complete compilation of the Brambly Hedge stories was released in 1999, but seems to be out of print and astonishingly expensive to acquire these days. Surely it’s time for another edition of such a timelessly beautiful book? These are tales that every child will love and are a great way to get youngsters into reading, comics and the environment. How cool is that?
© 1983, 1986, 1990, 1999 Jill Barklem. All rights reserved

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The Groo Adventurer


By Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier & Stan Sakai (Epic/Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-87135-703-8

Both in comic narrative and the infinitely more strenuous field of gag-cartooning Sergio Aragonés has produced vast volumes of excellent work. His darkly skewed sensibilities and grasp of the cosmically absurd, wedded to a totally unique drawing style and frankly terrifying professional discipline have made his (usually) silent doodles a vibrant proof of the maxims that laughter is universal and a picture is worth a thousand words.

After working for years for Mad Magazine and DC’s horror titles on gag features and the occasional full comic strip in 1981, with writer and associate Mark Evanier, Aragonés produced a madcap four-page parody of the Sword-and-Sorcery genre as a contribution to the Creators Rights benefit comicbook Destroyer Duck published by Eclipse Comics.

Following a second outing in Mike Grell’s Starslayer (#5) Pacific Comics launched Groo the Wanderer in his own title. After 8 issues (December 1982-April 1984) the troubled company folded but the unsinkable barbarian (that’s a joke I’ll explain later) resurfaced in the Groo Special one-shot from Eclipse (October 1984), before finding a home at Epic Comics: Archie Goodwin’s creator-owned corner of the Marvel Universe.

Aragon̩s had first created his witless warrior in the 1970s but no publisher would take on the property unless he sold all rights Рan almost universal situation in the industry until the advent of the Direct Sales market transferred power from companies and distributors to creators and consumers.

This volume collects the first four (of 120) issues from the Epic incarnation (March-April 1985) and reintroduces readers to the smelliest, ugliest, stupidest itinerant mercenary in the world. Luckily he’s also the best swordsman in creation and too thick to be harmed. The unstoppable brain-donor has since moved on to Image and Dark Horse Comics, but they haven’t completely gone belly-up yet…

Groo is always hungry and wanders because most places he stops at burn down, wash away or crash into rubble soon after he gets there. He loves to fight and the entire world trembles at the mention of his name. They do the same when they smell him too…

Produced in unique fashion by Aragonés, wordsmith Evanier, letterer Stan Sakai (creator of Usagi Yojimbo) and colourist Tom Luth, the idiot’s adventures form one of the longest running humour comicbook series in America and this volume is merely one of 27 to date.

Beginning with ‘The Song of Groo’ which introduces a wandering minstrel to the insane cast of a mediaeval wonderland of kingdoms, villages and provinces roughly mirroring Earth circa 1000AD, wherein the peripatetic poltroon botches a simple guard’s job and precipitates an international war, whilst ‘Dragon Killer’ allows him the opportunity to slay a beast, wipe out a paradise and blow up an entire country.

‘The Medallion’ is a safe-passage token that proves to be the most fray-provoking, schism-inducing peace symbol in the world and this chronicle concludes with ‘World Without Women!’ as the ever-eager hero-in-his-own-mind rescues helpless wives and maidens from zeppelin-riding pirates who keep them in utter luxury, returning the frail, fragile creatures to their rightful lives of dirt, drudgery and husbandly domination…

A magically cynical and silly comedy of errors Groo is the comic that people who hate comics read: brilliantly tongue-in-cheek, sharply sarcastic and devastatingly self-deprecating. An irresistible humour tour-de-force astoundingly scribed and illustrated by jesters who don’t know when – or how – to stop. New readers can start practically anywhere – and still be none the wiser…

Oh yeah, that sinking thing: among his other lack of abilities Groo cannot travel by ship. He’s not sea-sick or anything – it’s just that his mere presence on a maritime vessel causes it to sink…
© 1985, 1990 Sergio Aragonés. All Rights Reserved.

