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Indiana Jones: The Further Adventures Omnibus volume 1


By Walt Simonson, Denny O’Neil, David Michelinie, Howard Chaykin, Archie Goodwin, John Buscema, John Byrne, Gene Day, Richard Howell, Ron Frenz, Kerry Gammill, Dan Reed, Luke McDonnell, Terry Austin, Mel Candido, Danny Bulanadi, Sam de La Rosa, & various (Dark Horse/Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-246-8 (Dark Horse TPB) 978-1-84576-808-9 (Titan TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic and literary effect.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: What Blockbuster Really Means… 8/10

Next June sees the 45th anniversary of the release of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Who knows if we’ll still be here then, so in lieu of biblical smiting or the end coming courtesy of the babies, nitwits and monsters giving all the orders right now, here’s a rowdy recollection that’s fun to read and where Nazis at least have the chutzpah to admit it…

Although dormant for the moment, Dark Horse Comics have held the comics-producing franchise for Indiana Jones since 1993: generating thousands of pages of material, much of it excellent and some not quite. It might be construed as heretical to say it, but dedicated film fans aren’t all that quality conscious when it comes to their particular fascination, whether it’s games about finding Atlantis or the latest watered-down kids’ interpretation or whatever.

The Dark Horse Omnibus line was a wonderfully economical way to keep older material in print for such fans by bundling old publications into classy, full-colour digests. They were slightly smaller than US comic-books but larger than a standard tank?bon manga book, running about 400 pages per tome, but not all of them were available in digital editions. The entire format carried over when Marvel reacquired the Star Wars franchise and has been used since for their Alien and Predator lines.

This initial Indy volume (of three) chronologically re-presents the first dozen Marvel Comics (the original license holder) interpretations which followed the film Raiders of the Lost Ark as well as including the 3-issue miniseries adaptation by Walt Simonson, John Buscema & Klaus Janson that preceded that celluloid landmark. I’m being this specific because the comic version was also released as a single glossy, enhanced-colour magazine in the Marvel Super Special series (#18: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark if you’re curious).

So – just in case you’re the one who hasn’t seen the film… Set in the days before World War II, Hitler’s paranormal investigation division gathers occult artifacts from around the planet and soon crosses swords with a rough & ready unconventional archaeology professor from a New York university. Soon the far-from-esteemed Doctor Indiana Jones is scammed by the US government into tracking down his old tutor: a savant who might have knowledge of the biblical and mystically potent Ark of the Covenant…

Although Abner Ravenwood has since died, his daughter Marion possesses clues Jones needs. Unfortunately, she’s also an old flame he abandoned and would rather burn in hell than help him. However, when Nazis turn up and try to torch her in the Nepalese bar she washed up in, Marion joins Jones in a breakneck chase across the world from Cairo to the lost city of Tanis to a secret Nazi submarine base on a tropical island, fighting natives and Nazis every step of the way until the ancient artifact separates the just from the wicked in a spectacular and terrifying display of Old Testament style Wrath…

The movie’s format – baffling but breakneck search for a legendary object, chased or anticipated by utterly irredeemable antagonists, exotic locales, non-stop action, outrageous fights and just a hint of eldritch overtones – became staples for the comic book series that followed. It opened in impressive manner with ‘The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones’: a 2-part yarn from Jack-of-all-genres John Byrne, assisted by Terry Austin, with veteran scripter Denny O’Neil pitching in for the concluding ‘22-Karat Doom!’

When an old student is murdered before his eyes, Indy swears to complete the lad’s research, subsequently trekking through Africa in search of a mythical tribe who turn men to gold. He is never more than one step ahead of a maniac millionaire with no love of mysteries or antiquities, but possessed by a deep and abiding love of profit…

That adventure ends with our hero plunging out of a doomed plane and into issue #3’s US-set adventure ‘The Devil’s Cradle’ (by O’Neil, Gene Day, Richard Howell, Mel Candido & Danny Bulanadi) wherein Indy lands in a hillbilly wilderness where a rogue US Army Colonel and band of witch-burning yokels are separately hunting a 400-year-old alchemist with all the secrets of the ages at his fingertips…

David Michelinie, Ron Frenz & Bulanadi’s ‘Gateway to Infinity!’ sees our archaeological adventurer en route to Stonehenge, courtesy of the US government, as a ring of Nazi spies again fail to kill him. Hitler’s spies and parapsychologists are still hunting preternatural artifacts and the crystal cylinder uncovered at the ancient monument definitely qualifies. English professor (of antiquities not ENGLISH English) Karen Mays dates it to the Triassic period, millions of years before Man evolved, so the murderous Aryans will stop at nothing to make it theirs…

Luckily for Jones and Mays – but not the Reich – the spies eventually succeed. However, to their eternal regret their vile machinations unleash ‘The Harbingers’, and only Indy’s swift reactions prevent a horror beyond time escaping into our world…

Jazz Age mastermind Howard Chaykin joins Austin to illustrate wonderfully classy ‘Club Nightmare’ (plotted by Archie Goodwin & scripted by Michelinie) wherein Marion opens a swanky Manhattan nightspot, only to run afoul of mobsters – and worse – before it even opens. With Indy on hand to save the day though, the situation swiftly goes from tricky to calamitous to disastrous…

Michelinie, Kerry Gammill & Sam de La Rosa soon have our hero globetrotting again in ‘Africa Screams’ as a tussle in Tuscany with tomb-robber Ian McIver provides a solid clue to an even deeper mystery. Following an old map, Indy & Marion are soon on their way to the Dark Continent in search of the legendary Shintay; a tribe of pale giants, outcast from and last survivors of fabled Atlantis. Unfortunately, McIver and those ever-eager Nazi scavengers are also on the trail and in ‘Crystal Death’ the Shintay’s vast power almost eradicates half of Africa…

Issues #9 & 10 find our tomb hunter target of a sinister plot by German spies and Aztec wannabees in ‘The Gold Goddess: Xomec’s Raiders’ (Goodwin, Michelinie, Dan Reed & Bulanadi), prompting death-defying battles in the lofty heights of the Big Apple and depths of the Brazilian jungle…

We conclude in epic style with a breathtaking global duel and brand-new villain as Indy is seduced by nefarious antiquities collector Ben Ali Ayoob into investigating persistent Biblical myth ‘The Fourth Nail’. In ‘Blood and Sand’ Jones travels from Australian Outback to Barcelona trying to find the unused final spike that should have ended Christ’s suffering on the Cross, but his quest is dogged by bad luck, Arabian ninjas, guardian “gypsies”, immense insane bandits and irascible bulls looking for a handy matador to mangle…

The perilous pilgrimage reaches an inevitable conclusion in ‘Swords and Spikes’ (with additional art from Luke McDonnell & Mel Candido), a cavalcade of carnage, breakneck action and supernatural retribution…

With a covers gallery from such ably diverse hands as James T. Sherman, Walt Simonson, Terry Austin, Byrne, Howell & Armando Gil, Frenz, Mike Gustovich, Chaykin, Gammill, Bob Wiacek & Bob McLeod, this is a splendid slice of simple escapist fun: buried treasures any fan of any age would be delighted to unearth and rejoice over.
™ & © 1981, 1983, 2009 Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved.

Today in 1920 comic book legend Dan Spiegle was born. Where are those Lost in Space, Crossfire or Blackhawk archive editions!?

In 1921 equally legendary artist Matt Baker was born. Go look him up too like we did in Invisible Men – The Trailblazing Black Artists of Comic Books. You could even try and find Teen Angst: A Treasury of ’50’s Romance…

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Doctor Who: The Cruel Sea (Doctor Who Graphic Novel # 18)


By Gareth Roberts, Clayton Hickman, Mike Collins, Robert Shearman, Scott Gray, Steven Moffat, John Ross, David A. Roach, Kris Justice, Dylan Teague, James Offredi, Roger Langridge, Martin Geraghty & various (Panini Comics UK LTD)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-593-2 (Album PB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Timeless, Timebending Thrill Treats… 8/10

Doctor Who premiered on television with the first episode of ‘An Unearthly Child’ on November 23rd 1963. Within a year, his decades-long run in TV Comic began with issue #674 and the opening instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’.

On 11th October 1979 (although adhering to the US off-sale cover-dating system so it says 17th) Marvel’s UK subsidiary launched Doctor Who Weekly. It regenerated into a monthly magazine in September 1980 (#44) and has been with us under various names ever since.

All of which only goes to prove that the Time Lord is a comic hero with an impressive pedigree…

While Panini UK collaborated with Marvel they spent a lot of effort – and time! – collecting every strip from the archives into a uniform series of oversized graphic albums, each concentrating on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer. This one gathers stories from Doctor Who Magazine (AKA DWM) #355-364 plus material from The Doctor Who Annual 2006 (as originally published between April 2005 and January 2006): all featuring the contemporary official off-screen escapades of the recently revived Time Lord as explosively played by Christopher Eccleston. Comparatively it’s rather short and the large section of bonus features will tell you why…

For the longest time this was actually the only collection of strips featuring “the Ninth Doctor” and whether that statement made any sense to you largely depends on whether you are an old fan, a new convert or a complete beginner. Back then though, this incarnation of the Galloping Gallifreyan was big news as the TV series had been left to moulder since 1989, except for a US backed one-shot pilot with Paul MgGann. His jaunt subsequently fuelled years of comics capers but when a whole new series debuted on March 26th 2005 all bets were off…

More on that astounding busy-time and how it fared after Eccleston just as abruptly quit the role is covered in detail at the back in a copious Commentary section…

We’re here for the comics though, and they start with TV scripters uniting with comics pros for serialised nostalgia in ‘The Love Invasion’ (DWM #355-357) by Gareth Roberts & Clayton Hickman, limned by Mike Collins & David A. Roach, with colours from Dylan Teague & James Offredi, and steadfast Roger Langridge filling boxes and balloons.