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Batman/Deadman: Death and Glory


By James Robinson & John Estes (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-213-4 Softcover 978-1-56389-228-8

Everybody thinks they know Batman but only by a select few are the secrets of murdered trapeze artist Boston Brand also understood. An ordinary man in a brutal, cynical world Brand was a soul in balance until killed as part of a pointless initiation for a trainee assassin. When he died, instead of going to whatever reward awaited him, Rama Kushna, spirit of the universe, offered him the chance to solve his own murder. That opportunity evolved into an unending mission to balance the scales between good and evil in the world. The ghost is intangible and invisible to all mortal men, but has the ability to “walk into” living beings, possessing and controlling them.

Gotham City: Batman gradually regains consciousness, realising he is facing a squad of armed, trigger-happy police and holding a knife to the throat of a hostage. The scene is a Nightclub-turned-charnel house and all evidence before the hero’s widened eyes indicates that he is the murderous culprit…

Suddenly clear headed he drops his victim and escapes the SWAT teams, determined to find out what has happened since he lost consciousness. Stepping broadly out of character Batman uses magical items taken from villainous sorcerer Felix Faust to perform an eldritch rite and captures his prime suspect, Boston Brand. Unfortunately, his old comrade Deadman is not the guilty party, but reveals that a rich man who has sold his soul to the devil is responsible for all the Dark Knight’s woes.

Meanwhile, Albert Yeats, loser and AIDS victim is running for what’s left of his life, hunted by things he doesn’t know and can’t understand…

Determined to renege, Frederick Chaplin has offered another’s soul for his hellbound one, and the devil has accepted. Yeats had been chosen by the universe to reincarnate as the Messiah in his extremely imminent next life, but that can’t happen if he’s paying Chaplin’s tab in the Inferno. Deadman has been watching over Yeats until he safely passes, but when Batman was first possessed and subsequently distracted the Ghostly Guardian with his spell Yeats was left alone and unprotected…

Now the kid is in the wind and the heroes must find and shield him long enough to die safely, a task complicated by an entire city hunting what they still think is a murderous Bat-Maniac, whilst the real possession-killer – a phantom, satanic counterpart to Deadman called the Clown who has spread terror and death for seventy years – is loose to spread his own unholy kind of havoc…

Intriguing and pretty but lacking much of the emotional punch of earlier Batman/Deadman pairings, Death and Glory looks great but feels rather dispirited and glib in its attempts to blend urban horror, all-out chase action, cod-religion and hidden histories with a millennial feel-good factor, resulting in a top-rate outing for Boston Brand but a rather forced and unlikely performance from the Dark Knight.

Nevertheless, fans of both heroes will find lots to love here and Estes’ painted art will win the approval of most comic lovers. This book is still available through physical and online outlets, in both paperback and hardcover editions…

© 1996 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Bogie


By Claude Jean-Philippe & Patrick Lesueur, translated by Wendy Payton (Eclipse Books)
ISBN: 978-0-913035-78-8

As well as a far greater appreciation of, and looser, more accommodating definitions for performing and popular arts, the French just seem to cherish the magnificent ephemera of entertainment; examining and revisiting the icons and landmarks of TV, film, modern music and comics in ways that English-speakers just don’t seem capable of.

At the beginning of the 1980s artist Patrick Lesueur collaborated with author Claude Jean Philippe on a graphic series of biographies featuring Movie Stars who changed the world: Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Errol Flynn and the subject of this slim and beautiful chronicle translated for America by West Coast independent publisher Eclipse.

Even Wikipedia doesn’t throw up much about the writer but Lesueur began life as a window dresser before moving into bande dessinée in 1972 by joining the creative staff of Pilote, illustrating current affairs pages before moving into fiction with short eco-fables compiled as the album ‘En Attendant le Printemps’ and cop thriller ‘Reste-t-il du Miel pour le Thé’. Latterly he produced ‘Detroit’, ‘Douglas Dunkerk’, and classic car feature ‘Enzo Ferrari, l’Homme aux Voitures Rouges’.

Bogie is told in a haunting, conversationally first-person narrative: the moodily realistic yet whimsically refined life of one of the greatest screen gods of all time comes to elegiac life in this peculiarly down-beat and low-key piece, all the more fascinating because the tale unfolds in an engagingly static manner but actually sounds just like you’d want and expect Humphrey Bogart to talk to you if you met him in a bar, whilst the restrained yet powerfully effective images shout “private photograph album” in a candid, winningly intimate way.

Bogart apparently led an unremarkable life off-screen, or perhaps the creators just didn’t want this hard-drinking, much-married legend to outshine his own celluloid legacy, but in terms of graphic novel entertainment this poetic picture-story in a stunning achievement and worthy of your attention. Perhaps someday soon another publisher will re-release it and even translate those other silver screen sagas too…
Contents © 1984 Dargaud Editeur Paris by Claude Jean Philippe and Patrick Lesueur. 1989 This edition © 1989 Eclipse Books.

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Betty Boop volumes 1-3


By Bud Counihan (Blackthorne Publishing/Comic Strip Preserves)
ISBNs: 0-932629-33-4, 0-932629-47-4 and 0-932629-69-5

Betty Boop is one of the most famous and long-lived fictional media icons on the planet and probably the one who has generated the least amount of narrative creative material – as opposed to simply merchandise – per year since invented.

She was created at the Fleischer Cartoon Studios either by Max Fleischer himself or cartoonist and animator Grim Natwick – depending on whoever you’ve just read – and debuted in the monochrome animated short feature ‘Dizzy Dishes’ the sixth “Talkartoon” release from the studio, screening for the first time on August 9th 1930.

A deliberately racy sex-symbol from the start she was based on silent movie star Clara Bow, “the It-Girl” (as in “she’s got…”) albeit anthropomorphosised into a sexy French Poodle; voiced in those pioneering days of “the talkies” by a succession of actresses including Margie Hines, Kate Wright, Ann Rothschild and Mae Questel who all mimicked Bow’s soft and seductive (no, really!) Brooklyn accent.

Betty had become a fully human if wickedly distorted human girl by 1932’s ‘Any Rags’ and had co-opted and monopolised the remaining Talkartoons, graduated to the ‘Screen Songs’ feature and then won her own animated cartoon series, becoming “The Queen of the Animated Screen” until the end of the decade.

A Jazz Age flapper in the Depression Era, the delectable Miss Boop was probably the first sex-charged teen-rebel of the 20th Century yet remained winningly innocent and knowledgably chaste throughout her career. Thus she became astoundingly, incredibly popular – although her appeal diminished appreciably when the censorious Hayes Production Code cleaned up all the smut and fun coming out of Hollywood in 1934 – even though the Fleisher Studio was New York born and bred…

Saucy singer Helen Kane, who had performed in a sexy “Bow-esque” Brooklyn accent throughout the 1920s and was billed as “The Boop-Oop-A-Doop Girl” famously sued for “deliberate caricature” in 1932, ultimately failing in her suit, but even Betty couldn’t withstand a prolonged assault by the National Legion of Decency and the Hayes Code myrmidons. With all innuendo removed, salacious movements restricted and wearing much longer skirts Betty gained a boyfriend and family whilst the scripting consciously targeted a younger audience. Her last animated cartoon stories were released in 1939.

The one advantage to Betty’s screen neutering and new wholesome image was that she suddenly became eligible for inclusion on the Funnies pages of family newspapers, alongside the likes of Popeye and Mickey Mouse, and in 1934 King Features Syndicate launched a daily and Sunday newspaper strip drawn by Bud Counihan, a veteran ink-slinger who had created the ‘Little Napoleon’ strip in the 1920s before becoming Chic Young’s assistant on Blondie.