Here the Doctor drops new companion Rose Tyler back in swinging 1966 London for a spot of shopping only to uncover alien time meddling by a Kustollian trying to forestall Earth’s future interstellar might. It’s plan involves employing amped up dolly birds dubbed “Lend-a-Hand girls” to satisfy any desire mankind expresses with the intention of destroying the will to strive and overcome.

Of course the chronal comrades are having none of that…

Mike Collins writes and draws DWM #358’s ‘Art Attack’, with Kris Justice inking as Teague & Langridge do their usual thing for a riotous romp at following Rose’s expressed desire to see the Mona Lisa. Instead of the Paris Louvre now, the Doctor decides on the 37th century Oriel. Who wouldn’t prefer a trans-dimensional gallery containing every single art work to have survived World War V?

Sadly though, Artist-in-Residence Cazkelf the Transcendent has a masterpiece of betrayal and doom to compete and things get a bit deadly. Of course, the Doctor can be both creative and forgiving…

Screenwriter Robert Shearman joins Collins, Roach, Offredi & Langridge for eponymous epic ‘The Cruel Sea’ (DWM #359-362) wherein a 22nd century ocean cruise on the sands of Mars turns very nasty, very quickly. Although it’s a wedding party pleasure voyage for the ultra-rich, Tyler and her time tutor steam in stop the bride, an army of ex-wives and other swells being assimilated by a goopy crimson killer abiding in the gritty depths whilst getting to grips with the monster’s side of the story….

Sadly, this is tale of bad stuff, greedy stuff, stupid stuff but no good or redeeming stuff…

A winning component of The Doctor Who Annual 2006, Scott Gray, John Ross, Offredi & Langridge’s ‘Mr. Nobody’ reveals what happens when the distant reincarnation of galactic terror Shogalath is renditioned and tried for his crimes against the Vandos Imperium. Thankfully, as a (self-appointed) “Legal Representative of the Hyper-Temporal Magistrate Authority” the Doctor is glad to butt in and defend janitor Phil Tyson, but amidst all the shooting that ensues it soon seems not everyone is telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but…

It can’t be British time travel without a dash of Shakespeare, so closing comic conundrum ‘A Groatsworth of Wit’ – by Gareth Roberts, Collins, Roach, Offredi & Langridge from DWM #363-364 – exposes infernal forces bolstering and supporting the Bard’s spite-riven rival Robert Greene and how the subtle sponsorship of malign extra-dimensional “Shadeys” Bloodfinger and Woodscrape affects London four centuries later. The apparent cause is Greene arriving to see who was more famous in modern times and unleashing hell when the answer does not suit him…

Cue the Doctor and Rose drawn to an escalating conflagration as Greene’s tantrum shatters barriers and allows a brace of malign monsters access to everything humans, Of course the Gallivanting Gallifreyan has a few special effects and plot twists up his leather jacket sleeve, so all’s well that ends well for most players involved, but only after a most expedient trip to the olde Globe Theatre and crucial chinwag with the upstart crow himself…

Closing the entertainment portion of the tome is a winning illustrated prose yarn by future showrunner Steven Moffat, captivatingly augmented with pictures from Martin Geraghty. ‘What I Did on My Summer Holidays By Sally Sparrow’ also originated in The Doctor Who Annual 2006 and describes how a vacationing 12-year-old schoolgirl diligently extracts the Time Lord from a most precarious trap, all thanks to a box of old photographs and rampant nostalgia…

Moving on to education and elucidation the prodigious Commentary section begins with editor Clayton Hickman detailing how Eccleston & Billie Piper made a complicated leap to the printed page in ‘Fantastic Journey – Inside the Ninth Doctor Comic Strips’, augmented by development art by Mike Collins. That’s followed by specific story notes by the individual scripters and illustrators for ‘The Love Invasion’, ‘Art Attack’, ‘The Cruel Sea’, ‘Mr Nobody’, ‘A Groatsworth of Wit’ and ‘What I Did on My Summer Holidays by Sally Sparrow’: all supplemented by roughs, sketches, designs and page layout from Collins and Ross.

This rocket-paced rollercoaster ride introduces and – signs off – the Ninth Doctor in splendid style, and dedicated fans can find wealth of new stories in later publishers’ outputs. None of which is relevant if all you want is a darn good read. Every creator involved here managed the ultimate “Ask” of any strip creator: to deliver engaging, thrilling, fun yarns equally enjoyable for the merest beginner and most slavishly addicted fan.

We all have our little joys and hidden passions. Sometimes they overlap and magic is made. These are superb tales of an undeniable bulwark of British Fantasy and if you’re a fan of only one medium of expression, they might make you an addict to others. The Cruel Sea is a fabulous book for casual readers, a fine shelf addition for show devotees and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our art-form to anyone minded to give comics another go.

If only someone would get around to getting these tales digitised…
All Doctor Who material © BBCtv. Doctor Who logo © BBC 2013. Tardis image © BBC 1963. Doctor Who, the Tardis and all logos are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence. © Published 2014 by Panini Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved.

Today in 1933, London born US cartoonist Ashleigh (Pot-Shots) Brilliant & Argentine comic book wizard José Delbo (Mighty Samson, Wonder Woman, Transformers, Superman, Batman) were born. No relation we assume. In 1959 this date, pioneering strip cartoonist Gene Carr died as did Green Lantern originator Martin Nodell in 2006.

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Man-Thing Marvel Masterworks volume 1


By Steve Gerber, Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Gerry Conway, Val Mayerik, Gray Morrow, Rich Buckler, John Buscema, Neal Adams, Howard Chaykin, Jim Starlin, Gil Kane, Dan Adkins, Jim Mooney, Frank Bolle, Chic Stone, Frank McLaughlin, Sal Trapani, Joe Sinnott, Frank Brunner, Mike Ploog & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5547-2 (HB/digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also includes some Discriminatory Content included for dramatic and literary effect.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Timeless, Remorseless, Evergreen Scary Stuff to Make You Think… 9/10

At the end of the 1960s American comic books were in turmoil, much like the youth of the nation they targeted. Superheroes had dominated for much of the decade; peaking globally before explosively falling to ennui and overkill. Older genres such as horror, westerns and science fiction returned, fed by radical trends in movie-making, where the kids who had grown up with Marvel now fulfilled the bulk of their young adult entertainment needs.

Inspiration isn’t everything. In fact as Marvel slowly grew to a position of market dominance in the wake of the losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators, they did so less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties. The only real exception to this was the hasty hyper-generation of multiple horror titles in response to the industry down-turn in super-hero sales – a move vastly expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

The switch to supernatural stars had many benefits. Crucially it brought a new readership to Marvel comics, one attuned to the global revival in spiritualism, Satanism and all things sinisterly spooky. Almost as important, it gave the reprint-crazy company an opportunity to finally recycle old 1950s horror stories that had been rendered unprintable and useless since the Code’s inception in 1954.

A scant 15 years later the Comics Code prohibition against horror was hastily rewritten – amazing how plunging sales can affect ethics – and scary comics came back in a big way with a new crop of supernatural heroes and monsters popping up on the newsstands to supplement the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins already infiltrating the once science-only scenarios of the surviving mystery men titles. In fact lifting of the Code ban resulted in such an en masse creation of horror titles (both new characters and reprints from the massive boom of the early 1950s) that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to (temporarily, at least) bite the dust.

Almost overnight nasty monsters (and narcotics – but that’s another story) became acceptable fare on four-colour pages and whilst a parade of pre-code reprints made sound business sense, the creative aspect of the contemporary buzz for bizarre themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public. As always in entertainment, the watch-world was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was to be incorporated into the mix as soon as possible.

The first fan-sensation of the modern era, (now officially enshrined as the Bronze Age of US comic books) Swamp Thing had powerful popular fiction antecedents and in 1972 it was seemingly a concept whose time had come again. Prime evidence was the fact that Marvel were also working on a man-into-mucky, muddy mess character at the very same time. Both Swampy and the Macabre Man-Thing were thematic revisions of Theodore Sturgeon’s classic novella It, and bore notable resemblances to a hugely popular Hillman Comics star dubbed The Heap.

He/it sloshed through the back of Airboy Comics (née Air Fighters Comics) from 1943 until the end of the Golden Age, and my fanboy radar suspects Roy Thomas’ marsh-monster The Glob (Incredible Hulk #121-November 1969 & #129-June 1970) either inspired both DC and Marvel’s creative teams, or was part of that same zeitgeist. It must also be remembered that in the autumn of 1971 Skywald – a very minor player with big aspirations – released a monochrome magazine in their Warren knock-off line entitled The Heap.

For whatever reason, by the end of the 1960s superhero comics were in another steep sales decline, again succumbing to a genre boom led by a horror/mystery resurgence. A swift rewriting of the Comics Code Authority augmented the changeover and at National/DC, veteran EC comics star Joe Orlando became editor of House of Mystery and sister title House of Secrets. These were short story anthologies embracing gothic mystery scenarios, taking their lead from TV triumphs like Twilight Zone and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, but a horror themed lead meant a focus on character not plot, tragedy and empathy over twist endings and most precious of all, continuity…

No one was expecting satire and social commentary but that came along for the ride too!

Remarkably soon after the Comics Code prohibition against horror being amended, scary comics returned in force and a fresh crop of supernatural superheroes and monsters began appearing on newsstands to supplement the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins already infiltrating the once science-only scenarios of the surviving Fights ‘n’ Tights titles.

In fact, the lifting of the Code ban resulted in such an avalanche of horror titles in response to the industry-wide downturn in superhero sales, that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to – albeit temporarily – bite the dust.

When proto-horror Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (cover-dated October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel moved ahead with a line of shocking superstars. They began with a traditional werewolf and a vampire before chancing something new: a haunted biker who tapped into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the prevailing supernatural zeitgeist: the all-new Ghost Rider (in Marvel Spotlight #5, August 1972). He had been preceded by western hero Red Wolf in #1 and the aforementioned Werewolf by Night in #2-4. From these beginnings spooky floodgates opened to such an extent there was even room for non-white stars like The Living Mummy and ultimately today’s star turn…

This quirky compendium collects the earliest exploits of Marvel’s muck monster, and not at all coincidentally traces the rise of a unique comics voice. Steve Gerber was a sublimely gifted writer with a ferocious social conscience who combined a deep love of Marvel’s continuity minutiae with dark irrepressible wit, incisive introspection, barbed cultural criticism, a barely reigned-in imagination and boundless bizarre surrealism. His stories were always at the extreme edge of the company’s intellectual canon and never failed to deliver surprise and satisfaction, especially when he couched his sardonic sorties as thinly veiled attacks on burgeoning cultural homogenisation and commercial barbarity. Via material from Savage Tales #1, Astonishing Tales, #12-13, Adventure into Fear #10-19, The Man-Thing #1 & Marvel Two-In-One #1 (communally spanning May 1971 to January 1974) we’ll see how Marvel increasing became the voice of a lost and dissatisfied liberality…

The revolution begins after an erudite Introduction by authorial everyman Steve Orlando (Scarlet Witch, Wonder Woman, Ben 10, Heavy Metal Magazine), before we trudge back to very different times and the beginning of a new kind of comics experience and Marvel’s continued experiments with the monochrome, mature reader marketplace…

Ranged amidst the grittier-than-usual adult-oriented material (that meant partial nudity and more explicit violence back then) Savage Tales #1 (cover-dated May 1971) was a mixed bag of sword & sorcery, sci fi, crime and horror stories featuring Conan, Ka-Zar and more. That line-up included a powerfully enthralling horror yarn entitled ‘Man Thing!’ Scripted by Gerry Conway & Roy Thomas, it offered a fairly traditional spooky story elevated to sublime heights by Gray Morrow’s artwork. It related how government biochemist Ted Sallis was hiding out in the swamps whilst finishing a new/recreated iteration of the much-prized Super-soldier formula that had created Captain America…

Sadly, his live-in lover Ellen is an agent for the opposition and when she and her minions made a play for the formula, Ted is wounded and flees into the murky mire. To preserve the only sample of his life’s work, the desperate, possibly dying boffin injects himself with it… and the bog mingles with the mix to spawn something tragic and uncanny…

Barely conscious or sentient, a shambling muck-monster emerges, apparently set on justice or vengeance…

Savage Tales was not a success and who knows how many manic Marvelites actually saw the anthology, but creators are stubborn brutes who can’t let things lie, so some months later the muck monster shambled back via a tenuous mainstream comic book connection…

Cover-dated June 1972, Astonishing Tales #12 sees the Savage Land’s self-appointed Sovereign Ka-Zar – and morphologically unsubstantiated primaeval saber-cat Zabu – abruptly relocating to Florida in pursuit of S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Barbra “Bobbi” Morse only to find that ‘Terror Stalks the Everglades!’ Here Thomas, John Buscema & Dan Adkins deftly recast the Jungle King as a freelance “consultant” for the superspy network, assisting aging biologist Dr. Wilma Calvin – who just happens to be Morse’s mentor – in tracking down a missing scientist named Ted Sallis.

What Ka-Zar doesn’t know is that the project all of them are working on is the recreation of the super-soldier serum that created Captain America and what nobody (technically) alive knows is that Sallis succeeded before he vanished. However, when Advanced Idea Mechanic agents tried to steal it. Sallis had injected himself and the chemicals reacted with the swamp’s magical energies to create a mindless shambling monster.

Readers are clued in thanks to a lovely unused interlude intended for Savage Tales #2, with Wein & Neal Adams providing a chilling recap sequence detailing the macabre Man-Thing’s previous relationship with Calvin, before back in the now, AIM attacks, trapping Ka-Zar with the bog-beast…

In AT #13 (Thomas, J. Buscema, Rich Buckler & Adkins), the mystery grows as the Jungle Lord escapes the ‘Man-Thing!’ to focus on the real monsters, subsequently routing out a traitor and defeating AIM… for now. With the attention-grabbing overlap with mainstream Marvel done for the moment the path was clear if muddy for a new horror hero to forge ahead, but what was needed was the right tone of voice…

Steve Gerber was a uniquely gifted writer who combined a deep love of Marvel’s continuity minutiae with dark irrepressible wit, incisive introspection, barbed socio-cultural criticism, a barely reigned-in imagination and boundless bizarre surrealism. His stories were always at the extreme edge of the company’s intellectual canon and never failed to deliver surprise and satisfaction, especially when he couched his sardonic sorties as thinly veiled attacks on burgeoning cultural homogenisation and commercial barbarity. With Man-Thing he held up a peculiarly scummy mirror to many cordoned-off and taboo subjects and made history – and enemies – over and over again. However before him, Conway & Morrow returned, aided by Howard Chaykin as the bog beast won its own series, beginning in (Adventure into) Fear #10. Cover-dated October 1972, ‘Man Thing!’ (Say it again! Again!) saw the monster defy all odds to return an abandoned baby to a daddy who just did not want him… and would not take no for an answer…

After that conceptual interlude Gerber, Buckler & Jim Mooney opened an extended mystic parable in Fear #11 on the ‘Night of the Nether-Spawn!’ Gerber’s take was that the beast was empathic and all-but-mindless, reacting and responding to those in its vicinity, but having practically no personal volition. Here that relationship draws in teenagers Jennifer Kale and her little brother Andy who are about to get into all sorts of trouble because they stole something from their grandpa. Sadly, when you play with a magical tome belonging to an ancient cult, handed down over eons to the latest in a long line of guardian wizards, sinister stuff is likely to happen…

The upshot is that a demonic force comes looking for little Miss Kale and its evil emanations make it a painful intrusion the maddened muck monster cannot abide. With diabolical Thog the Nether-Spawn thus preoccupied battling the bonkers bog-brute all through small-town Citrusville, Andy & Jennifer are free to try to fix what they broke. All appearances and happy endings to the contrary, it’s too little, too late…

The nation’s racial tensions boiled over into Fear #12 as Gerber, Jim Starlin & Buckler discovered ‘No Choice of Colors!’ after the moss-heap slurped into a far-too-personal vendetta linking racist white sheriff Wallace Corlee and fugitive black murder suspect Mark Jackson. After initially and instinctively saving the wounded runner, Man-Thing is helpless against the literally paralysing hatred of both men: one condemned for loving the wrong shade of woman and the just other happy to have a legal reason to kill another “coloured man”…

Only after one of the enraged obsessives is no more can the swamp beast freely act against the other…

In #13, Val Mayerik begins his fruitful association with the series as – inked by Frank Bolle – ‘Where Worlds Collide!’ finds Gerber in universe-building mode: introducing Jennifer Kale’s Grandpa Joshua as high priest of a cult that has thrived secretly since Atlantis sank beneath the waves. They have safeguarded the world for eons, handing down the sacred Tome of Zhered-Na, but now Jennifer’s meddling as she innocently answered the call of her heritage has opened a portal to infernal terror that begins by taking Jen’s not-boyfriend Jaxon and opening pathways to devil-infested dimensions. When the Man-Thing follows, he finds a place where Ted Sallis is made manifest again and where Thog offers to make it permanent if the human will betray his world…

Ted’s violent refusal coincides with Joshua and the grandkids showing up and, in the flush of frantic battle and escape to consensus reality, the Kales discover Jennifer’s uncanny link to the mindless (again) monster…

Veteran Chic Stone inks #14’s ‘The Demon Plague!’ as, all over America, hate and insanity blossom. Everywhere, humans attack those nearest, dearest or even largely indifferent to them; and the deluge of violence even affects the wildlife in Florida’s swamps with Man-Thing pitilessly assaulted by everything that walks or hops or crawls or swims…

Joshua Kale soon determines that the not properly sealed dimensional portal is permitting demons to pass and possess mortals, and convenes a cult ceremony to close it from within the swamp – which just happens to be the Nexus of All Realities…

Despite best efforts the ritual goes awry and, curiously spying on them, Jennifer and the bog-beast are abducted from existence by a major mage dubbed Dakimh the Enchanter. Forced into gladiatorial actions to retain the sacred tome that only Jennifer knows no longer exists, everybody underestimates the shambling compost heap with flamethrower hands, and the Earthlings are promptly returned without giving away any more arcane secrets…

With Frank McLaughkin as guest inker this time, Gerber & Mayerik probe ‘From Here to Infinity!’ in Fear #15. With chaos gripping the entire planet, the Man-Thing seemingly killed by invading demons and no sacred tome to consult, Joshua Kale visits ancient Atlantis, seeing how mystic Zhered-Na personally dealt with the last such incursion, learning of an eternal war between divine realms – shining Therea and dark Sominus…

As the current cult leader views how his inspiration met her end, elsewhere Dakimh recruits promising potential sorceress Jennifer, revives the bog-beast and takes them both an a trans-dimensional voyage to save reality and stop the sorcerous shooting war…cat least for now and at the cost of the link to the swamp totem…

Abruptly switching tack and tone, Fear #16 ‘Cry of the Native!’ (inked by Sal Trapani) explores themes of Native American rights, ecological barbarism and callous capitalism run amok, when developer F A Schist attempts to drain the swamp and relocate its Indian occupants to facilitate his new airport complex. Complex issues of new jobs versus already broken treaties and promises lead to sabotage, riots and civil unrest, but what concerns the Kales most is how the disruption might affect the shaky barriers holding back the hungry hordes of Sominus…

This time, however, simply human pride, greed, bigotry and love of violence – all agonising felt by mindless, empathic Man-Thing – is enough to spark riot and butchery, and stall the project. In the aftermath (and with Trapani sticking around as inker) #17’s ‘It Came Out of the Sky!’ offers dark, wry parody as the bog-beast curiously opens a long-submerged space capsule buried in the hidden mire. Within is a super-powered baby sent from a world believed by one scientist/loving father to be on the imminent edge of extinction due to environmental collapse…