The Betty Boop strip never really caught on and folded early in 1937, which leaves us with these three rather charming and wistfully engaging volumes collected and edited by comics aficionado and historian Shel Dorf as part of Blackthorne’s low-budget 1980s reprint program, alongside other hard-to-find classics like Tales of the Green Berets and Star Hawks, and one possibly never to be collected elsewhere…

There was a brief flurry of renewed activity during the 1980s, which led to a couple of TV specials, a comic-book from First Comics ‘Betty Boop’s Big Break’ (1990) and another newspaper strip ‘Betty Boop and Felix’ by Brian Walker (son of Beetle Bailey and Hi & Lois creator Mort Walker) which she shared with fellow King Features nostalgia icon Felix the Cat (see Nine Lives to Live: a Classic Felix Celebration) which ran from 1984-1988 but that’s still a pretty meagre complete canon for a lady of Betty’s longevity and pedigree.

As stated, the collected strips in these Blackthorne editions feature the freshly-sanitised, family-oriented heroine of the later 1930s, but for devotees of the era and comics fans in general the strip still retains a unique and abiding charm, and to be honest, Counihan’s Betty is still oddly, innocently coquettish: a saucy thing with too-short skirts and skimpy apparel (some of the outfits – especially bathing costumes – would raise eyebrows even now), and although the bald innuendo that made her a star is absent, these tales of a street-wise young thing trying to “make it” as a Hollywood starlet are plenty racy enough when viewed through the knowing and sexually adroit eyes of 21st century readers…

Book 1 of this cheap ‘n’ cheerful black-and-white series opens with an extended sequence of gag-a-day instalments that combine into a epic comedy-of-errors as Betty’s lawyers do litigious battle with movie directors and producers to arrive at the perfect contract for all parties – clearly a war that rages to this day in Tinseltown – whilst labouring under the cost restrictions of what was still, after all, The Great Depression.

The full page Sunday strips are presented in a separate section but even with twice the panel-count the material was still broadly slapstick, cunning wordplay, single joke stories, but one of these does introduce the first of an extended cast, Betty’s streetwise baby brother “Bubby” a rapscallion to act as a chaotic foil to the star’s affably sweet, knowingly dim complacency.

There’s a succession of romantic leading men (usually called “Van” something-or-other) but none stick around for long as Betty builds her career, and eventually the scenario changes to a western setting as cast and crew begin making Cowboy Pictures, leading to many weeks’ worth of “Injun Jokes”, but ones working delightfully counter to old and unpleasant stereotypes, and the first collection concludes with the introduction of fearsome lower-class virago Aunt Tillie; chaperone, bouncer and sometime comedy movie extra…

Book 2 (Adventures of a Hollywood Star) continues in the same vein with lawyers, entourage and extras providing the bulk of the humour and Betty increasingly becoming the Straight Man in her own strip except in a recurring gag about losing weight to honour her contract (which stipulates she cannot be filmed weighing more than 100 pounds! Geez! Her head alone has got to weigh at least… sorry, I know… just a comic, …).

Like many modern stars Betty had a dual career and there’s a lot of recording industry and song jokes before the Native Americans return to steal the show some more. Book 3 continues in what is now a clear and unflinching formula, but with Bubby, Aunt Tillie and her diminutive new beau ‘Hunky Dory’ increasingly edging Betty out of the spotlight and even occasionally off the page entirely…

By no means a major effort of “the Golden Age of Comics Strips” Counihan’s Betty Boop (like most licensed syndicated features the strip was “signed” by the copyright holder, in this case Max Fleischer) is still a hugely effective, engaging and entertaining work, splendidly executed and well worthy of a comprehensive and complete compilation.

With the huge merchandising empire built around the effervescent little cartoon Gamin/Houri, (everything from apparel to wallpaper, clocks and blankets) surely it isn’t too much to expect a proper home for all the wicked little japes, jests and junkets of her sojourn in sequential art?

Additionally the second and third books also contain a selection of Paper Doll Bettys with outfits to cut out and colour, designed by Barb Rausch (Neil the Horse, Katy Keene, Barbie, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast among many others) a traditional “added-value” feature of the earliest comic strips that still finds irresistible resonance with much of today’s audience. Just remember, now we can make copies without cutting up those precious originals…
© 1986, 1987 King Features Syndicate. All rights reserved.