The capsule had fed and sustained the godlike being within for 22 years, but when Wundarr emerged to immediately imprint on the Man-Thing, nothing could convince the educationally and emotionally challenged – and fully-grown – waif that the unthinking moss-mass was not his mother. The rejection and indifference proved unbearable and the violent tantrums that resulted almost destroy the airport construction site and Citrusville…

The story notionally carries over into debuting superhero team-up book Marvel Two-In-One #1 (cover-dated January 1974) where, after a desert clash with Thanos, Fantastic Four stalwart Ben Grimm accidentally and improbably ends up in Florida for the premier issue of his own title. Crafted by Gerber, Gil Kane & Joe Sinnott, the ‘Vengeance of the Molecule Man!’ sees The Thing learn some horrifying home truths about what constitutes being a monster when battling with and beside ghastly, grotesque anti-hero Man-Thing after the essence of the reality-warping villain starts possessing bodies in the swamps

Back in Fear #18, Gerber, Mayerik & Trapani resume straight terror tropes and real-world controversy in ‘A Question of Survival!’ as a bus load of ordinary people and a drunk driver catastrophically intersect on a highway through the Everglades. Drawn to the emotional turmoil, the mire monster becomes unwilling witness and unintentional guide as the survivors learn about each other (this at a time when women and minorities were still legally second-class citizens, and pacifists & warhawks violently clashed over Vietnam) whilst trekking back to civilisation and medical treatment. Sadly, one of them really needs to be the only survivor and is not averse to more killing…

The series truly hit its innovative stride with its final appearance in (Adventure into) Fear #19 – cover-dated December 1973 – wherein Thog makes his grand move to conquer all realities and destroy the benign over-gods of Therea. That’s when Jennifer Kale officially becomes ‘The Enchanter’s Apprentice!’ (Gerber, Mayerik & Trapani) and joins another trans-planar trek as the formerly regulated realms of existence begin to collide, clash and combine. First task is to gather the heroes needful to the task and her far-from-united party rapidly expands to include tutor Dakimh, the mindless Man-Thing, a burly barbarian (Korrek, Warrior Prince of Katharta!) and a brusquely cynical talking mallard who calls himself Howard…

Hounded by Thog’s forces, their task is to traverse the twisting paths of existence and save the gods with the chase leading directly into The Man-Thing #1 (January 1974) and a world-shattering ‘Battle for the Palace of the Gods!’ Along the way, Howard is an early casualty, lost in a plunge through cascading universes and the chaos even briefly encompasses baffled heroes Daredevil and Black Widow; and all seems lost when the malign Congress of Realities smashes into seemingly undefended Therea. However, there are forces at play that are beyond even demons and devils, and the mysterious Man-Thing is their unknowing yet willing tool; and ultimately realties are rebalanced and life goes on…

With covers by John Buscema, Buckler, Morrow, Adams, Starlin, Kane, John Romita Snr., Alan Weiss, Frank Brunner, Sinnott, Frank Giacoia, Herb Trimpe & Ernie Chan, the extras in this moody tome of terror and extrospection also include – from November 1970 – Thomas’ original plot for the short story in Savage Tales #1; an original grey-toned art page by Morrow; more by Buscema & Adkins, Buckler, Mooney, Weiss, Brunner, Mayerik & McLaughlin. For your perusal, Gerber’s plot for Fear #16 follows, with lettering notes and Brunner’s cover for #17. More original art includes Romita’s cover for #18 plus interior art by Mayerik & Trapani. The cover art for #19 by Kane & Chan opens another gallery before segueing into house ads, Adams’ cover for Monsters Unleashed #3 and a cover gallery for reprint title Book of the Dead #1-3 (1993-1994) by Tennyson Smith & Morrow, and Ariel Olivetti’s cover to the 2012 Man-Thing Omnibus.

We – me especially – apply the terms milestone, landmark and groundbreaking as guarantors of quality that change the way comics are perceived and even created. It has never been more true or accurate than with these game-changing, socially aware horror yarns. These are stories you must not miss…
© 2024 MARVEL.

Today in 1894 the magnificent Elzie Segar was born. Go read some Popeye or even Thimble Theatre if you can find it.

In 1980 Berke Breathed chose the day to begin his almost-as-magnificent Bloom County strip, as we last saw in Bloom County: Real, Classy, & Compleat 1980-1989. Some of that last factoid is made up by me, but it could have happened…

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The Complete Peanuts volume 10: 1969-1970


By Charles M. Schulz (Fantagraphics Books/Canongate Books UK)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-126-0 (US TPB) 978-0857862143 (Cannongate HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Towering Monumental Tradition Writ (and Drew) Large… 10/10

Peanuts is unequivocally the most important comic strip in the history of graphic narrative. It is also the most deeply personal. Cartoonist Charles M Schulz crafted his moodily hilarious, hysterically introspective, shockingly surreal philosophical epic for half a century: 17,897 strips spanning October 2nd 1950 to February 13th 2000. He died – from complications of cancer – the day before his last strip was printed.

At its height, Peanuts ran in 2,600 newspapers, in 21 languages and75 countries. Many of those venues still run it as perpetual reprints, and have done ever since “Sparky” passed. During his lifetime, book collections, a merchandising mountain and television spin-offs had made the publicity-shy doodler an actual billionaire at a time when that really meant something…

None of that matters. Peanuts – a title Schulz loathed, but one the syndicate forced upon him – changed the way comics strips were received and perceived: proving cartoon comedy could have edges and nuance and meaning as well as too-soon-forgotten pratfalls and punchlines.

We begin with an effusive and enthusiastic foreword from author/animator/illustrator Mo Willems (Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, Knuffle Bunny, Sheep in the Big City) expressing his debt to the strip.

On the pages, this period heralds a true renaissance probably triggered by headlines in an era of swiftly shifting changes in social attitudes and rampant cultural exploration. Notionally, our focus and point of contact remains quintessentially inspirational loser Charlie Brown who, despite slowly taking a few steps behind fanciful, high-maintenance mutt Snoopy, remains squarely at odds with the mercurial supporting cast. They are still hanging out doing what at first sight seems to be Kids Stuff in an increasingly hostile and intrusive universe of perverse happenstance. Except perhaps that Lucy Van Pelt kid. She’s not like the others…

Neatly interspersed with daily doses of gloom, the Peanuts Sunday page first debuted on January 6th 1952: a standard half-page slot offering more measured fare than 4-panel dailies. Thwarted ambition, sporting failures, crushing frustration abound, alternating with Snoopy’s inner life of aviation and war stories, star gazing, shooting the breeze with bird buddies, weather woes and food fiascos. These and other signature sorties across the sabbath indulgences afforded Schulz room to be his most imaginative, whimsical and provocative…

Regular tentpole moments to relish include more Snoopy v Lucy deathmatches/ambush snogs/dance offs; Charlie Brown’s food feud with the beagle, an assortment of night terrors; Lucy’s emphatically simple solutions to complex questions; doggy dreams; the power of television; sporting endeavours and the sharply-cornered romantic triangle involving Lucy, Schroeder & Beethoven – albeit wedded to “sophisticated” fallout when pushy Frieda decides she also wants to play…

Always, gags centre on play, varying degrees of musicality, pranks, interpersonal alignments, the mounting pressures of ever-harder education, mass media lensed through young eyes and a selection of sports in their season. All are leavened by agonising teasing, naked contempt, kindled and crushed hopes, the making of baffled observations and occasionally acting a bit too much like grown-ups. However, in this tome, themes and tropes that define the entire series (especially in the wake of many animated TV specials) become mantra-like yet endlessly variable, but focus less on Charlie and more on those around him. Also, the outside grown-up world considerably encroaches, as when Lucy declares herself a “ New Feminist” although no one looking can see any difference to any presumably previously un-enlightened Miss van Pelt…

Human interactions still find the boy a pitiable outlier. Mean girl Violet, musical prodigy Schroeder, self-taught psychoanalyst/dictator-in-waiting Lucy, her brilliantly off-kilter little brother Linus and dirt-magnet “Pig-Pen” are fixtures honed and primed to generate joke-routines and gag-sequences around their signature foibles, but some early characters have faded away in favour of fresh attention-attracting players. Newcomers sidle in and shuffle off without much flurry or fanfare but in our real world the use of “Minority” characters José Peron of New Mexico and African American Franklin drew much attention and controversy – because, I guess, there will always be gits and arseholes – especially if the oblivious readers elected them…

The most significant expansion is that weird upside bird bugging the beagle gets a name – Woodstock (as revealed on June 22, 1970) – and a job as his dogsbody – secretary, actually – whilst shock near-cripples the round-headed kid when he discovers that the “little red-haired girl” he almost plucked up the nerve to talk to moves to a new city. It’s a blow he’s still reeling from when this book ends two years later, and one only Linus really understands. After all, his teacher Miss Othmar is gone after the teacher’s strike…

There is much more madcap politically-tinged material, including repeated riffs on a recently inaugurated new real-world president (Richard Milhous Nixon on January 20, 1969) as seen when Snoopy briefly becomes the most powerful mutt in the Free world after being chosen as the new Grand Beagle…

At least the Brown boy’s existential crisis/responsibility vector/little sister Sally has grown enough to become just another trigger for relentless self-excoriation. As she grows, pesters librarians, forms opinions and propounds steadfastly authoritarian views, Charlie is relegated to being her dumber, but eternally protective, big brother especially as her biggest bugbear is starting school and Charlie is such an expert on all things scholastic…

Resigned to – but far from uncomplaining about – life as a loser in the gunsight of cruel and capricious fate, the boy Brown is helpless meat in the clutches of openly sadistic Lucy. When not sabotaging his efforts to kick a football, she monetises her spiteful verve via a 5¢ walk-in psychoanalysis booth (although supply and demand economics also affects this unshakeable standard), ensuring that whether at play, in sports, kite-flying or just brooding, the round-headed kid truly endures the character-building trials of the damned.

One deliciously powerful constant that grows more abundant is the boy’s utter inability to fly that kite. Here war with wind, gravity and landscape reaches absurdist proportions, as the tree haunts Charlie Brown’s adored pastime with vicious, violent and malign venom. Moreover, other kids are aware of its growing power. After one terse musical interlude with Schroeder, Lucy lobs our reluctant lover-boy’s beloved piano into the voracious carnivorous conifer…

By now, the beagle is the true star of the show, with his primary quest for more and better playing out against an increasingly baroque inner life, wild encounters with birds, sports, dance marathons and skating trysts (especially the close-order combat called ice hockey!), philosophical ruminations, and ever-more-popular catchphrases. Here, burgeoning whimsy leads to more glimpses of the interior world: his WWI other life, peppered with dogfights against the accursed Red Baron, but also careers as an astronaut, a sports coach, a prairie dog and a detective seeking his lost mother. That tragic obscured past as an alumni of the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm leads to constant introspection… and dancing… lots and lots of dancing…

Naturally, Snoopy soon subverts all that misery and curiosity to fuel his creative side and begins the Great American Novel that will change literature forever… but that’s before the Browns go on vacation and leave the dog with the Van Pelts. Naturally, Lucy has an idea about finally fixing the pooch. It doesn’t end well…

As always, timeless episodes of play, peril, peewee psychoanalysis and personal excoriation are beards for some heavy topics. Rendered in marvellous monochrome, there are crucial character introductions, plot developments and creation of more traditions we all revere to this day. Of particular note is the growing role of Patricia Reichardt – AKA tomboy Peppermint Patty – who heartbreakingly deals with the so-early discovery that she will never be pretty or beautiful. Even Snoopy’s most concerted efforts can’t quite salve that sting…

Another trenchant continued gag-series resumes Lucy obsessive attempts to “cure” Linus of his blanket dependency by again playing him off against Grandma who will give donations to charities if the boy grows up…

Snoopy is the only force capable of challenging if not actually countering Lucy. Over these two years, her campaign to curb that weird beagle, cure her brother of blanket addiction and generally reorder reality to her preferences reaches astounding heights and appalling depths, but the dog keeps trying and scores many minor victories. As always the book opens and closes with many strips riffing on snow, food, movie-going and television – or the gang’s responses to it – becoming ever more pervasive. And as always, Lucy constantly, consistently sucks all the joy out of the white wonder stuff and the astounding variety offered by the goggle-box. Perpetually sabotaged, and facing abuse from every female in their life, Brown and Snoopy endure more casual grief from smug, attention-seeking Frieda, who champions shallow good looks over substance. At least Linus is growing: hardened inside by what happened to teacher Miss Othmar, but Lucy’s amatory ambitions for Schroeder grow ever more chilling and substantive. She will never move on…

Schulz established way points in his year: formally celebrating certain calendar occasions – real or invented – as perennial shared events: Mothers and Fathers’ Days, Fourth of July, National Dog Week strips accompanied in their turn yearly milestones like Christmas, St. Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween/Great Pumpkin Day and Beethoven’s Birthday were joined this year by a return to another American ritual as many of the cast return to summer camp. At least there is unbridled joy when Brown’s baseball team hits a winning streak and Charlie meets his all-time sporting idol – except of course they’re not quite the boons they first appear…

Sports loom large and terrifying as ever, but star athlete Snoopy is more interested in new passions than boring old baseball or hockey. Even Lucy finds far more absorbing pastimes but still enjoys crushing the spirits of her teammates in whatever endeavour they are failing at. Anxiety-wracked Brown even steps down from the baseball team to ease his life, but that only intensifies his woes, and does nothing to help his kite wielding or football kicking…

Linus endures more disappointment in two Great Pumpkin seasons and before you know it, there’s the traditional countdown to Christmas and another year filled with weird, wild and wonderful moments…

Wrapping it all up, Gary Groth celebrates and deconstructs the man and his work in ‘Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000’, preceded by a copious ‘Index’ offering instant access to favourite scenes you’d like to see again…

Available in multiple formats, this volume guarantees total enjoyment: comedy gold and social glue metamorphosing into an epic of spellbinding graphic mastery that still adds joy to billions of lives, and continues to make new fans and devotees long after its maker’s passing.
The Complete Peanuts: 1969-1970 (Volume Ten) © 2008 Peanuts Worldwide, LLC. The Foreword is © 2008, John Waters. “Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000” © 2008 Gary Groth. All rights reserved.

Today in 1946 Lucky Luke “debuted” in the Spirou Alamanch Annual – except if you read Lucky Luke: The Complete Collection Volume One you’ll know that ain’t necessarily so…

And in 1970 the incredible Rube Goldberg shuffled off this mortal coil. It was probably one he had designed in his masterful cartoons. Go google Rueben Awards…

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Orient Gateway


By Vittorio Giardino (Catalan Communications/NBM)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-041-3 (Catalan PB Album) 978-1-56163-184-1 (NBM PB Album)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Pure Unobtainable Wonder… 9/10

It’s time again for me to whine about how and why some of humanity’s most impressive comics tales continually languish in English-language limbo as my loutish people seemingly refuse to open themselves to the wonders of the world. This time – AGAIN! – it’s a truly wonderful period spy drama you would think was the height of taste and fashion right now…

Born on Christmas Eve 1946, Vittorio Giardino was an electrician who switched careers at age 30. He initially worked for a number of comics magazines before his first collection – Pax Romana – was released in 1978. Giardino toiled, slowly but consistently, on both feature characters such as detective Sam Pezzo, saucy Winsor McKay homage Little Ego and cold-war drama Jonas Fink, as well as general fiction tales, producing 46 albums to date.

In 1982 he began relating the career of a quiet, bearded fellow recalled by the Deuxieme Bureau (the French Secret Service) to investigate the slaughter of almost every agent in the cosmopolitan paradise of Budapest.

The series ran in four parts in the magazine Orient Express before being collected as Rhapsodie Hongroise – Giardino’s thirteenth book… and one in no way unlucky for him. Reluctant spy Max Fridman (transliterated as Max Friedman for the English-speaking world) was dragged back into the “Great Game” in the years of uneasy peace just before the outbreak of WWII: a metaphor for the nations of Europe. Every day and with every fresh headline that becomes more relevant than ever right now…

Over the course of ten years, the masterful Italian graphic novelist crafted two more individual tales and in 1999 added a stunning triptych of albums. The three volumes of No Pasaràn! detailed a key moment during the on-going conflict in what became Republican Spain and the dying days of the Civil War which revealed many clues into the life of the diffident and unassuming hero. Three further volumes have been added to the canon (Max Fridman: Rio de Sangre in 2002, Max Fridman: Sin ilusión in 2008, and just this year Max Fridman: I cugini Meyer) so I’m declaring they are all now long past due to be revived and revisited, and revered…

Back then though, it took three years for Giardino to resume this subtly addictive pre-war drama with follow-up La Porta d’Oriente… Orient Gateway to you and me…

Summer 1938: All espionage agencies in the world know war is coming and nothing can stop it. Frantically jockeying for the most favourable position, all are seeking any infinitesimal advantage for when the balloon goes up. Recently Soviet engineer Mr. Stern has become just such a preferred asset of far too many rival organisations, so he runs, losing himself in the teeming, mysterious city of Istanbul.

Once again diffident, canny operative Max is drawn into the murky miasma of spycraft, but now, beside exotic, bewitching Magda Witnitz, is he the only one to ask why so many dangerous people want to “acquire” Stern?

…And why are they so willing to kill for him?

Subtle, entrancing and magnificently illustrated, this is a mesmerising, slow-boil thriller with all the beguiling nostalgic panache of Casablanca or Topkapi and labyrinthine twists and turns of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or even Slow Horses, which no fan of the genre, let alone comics aficionado, can afford to miss.

Giardino is a smart and confident writer who makes tone and nuance carry a tale and his art – a more representational derivation of Hergé’s Ligne Claire (clean line) – makes the lovingly rendered locations as much a character as any of the stylish operatives in a dark, doomed world on the brink of holocaust.

Although still largely an agent unknown in the English-speaking world, Max Friedman is one of espionage literature’s greatest characters, and Giardino’s work is like honey for the eyes and mind. This is another graphic novel every fan of comics or the Intelligence Game should know.
© 1986 Vittorio Giardino. All rights reserved.

Today in 1921 veteran Golden Age creator Charles Nicholas Wojtkoski (Blue Beetle and so much more) was born, He shares the date with cartoonist Joe Edwards whom we mostly know for Archie Comics series including Jughead, Betty & Veronica, Super Duck, Captain Sprocket and his private brainchild Li’l Jinx.

In 1929, jack of all trades Frank Spinger joined the party. He drew almost everything, but you must read The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist as well as Dazzler, Nick Fury, Friday Foster, Rex Morgan, M.D. or Secret Six…

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Glorious Summers volume 4: The Runaway 1979


By Zidrou & Jordi Lafebre, with additional colour by Mado Peña, translated by Lara Vergnaud (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: Digital edition only

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Holiday Joy and Heartbreak in the Balance… 9/10

Until comparatively recently, comics in the English-speaking world mostly countenanced comedic or numerous adventure sub-genres (crime, superhero, horror, sci fi), with only a small but vital niche of “mundane world” ventures, usually depicted via graphic biographies and autobiographies like They Called Us Enemy, Breakwater, Love on the Isle of Dogs, Wage Slaves or Sour Pickles offering a different feel and flavour. Even historical sagas were treated as extraordinary moments with larger-than-life characters whenever possible.