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JSA volume 10: Black Vengeance


By Geoff Johns, Don Kramer & Keith Champagne (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-256-8

New, Extended Review

The addictive super-hero soap opera (originally published as JSA #66-75 of the monthly magazine) stepped into high gear as the younger stalwarts of the team once more went time-travelling: this time back to the immediate post-war years to thwart a plot to prevent the Justice Society from ever coming out of retirement, after the House un-American Activities Commission and Senator Joe McCarthy forced them to disappear in 1951.

But before that engaging time-paradox romp got underway attention returned briefly to the once-rogue state of Kahndaq (see JSA: Black Reign) wherein ‘Prologue’ by Geoff Johns, Don Kramer & Keith Champagne showed the size-changing Atom Smasher having doubts about the efficacy and ethics of the way the newly liberated country was progressing under Black Adam’s reign. Suddenly, he is summoned by mysterious, autocratic Time Master Rip Hunter to save hid erstwhile Justice Society comrades…

Illustrated by Dave Gibbons and James Hodgkins, the scene shifted to 1951 where Fascistic time-meddler Per Degaton was once more attempting to bend reality to his will…

‘Making History’ (art by Kramer & Champagne) revisits a seminal 1979 JSA tale by Paul Levitz and Joe Staton, originally published in Adventure Comics #466 and collected in the second volume of Justice Society (coming soon to this blog) which revealed the reason that the team retired was due to witch-hunts and political pressure from the US government’s House Un-American Activities Commission. Rather than reveal their secret identities the team simply ceased to operate, only coming out of retirement once the oppressive climate abated. Now Degaton was twisting events to ensure his hated enemies never returned…

Hunter’s attempts to stop him have convinced the murderous mastermind to eradicate the 21st century team and all their friends and families before they can journey to 1951 and interfere…

‘Guardian Angels’ and ‘High Societies’ found the hastily assembled rescue team encountering unexpected problems as they worked to counter the Time Nazi, especially for  Mr. Terrific, a brilliant African-American who couldn’t even ride in the same vehicles as his time-transplanted white companions.

A scene depicting how the Ku Klux Klan responded to a black man who wasn’t afraid of them and subsequently got the kicking of their vile lives is a delightfully gratuitous and vicarious joy that still warms my old liberal heart and absolutely stole the show before the timely assistance of two generations of Hourman in ‘Past Mistakes’ turned the tide and the forces of good finally, magnificently triumphed in ‘JSA/JSA: Conclusion’.

The controversial and contentious Kahndaq saga is then resolved with the eponymous three-parter ‘Black Vengeance’ (drawn by Kramer, Leonard Kirk and Stephen Sadowski with inks from Champagne & Michael Bair) as the morally bereft Atom Smasher, once more with the JSA, surrenders himself to a higher justice just as Eclipso and the Spectre begin their combined assault on magic (which formed the basis of the Infinite Crisis prequel series Day of Vengeance: you don’t need to read them to enjoy or understand this story, but it is recommended…) resulting in a devastating conflict that destroys the body and soul of the country and its inhabitants…

This volume is a little disjointed in places as it serves to clear up long running plot-lines whilst asking a few more pertinent questions about US imperialism as seen from the perspective of the citizens of the fictional middle-Eastern nation which was regularly reduced to rubble and collateral damage statistics whenever super-powers and Superpowers came into play.

Despite the prevalent political overtones, this is still primarily a simple hero-fest for fans of the genre, and delivers high-quality escapism for the faithful, although the uninitiated might find the implicit back-story a tad hard to grasp. At this time the entire DC line was gearing up for major changes beyond their Infinite Crisis publishing event and the narrative throat-clearing here allowed everybody concerned a few final dalliances with the World’s First Super-Team before the Big Boom got lowered (and for those last two excellent escapades check out the final two volumes of this graphic novel sequence JSA: Mixed Signals and JSA: Ghost Stories).