What we have never had – and still largely don’t – is a comics equivalent to general fiction, and drama. That’s not so in Japan, South Korea or Europe, where a literal “anything goes” attitude has always accommodated and nurtured human-scaled, slice-of-life tales depicting ordinary people in as many quiet as extraordinary moments. Surely it can’t be that hard to tell engaging stories in pedestrian, recognisably ordinary settings? Medical traumas, love stories, school tales and family tragedies about common folk seem to play well on various-sized screens around the world, so why not in English language comics? The closest we seem to get are comedies like John Allison’s superb Giant Days…

People being people is more than enough for Europeans. Apparently, there’s an insatiable appetite for everyday events aimed at properly “mature readers”, joyfully sans vampires, aliens or men in tights. These even have sub-genres of their own. For example, there’s a wealth of superb material just about going on holiday: the highly ritualised une petite vacances. Let’s stare & glare covetously at them having a good time, because over there holidays are an inalienable right, and thus they have some simply fabulous tales about a simple break. If you can remember the 1970s, this one is probably the best you’ll ever see…

An absolute exemplar of fantasy vacations made real, Glorious Summers: Southbound! (1973) was a nostalgia-drenched confection by Zidrou and regular collaborator Jordi Lafebre: a sublime example of idyllic group memory made into graphic sorcery in an everyday account utterly unafraid to temper humorous sweetness and light with real-world tragedy and suspense.

Peut-être a little context is in order. Summer holidays – “Midi” – are a big deal in France and Belgium. The French divide into two tribes over the annual rest period, which generally lasts an entire month. Juilletistes vacation in July, wielding dogmatic facts like rapiers to prove why it’s the only way to take a break. They are eternally opposed, heart, soul and suntan lotion, by majority faction the Aoûtiens, who recharge their batteries in August whilst fully reciprocating the suspicion, disdain and baffled scorn of the early-leavers. Many European sociologists claim the greatest social division today is not race, religion, gender, political affiliation or whether to open boiled eggs from the top or the bottom, but when summer holidays begin and end…

In 2015, courtesy of scripter Benoît “Zidrou” Drousie and Spanish illustrator Jordi Lafebre, Les Beaux Étés 1: Cap au Sud! began a string of family visits that beguile and charm every time we reread them. Zidrou is Belgian, Brussels-born in 1962 and was a school teacher prior to quitting marking books in 1990 to begin making them. His main successes include school dunce series L’Elève Ducobu, Petit Dagobert, Scott Zombi, La Ribambelle, Le Montreur d’histoires, the revival of Ric Hochet, African Trilogy, Léonardo, Shi and many more. His most celebrated and beloved stories are this memorable sequence and 2010’s Lydie, both illustrated by Lafebre.

That gifted, empathically sensitive illustrator and art teacher was born in Barcelona in 1979 and has created comics professionally since 2001, first for magazines like Mister K, where he limned Toni Font’s El Mundo de Judy. He found regular work at Le Journal de Spirou, creating the romance Always Never and collaborated with Zidrou on La vieille dame qui n’avait jamais joué au tennis et autres nouvelles qui font du bien, Lydie, and La Mondaine.

A combination of feel-good fable and powerful comedy drama, Glorious Summers depicts memories of an aging couple recalling their grandest family moments, beginning with a momentous vacation in 1973 where their four kids nearly lost their parents….

However, fourth reverie The Runaway is slightly askew of the regular time frame and schedule, focusing on 1979 after a constantly deferred getaway due to dad’s deadline woes and relentless bad fortune leads to animosity and upset…

Weary frazzled 41-year-old Maddie Faldérault is on a slow burn. Her life is a constant drain. The job at the shoe shop is a demeaning nightmare, but money is scarce. Old Fat Pop Pop is really sick and so is her beloved car Little Miss Esterel. Moreover her adorable, wonderful kids are growing up too fast and becoming more and more trying. And Christmas is days away and Maddie could really use a break…

When a call comes of a medical emergency she dashes over expecting to see hubby Pierre finally crippled by his literally back-breaking toil over a drawing board. After years of whining about being an anonymous assistant, he had at last made the jump to create his own feature, and everyone was a delighted when his Zoombies were picked up by an animation studio. Now many months later, and tied to a vile contract, he’s drawing more and more and hasn’t yet seen a penny for all his trouble…

Thankfully, he’s not the problem. His old boss Garin has had a career-ending stroke and the publisher want Pierre to come back and take over the soul-destroying mega-strip he used to ghost. It means financial security (maybe even a by-line), but only at the cost of his dreams…

Maddie’s immediate relief extinguishes all thoughts of her own miseries but as the parents reach home and comfort their panicking brood – effusive 9-year-old precociously hyperactive Paulette (AKA Peaches), moody, music mad 14 year old Louis, weight obsessed Nicole and college crushed Jolly-Julie (whose homework over the holidays includes 10 kilos of law books!) – the thought of a family Christmas is quashed as her son reveals his plans to travel unsupervised to England to see some band called Pink Floyd…

Acrimony and argument end the day badly for all, but the real trigger comes later when Pierre accidentally reminds her that his job and a total lack of rejuvenating sun and sand utterly ruined her precious August getaway…

After she explodes, it takes a very long time for the spouses to be friends again…

The next day the shoe shop is a living hell but when she gets home it’s to a family packed and ready for a holiday in the sun – even if he has to drive Little Miss Esterel all the way to the Côte d’Azur or even Africa to find it…

Pierre has cajoled the entire pack – all but revision wracked Jolly-Julie – to rerun the annual Faldérault escape from gloomy Brussels just for her, but not without some effort… and unrealised deception. Louis is in prime teen rebel mode now and once they’re out of Belgium and have played their usual games with the French border guards, he absconds determined to get to London by Christmas at all costs. After all its not just the music. There’s someone waiting for him there…

Of course, once he vanishes, the family goes into overdrive to find The Runaway, and as ever, the company of strangers is a powerful reminder of just how kind people can be – even the cops! – and the surprise holiday recharge becomes a most special Christmas: one that significantly changes life for all of them…

This sublimely understated seasonal treat is a sentimentally witty gem polished to perfection by the addition of an ‘epilog’ and pictorial codicil in the form of a charming fantasy postscript from Peaches. Her illustrated prose letter ‘The House that Dreamed of Going on Vacation – by Paulette Foldérault’ neatly adds all the warmth lost in unused summer sunshine and ends the saga on a cosy note of promise…

This tale is another beautifully recalled, rendered and realised basket of memories stitched seamlessly together. It’s funny, sweet and charming whilst delivering sharp swipes you never see coming. There aren’t any spectacular events and shocking crises (well, just the one here) and that’s the whole point…

If you’re British – and old enough – this series (six translated albums thus far, plus a French omnibus edition) will echo revered family sitcoms like Bless This House or Butterflies and generational ads starring the “Oxo Family”. (If that description doesn’t fit you, I pity your browsing history if you look up any of that…). The rest of you in need of an opening (but unfair) comparator could break out the Calvin and Hobbes collections and re-examine the bits with his embattled parents when the kid’s out of the picture…

Lyrical, laconic, engagingly demure, and debilitatingly nostalgic, this holiday romance is sheer visual perfection wrapped in sharp dialogue and a superbly anarchic sense of mischief. Vacations and occasions are built of moments and might-have-beens, packaged here in a compelling melange making the mundane marvellous.
© 2018 -DARGAUD BENELUX (Dargaud-Lombard s.a.) – ZIDROU & LEFEBRE, LLC. All rights reserved.

Today in 1924 superstar Sam Glanzman was born. You should read everything he ever did but perhaps start with A Sailor’s Story?

Britain’s WWII secret weapon Jane by Norman Pett opened in The Daily Mirror dated December 4th 1932. We’ve shamefully peeped at her a few times, most recently in The Misadventures of Jane. She has the same birthdays as V.T. Hamlin’s magnificent Alley Oop feature, for which Alley Oop by V.T. Hamlin must be your first port of call…

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All-Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever


By Gerry Conway, Paul Levitz, Ric Estrada, Wally Wood, Keith Giffen, Joe Staton, Bob Layton, Joe Giella, Dave Hunt, Dick Giordano, Brian Bolland, Jim Aparo & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0071-7 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Ageless Evergreen Super-Sensationalism… 8/10

In the torrid and turbulent 1970s many of the comics industry’s oldest publishing ideas were finally laid to rest. The belief that characters could be “over-exposed” was one of the most long-lasting (after all, it never hurt Superman, Batman or the original Captain Marvel), garnered from years of experience in an industry which lived or died on that fractional portion of pennies derived each month from pocket-money and allowances of kids that wasn’t spent on candy, toys or movies.

By the end of the 1960s, comic book costs and retail prices were inexorably rising and a proportion of titles – especially newly resurrected horror stories – were consciously being produced for older readerships. Nearly a decade of organised fan publications and letter writing crusades had finally convinced publishing bean-counters what editors already knew: grown-ups avidly read comics too. Avidly. Passionately. Obsessively. They would happily spend more than kids and, most importantly, wanted more, more, more of what they particularly loved.

Explicitly: If one appearance per month was popular, extras, specials and second series would be more so. By the time Marvel Wunderkind Gerry Conway was preparing to leave The House of Ideas, DC was willing and ready to expand its variegated line-up with some oft-requested/demanded fan-favourite characters…

Paramount among these was the Justice Society of America, the first comic book super-team and a perennial gem whose annual guest-appearances in the Justice League of America had become an inescapable and beloved summer tradition. Thus in 1976 Writer/Editor Conway marked his second DC tenure (he had first broken into the game writing horror shorts for Joe Orlando) by reviving All Star Comics with number #58. In 1951, as the first Heroic Age ended, the key title had transformed overnight into All Star Western, with that numbering running for a further decade as home cowboy crusaders like Strong Bow, Trigger Twins, Johnny Thunder (a new “masked” do-gooder, not the Golden Age costumed idiot with a genie) and Super-Chief.

If you’re interested, among the other revivals/introductions in “Conway’s Corner” were perennial star Plastic Man, Blackhawk, The Secret Society of Super-Villains, Freedom Fighters, Kobra, Blitzkrieg – and many more.

In case you need reminding in their anniversary year: All Star Comics #3 (cover-dated Winter 1940-1941 and released in November 1940) is the officially cited kick-off for all Superteam tales, even if the assembled mystery men merely had dinner and recounted recent cases. They didn’t actually go on a mission together until ASC #4, which had an April 1941 cover-date and hit newsstands on February 7th.

Set on the parallel world of Earth-2, and in keeping with the editorial sense of ensuring the series be relevant to young readers too, Conway reintroduced a veteran team, leavened with a smattering of teen heroes, combined into a contentious, generation-gap fuelled Super Squad. These young whippersnappers included Robin (already a JSA-er since the mid-1960s and Justice League of America #55); Sylvester Pemberton AKA The Star-Spangled Kid (in actuality a boy-hero from the 1940s lost in time for decades) and – it must shamefully be said – a busty young thing who quickly became the feisty favourite of a generation of growing boys.

Kara Zor-L was attention grabbing in all the right and wrong ways and would soon become infamous as the “take-charge” pushy feminist dynamo Power Girl.

This titanic hardback and digital collection volume gathers that 4-year run of the JSA from the late 1970s into a sublime showcase of so-different, ever-changing times via All-Star Comics #58-74, plus the series’ continuation and conclusion from epic anthology title Adventure Comics (#461-466), and includes the seminal saga from DC Special #29 which, after almost four decades, finally provided the team with an origin…

Without preamble, the action begins with ‘Prologue’: a 3-page introduction/recap/summation of the Society’s history as well as the celestial mechanics of Alternate Earths, as crafted by Paul Levitz, Joe Staton & Bob Layton and first seen in Adventure #461, January/February 1979. This outlines the history and workings of DC’s parallel continuities, after which the first half of the 2-part debut tale from All-Star Comics #58 (January/February 1976 by Conway, Ric Estrada &Wally Wood) finds newly-inducted Pemberton chafing at his time-lost plight and revelling in new powers after being given a cosmic-energy device by retired JSA veteran Starman.

When a crisis propels him and elder heroes Flash, Dr. Mid-Nite, Wildcat, Green Lantern, Hawkman and Dr. Fate into a 3-pronged calamity devastating Seattle, Cape Town and Peking (which you youngsters now known as Beijing). With man-made natural disasters, everywhere the elder statesmen split up but are overwhelmed, giving the new kids a chance to shine in ‘All Star Super-Squad’. With abrasive, impatient Power Girl in the vanguard, the entire team is soon on the trail of old foe Degaton and his mind-bending ally in #59’s conclusion ‘Brainwave Blows Up!’

Keith Giffen replaced Estrada in #60 whilst introducing a psychotic super-arsonist who attacks the Squad just as the age-divide starts grating and PG begins ticking off (or “re-educating”) the stuffy, paternalistic JSA-ers in ‘Vulcan: Son of Fire!’. Closing instalment ‘Hellfire and Holocaust’ finds the flaming fury fatally wounding Fate before his own defeat, just as a new mystic menace is stirring…

Conway’s last issue as scripter was #62. ‘When Fall the Mighty’ highlights antediluvian sorcerer Zanadu who devastatingly attacks, even as the criminal Injustice Gang open their latest vengeful assault using mind-control to turn friend against friend. The cast subsequently expands with the return of Hourman and Power Girl’s Kryptonian mentor, but even they prove insufficient to prevent ‘The Death of Doctor Fate’ as written by Paul Levitz. Assaulted on all sides, the team splinters. Wildcat, Hawkman and the Kryptonian cousins tackle the rampant super-villains whilst Flash & Green Lantern search Egypt for a cure to Fate’s condition, and Hourman, Mid-Nite & Star-Spangled Kid desperately attempt to keep their fallen comrade alive.

When they fail Zanadu renews his assault, almost adding the moribund Fate’s death-watch defenders to his tally… until the archaic alien’s very presence calls Kent Nelson back from beyond the grave…

With that crisis averted, Superman makes ready to leave but is embroiled in a last-minute, manic time-travel assassination plot (Levitz script, and fully illustrated by inimitable Wally Wood) which drags the team and guest-star The Shining Knight from an embattled Camelot in ‘Yesterday Begins Today!’ to the far-flung future and ‘The Master Plan of Vandal Savage’: a breathtaking spectacle of drama and excitement that signalled Woody’s departure from the series.

Joe Staton & Bob Layton took the unenviable task of filling his artistic shoes, beginning with #66 as ‘Injustice Strikes Twice!’ wherein the reunited team – sans Superman – fall prey to ambush by arch-enemies, whilst emotion-warping Psycho-Pirate starts twisting GL Alan Scott into an out-of-control menace determined to crush Corporate America beneath his emerald heel. This subsequently leads to the return of Earth-2’s Bruce Wayne, who had previously retired his masked persona to become Gotham’s Police Commissioner. In ‘Attack of the Underlord!’ (All-Star Comics #67, July/August 1977), the Injustice Society’s monstrous allies are revealed as subterranean conquerors who nearly end the team forever. Meanwhile, Wayne’s plans near fruition. He wants to shut down the JSA before their increasingly destructive exploits demolish his beloved city…

Contemporary continuity pauses here as the aforementioned case from DC Special #29 (September 1977) discloses ‘The Untold Origin of the Justice Society’ in an extra-length epic set in 1940. Here Levitz, Staton & Layton reveal previously classified events which saw Adolf Hitler acquire the mystical Spear of Destiny and immediately summon mythical Teutonic Valkyries to aid in the invasion of Britain. Alerted to the threat, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt – hampered by his country’s neutrality – unofficially asks a select band of masked mystery-men to lend their aid as non-political, private citizens.

In a cataclysmic escalation, the struggle ranges from the heart of Europe throughout the British Isles and even to the White House Oval Office before ten bold costumed champions finally – albeit temporarily – stymy the Nazis’ plans…

Back in All Star #68 (October 1977) the Kryptonian Kid was clearly becoming top star of the show. ‘Divided We Stand!’ (Levitz, Staton & Layton) concludes the Psycho-Pirate’s scheme to discredit and destroy the JSA, and sets the scene for her first solo outing in Showcase #97-99 (which is not included here). Meanwhile GL resumes a maniacal rampage through Gotham and Police Commissioner Wayne takes extreme measures to bring the seemingly out-of-control JSA to book. With ASC #69’s ‘United We Fall!’, he reunites in his own team of retired JSA stars to arrest the rogue squad, resulting in a classic fanboy dream duel as Dr. Fate, Wildcat, Hawkman, Flash, GL & Star-Spangled Kid battled the original Batman, Robin, Hourman, Starman, Dr. Mid-Nite and Wonder Woman. It’s a colourful catastrophe in waiting until PG & Superman intervene to reveal the true cause of all that unleashed madness.

… And in the background, a new character was about to make a landmark debut…

With order restored ‘A Parting of the Ways!’ spotlights Wildcat and Star-Spangled Kid as the off-duty heroes stumble upon high-tech super-thieves Strike Force. These bandits initially prove too much for the pair – and even new star The Huntress – but with a pair of startling revelations in ‘The Deadliest Game in Town!’ the trio finally triumph. In the aftermath, the Kid resigns and the daughter of Batman & Catwoman replaces him…

All-Star Comics #72 reintroduces a brace of classic Golden Age villainesses in ‘A Thorn by Any Other Name’ – wherein the psychopathic floral fury returns to poison Wildcat, leaving Helena Wayne to battle the original 1940’s Huntress for an antidote and rights to the name. With Joe Giella taking over the inker’s role, concluding chapter ‘Be it Ever So Deadly’ sees the whole team deployed as Huntress battled Huntress whilst Thorn and The Sportsmaster do their deadly best to destroy the heroes and their loved ones. Meanwhile in Egypt, Hawkman & Dr. Fate stumble upon a deadly ancient menace to all of reality…

The late 1970s was a perilous period for comics, with exponentially rising costs inevitably resulting in drastically dwindling sales. Many titles were abruptly cancelled in a “DC Implosion” and All-Star Comics was one of the casualties. Issue #74 was the last, pitting the reunited Society against a mystic Armageddon perpetrated by a nigh-omnipotent Master Summoner who orchestrated a ‘World on the Edge of Ending’ before the JSA triumphantly dragged victory from the jaws of defeat…

Although the book was gone, the series continued in 68-page anthology title Adventure Comics, beginning in #461 (January/February 1979) with the first half of a blockbuster tale originally intended for the anniversary 75th issue. Drawn & inked by Staton, ‘Only Legends Live Forever’ details the Batman’s last case as the Dark Knight comes out of retirement to battle a seeming nonentity who has mysteriously acquired god-like power. Adventure #462 delivered the heartbreaking conclusion in ‘The Legend Lives Again!’ before AC #462’s ‘The Night of the Soul Thief!’ sees Huntress, Robin and assembled Society members deliver righteous justice to the mysterious mastermind who actually orchestrated the death of the World’s Greatest Detective…

For #464, an intriguing insight into aging warrior Wildcat reveals ‘To Everything There is a Season…’ as Ted Grant embraces his own mortality and begins a new career as a teacher of heroes, before ‘Countdown to Disaster!’ (inked by Dave Hunt) finds Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Power Girl, Huntress & Dr. Fate hunting a doomsday device lost amidst Gotham’s teeming masses. It would be the last modern outing of the team for years to come…

But not the last in this volume: that honour falls to another Levitz & Staton landmark: a little history lesson wherein they expose the reason why the team vanished at the beginning of the 1950s. From Adventure #466, ‘The Defeat of the Justice Society!’ shows how the US Government had cravenly betrayed their greatest champions during the McCarthy witch-hunts: provoking the mystery-men into voluntarily withdrawing from public, heroic life for over a decade… until the costumed stalwarts of Earth-1 started the whole Fights ‘n’ Tights scene all over again…

Upping the gaudy glory quotient, a team pin-up by Staton & Dick Giordano and two earlier collection covers from Brian Bolland cap off the costumed dramas.