A shaky moment in an otherwise superlative series, but this is still a book well worth pursuing and a saga worth reading over and over again.

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Jesse James: Classic Western Collection


By Joe Kubert & Carmine Infantino (Vanguard Productions)
ISBN 1-887591-44-3

There was a time, not that very long ago, when all of popular fiction was engorged with cowboy stories.

As always happens with such periodic phenomena – such as the Swinging Sixties Super-Spy Boom and perhaps the modern Vampire Boyfriend trend (too soon to tell, but I’m sharpening stakes and having some cola and Perrier blessed, just in case…) – there’s a tremendous amount of dross and a few spectacular gems. On such occasions there’s also generally a small amount of superb but not-quite-transformationally magnificent concoctions that get lost in the shuffle: carried along with the overwhelming surge of material pumped out by television, film, comics and book producers and even the toy, game and record industries.

After World War II the American family entertainment market – for which read comics, radio and the burgeoning television industry – became comprehensively enamoured of the clear-cut, simplistic sensibilities and easy, escapist solutions offered by Tales of the Old West; already a firmly established favourite of paperback fiction, movie serials and feature films.

I’ve often pondered on how almost simultaneously a dark, bleak, nigh-nihilistic and oddly left-leaning Film Noir genre quietly blossomed alongside that wholesome revolution, seemingly for the cynical minority of entertainment intellectuals who somehow knew that the returned veterans still hadn’t found a Land Fit for Heroes… but that a thought for another time and graphic novel review.

Comic books saw a huge outpouring of anthology titles and new six-gun toting heroes to replace the rapidly dwindling supply of costumed Mystery Men, and true to formula, most of these pioneers ranged from transiently mediocre to outright appalling. Europe and Britain also embraced the Sagebrush zeitgeist, and produced some pretty impressive work, with France and Italy eventually making the genre their own by the end of the 1960s. Still and all there was the rare gleam of gold and also a fair share of highly acceptable silver in the American tales, and as always, the crucial difference was due to the artists and writers involved…

With every comic-book publisher turning hopeful eyes westward, it was natural that most of the historical figures would quickly find a home and of course facts counted little, as indeed they never had with cowboy literature…

Avon Books started in 1941, created when the American News Corporation bought out pulp magazine publishers J.S. Ogilvie, and their output was famously described by Time Magazine as “westerns, whodunits and the kind of boy-meets-girl story that can be illustrated by a ripe cheesecake jacket.”

By 1945 the company had launched a comic-book division as fiercely populist as the parent company with over 100 short-lived titles such as Atomic Spy Cases, Batchelor’s Diary, Behind Prison Bars, Campus Romance, Gangsters and Gun Molls, Slave Girl Comics, War Dogs of the U.S. Army, White Princess of the Jungle and many others, all aimed – even the funny animal titles like Space Mouse and Spotty the Pup! – at a slightly older and more discerning audience, and all drawn by some of the best artists working at the time. Many if not most sported lush painted covers that were both eye-catching and beautiful.

Six of their titles had respectable runs: Peter Rabbit, Eerie, Wild Bill Hickock, outrageous “Commie-busting” war comic Captain Steve Savage, Fighting Indians of the Wild West and the comfortingly scripted but magnificently illustrated fictionalised adventures of Jesse James.

Within these pages cow-punching aficionados (no, its neither a sexual proclivity nor an Olympic sport) and all fans of wonderful comic artwork can (re)discover a selection of range-riding rollercoaster rides about a troubled and misunderstood fast-gun forced to defend his name and life from an assorted passel of low-down no-goods and scurvy owlhoots, that have far more in common with Robin Hood’s brand of Outlawry than the actual Frank and Jesse James.

Nonetheless these anodyne but enjoyable tall tales still have a lot to recommend them. In stories such as ‘The Liberty Bank Robbery’, ‘Disaster at Savannah’, ‘Texas Killer’, ‘Devil’s Desperadoes’, ‘Jesse James… Sheriff’, ‘Helltown Holdups’, ‘Gunplay at Gallatin’, ‘The Great Prison Break!’, ‘Six-Gun Slaughter at San Romano’, ‘The Russelville Gunfights’ and ‘The Apache Kid Treasure’ the put-upon hero tries to live a blameless life until pushed to action by reputation-hungry fools, greedy bankers, psychotic killers and all the other myriad touchstones of Western mythology.

This black and white collection reprints material from issues #5, 6 and 7 of Jesse James (1950-1951) primarily featuring the art of comics legends Joe Kubert and Carmine Infantino, who would a few years later usher in the Silver Age of comics, but also includes the stylish frontispieces by acclaimed artist Wally Wood and world-famous portraitist Everett Raymond Kinstler, whose elegant illustrative art graced many Avon comics, as well as text features, biographies and even some pre-production pencil sketches.

Bill Black has also reprinted a few Avon Jesse James tales as part of his AC Comics line, but with 24 issues plus an annual released between 1950-1956 and artists like Leonard Starr, Al Williamson, Fred Kida and Frank Frazetta also contributing sterling work to these admittedly above-average shoot-’em-up scripts, surely there’s still enough potential fans around to support a complete reprinting of this title – perhaps in the cheap and cheerful DC Showcase/Marvel Essentials giant phonebook format?

Black hats, white hats, great pictures and traditional action values – what more could you possibly ask for?

© 2001 Vanguard Productions 2003P. All other trademarks and copyrights in this book are acknowledged to their respective owners.

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Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life volume 1


By Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni Press)
ISBN: 1-9326-6408-4

Ha! I Told You So Dept: a shameless cashing–in reprint moment…

Is it just me, or is all the really cool, really fun and really fresh comic stuff coming out of the alternative/Small Press/creator owned/self-published sector of the comic industry? Like so many others my age I grew up in a time with very few strip publishers, and though I love ’em dearly still, I’m acutely aware of just how limited a range those mainstream creators were allowed to work within.

I’m simply appalled that in an era of specialist retailers, comic conventions and all the computer age paraphernalia that should keep editors and publishers totally clued in to the appetites of their customer base, the same old stuff is perpetually retooled and recycled whilst everybody and his aunt bemoans the unstoppable decline in comics sales and the inevitable death of the medium.

I have some maxims that might help solve this conundrum. Produce work for your audience, not yourselves. Variety is the spice of life. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Think about the work first, and the Subsidiary Merchandising Rights last. This is an entertainment medium: Your goal should be to make entertainment.

Having got that off my capacious chest, I can whole-heartedly recommend the work of Bryan Lee O’Malley. His Manga-tinted tales of an adorable boy-idol idle slacker, shambling his way through contemporary, if somewhat surreal, life is a gentle stroll through a world that manages to feel warmly nostalgic no matter what age you are or where you grew up. Scott Pilgrim is young, lazy and gorgeous, shares a flat with his cool, gay best mate, plays in a band and has girlfriend hassles. He lives his life from moment to moment and manages to keep a firm grip on both angst and hormones.

Although ostensibly targeting the modern counter-culture of the troubled teen, skate-boarding, new punk generation, there is a wonderfully accessible universality to his problematic existence and his perpetually stop-gap solutions. In terms of content alone this should be considered a mass-market item. And should enough people see this work to make Scott Pilgrim a “bankable” commodity pray that the author keeps some form of creative control, because this is that rarest of comic books. The stories and characters are unbelievably good but the sometimes crude and often over-exuberant drawing is absolutely perfect for this material. Nothing and nobody else could possibly do it justice – and that includes any dream cast any Hollywood producer could possibly drool over.

This is a great comic book. Go buy it now.

I wrote the above in 2006 and now I’m cashing in on the movie. See the film, be amused and amazed but for the Love of Grunge get this book and its five sequels!

â„¢ & © 2004 Bryan Lee O’Malley. All Rights Reserved.