Although perhaps a tad dated now, these exuberant, rapid-paced, imaginative yarns perfectly blend the naive charm of Golden Age derring-do with cynical modern sensibilities. Here you will be reassured that no matter what, in the end our heroes will always find a way to save the day. Such classic spectacles from simpler times are a glorious example of traditional superhero storytelling at its finest: fun, furious, ferociously engaging, excitingly written and beguilingly illustrated. No Fights ‘n’ Tights fan should miss these marvellous sagas.
© 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 2019 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1912 Cliff Sterrett’s astounding strip Polly and Her Pals ran in US papers for the first time, and in 1921 artist Art Saaf was born – someone else you’ve probably enjoyed without even knowing it, so go learn about him too.

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The Mighty Thor Epic Collection volume 25: The Dark Gods (1998-1999)


By Dan Jurgens & John Romita Jr., Tom DeFalco, Howard Mackie, J.M. DeMatteis, Klaus Janson, John Buscema, Ramon Bernado, Klaus Janson, Mark Pennington, Scott Hanna, Jerry Ordway & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-6411-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Punch-Punch! Smite-Smite! Gosh Wow!… 8/10

In the middle of 1962, Stan Lee & Jack Kirby launched their latest offbeat superhero creation in anthology monsters-and-mysteries title Journey into Mystery #83. The edifying epic introduced meek, disabled American doctor Donald Blake who took a vacation in Norway only to encounter the vanguard of an alien invasion. Fleeing in terror, he was trapped in a cave and found an old, gnarled walking stick. When, in helplessness and frustration, he smashed the cane into a huge boulder obstructing his escape, his insignificant frame was transformed into the hulking and brawny Norse God of Thunder, Thor!

The series grew from formulaic beginnings battling aliens, commies and cheap thugs into a vast, breathtaking cosmic playground for Kirby’s burgeoning imagination with Journey into Mystery inevitably becoming The Mighty Thor. After years of celestial adventuring, the peculiarities and inconsistencies of the Don Blake/Thor relationship were re-examined – as well as his doomed romance with his nurse Jane Foster – and all was finally clarified and explained regarding how an immortal godling could also be frail Dr. Blake.

The saga took the immortal hero back to his long-distant youth, ultimately revealing that the mortal surgeon was no more than an Odinian deception: a living shell designed to teach the Thunder God humility and compassion…

Time passed, Kirby left and the Thunderer’s fortunes waxed and waned. During the troubled mid-1990’s the title vanished, culled with The Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America and Fantastic Four and subcontracted out to Image creators Jim Lee & Rob Liefeld during 1996-1997 in a desperate attempt to improve sales after Marvel’s apocalyptic Onslaught event.

In 1998 Heroes Return and Heroes Reborn saw those properties rejoin the greater Marvel Universe, relaunched with new first issues. The Thunder God reappeared a few weeks later as in July, Mighty Thor volume 2 launched. This compendium gathers # Mighty Thor #1-13, plus Silver Surfer & Thor Annual 1998; Thor Annual ’99 & Peter Parker, Spider-Man #2 spanning July 1998 to July 1999.

It begins with ‘In Search of the Gods’ by Dan Jurgens, John Romita Jr. & Klaus Janson, finding the Thunderer back on Midgard after more than a year away from the home cosmos, and instantly involved in a desperate hostage situation. Acting immediately, he ends the crisis only to discover the perpetrator is a currently-powerless Guardian God Heimdall. Recently in contemporaneously relaunched Avengers #1, Thor had found Asgard devastated and deserted and now that shocking mystery has been further compounded on Earth…

Elsewhere, Death Goddess Hela and Volla the Prophetess conspire in anticipation of cosmic calamity and desires finally reaching fruition, even as a military shipment goes badly awry at New York’s docks where EMT/paramedic Jake Olsen gets the call to assist…

Before leaving Heimdall with (now) Doctor Jane Foster, Thor and the sentinel Asgardian explored shattered Asgard again, inadvertently liberating an unknown horror from ancient captivity, but all that is forgotten as the docks situation worsens and Thor joins the hard-pressed Avengers in battling reawakened Odinian ultimate weapon The Destroyer…

Despite the best efforts of the World’s Mightiest Heroes, the carnage is shattering and people die. People like Olson… and Thor…

Thor’s story nevertheless continues as his journey to Hela’s realm is interrupted by disturbing new cosmic entity Marnot who claims the Thunderer’s soul and returns it to the living world, bound to equally-miraculously resurrected Olsen in a reprise of the spell that created Don Blake… and just in time to stop The Destroyer. However, the new-old arrangement will prove to be a true ‘Deal with the Devil!’

Reborn as ‘God and Man’ in #3, the Storm Lord again walks the Earth – but only as the dormant-until-summoned alter-ego of another frail mortal host with a painfully complex personal life. It makes battling the sea-monsters of beguiling sea-goddess Sedna beside former Avenger Namor the Sub-Mariner a far from friendly reunion in ‘From the Ashes’…

Next comes a notional prequel tale from Silver Surfer & Thor Annual 1998, courtesy of Tom DeFalco, Ramon Bernado & Mark Pennington. ‘Millennius!’ finds the Silver Surfer beset by frost giants that have somehow escaped the confines of Asgard. After thrashing and returning them whence they belong, investigation beside the stormy Prince uncovers a plot by an exiled vengeful if not utterly deranged primal god determined to wreak havoc upon the modern universe and resume reshaping what remains to his dark whims. Thanks to the valour of the heroes he does not succeed…

TMT #5 finds the Thunderer still acclimating to his personal new normal and the decidedly different requirements of mortal crimes and crises. This somehow leads to Mjolnir rebelling after Thor’s take-charge personality overrules Olsen’s legal authority when the still readjusting godling compels his paramedic self to perform illegal surgery to save a life in ‘Heroes’…

The wreckers of Asgard and Marnot have been manoeuvring in the background throughout and following a flashback to Asgardian childhood, ‘What’s a God to Do?’ sees Thor edging closer to the truth after another pointless clash with best pal Hercules. Once the dust has settled, Thor finds his people have been framed for attacking Olympus even as in Asgard, the fate of the vanquished All-Father is revealed. However, this ‘Deception’ has proven effective, and Thor & Hercules are attacked by the entire outraged Hellenic pantheon…

The true architects of most of this mayhem are a pantheon of previously unknown Dark Gods – Perrikus, Adva, D’Chel, Slottoth, Tokkots and Majeston Zelia – so powerful that they have managed to take possession of the fallen Fabled Realm, consistently attacking Thor since his return; now barring him entirely from reaching his sundered home…

We diverge briefly for Mighty Thor Annual ‘99 which at last revealed why Thor arrived back in our universe so much later than his Avenging Allies. Written and pencilled by Jurgens with inks from Janson, ‘The Tears of a God’ found Thor visiting The Fantastic Four and describing the dimensional rip which left him partially amnesiac and filled with ineffable sadness, before – for our eyes only – the story is fully disclosed…

After battling Doctor Doom in the void between worlds, Thor and the Iron Dictator were cast onto an alien planet where the wounded Thunderer was nursed to health by a mysterious outcast named Ceranda. Somehow unable to leave the desolate world, the lost scion of Asgard grew slowly closer to the beautiful hermit, whilst elsewhere Doom was taking control of a subterranean society: co-opting their technology and resources to his selfish needs…

The last thing the Lord of Latveria needed for escape was Thor’s dimension-spanning hammer and he knew the true reason why it wasn’t working. This tale of dark desire and selfish love ended badly all round so perhaps its best that after the battle and return to Earth Thor had no memory of weeks spent with bewitching Ceranda…

Back at now, a stellar crossover between hammer-hurler and webspinner opens in Thor #8 as the Thunder God encounters the astounding arachnid as Tokkots goes on an Earthly rampage in ‘…and the Home of the Brave!’ prior to being spectacularly defeated and despatched to enslaved Asgard in ‘Plaything of the Gods’ (as seen in Peter Parker, Spider-Man #2, by Howard Mackie, Romita Jr. & Scott Hanna).

The end of the reinvigorated Storm Lord’s first extended story-arc comes with ‘Answers’ by regular writer Jurgens and guest illustrators John Buscema & Jerry Ordway when a vintage robotic menace returns. Here a couple of young punks luck into the operating system for android bandit Replicus and whilst the earthbound Thunder God is taking care of business in Asgard, dark usurpers are crowing over the ravaged, tortured bodies of his best friend Balder, eternally betrothed Lady Sif and mighty sire Odin, all the while scheming how to destroy the last remaining free Asgardian…

Thor is just as keen on facing his elusive tormentors and finally gains insight from enigmatic Marnot, who teasingly reveals a long-ago day when the early Asgardians encountered a rival pantheon: happily cruel gods dominating and enslaving the realm of Narcisson and just begging to begin a brutal all-out war with new foes. Against all logic the Narcissons won and were on the verge of eradicating the Asgardians until a juvenile Thor turned the tide, enabling Odin and his surviving warriors to carry the day. With these Dark Gods routed and captive, the All-Father wiped the memories of his own triumphant warriors to spare them the trauma and loss of so many comrades and loved ones. Now, however, the Narcisson gods were somehow free and had at last conquered the Eternal Realm. Armed with knowledge, Thor began to prepare for the invasion and liberation of Asgard…

The final campaign began in the three chapter saga ‘The Dark Wars: part I’, by Jurgens, Romita Jr. & Janson as human Jake Olsen frantically starts setting his complex human affairs in order. The conjoined hero is utterly unaware that colleague Dr. Foster has deduced his godly secret and that an unknown mortal enemy is setting him up to take the fall for selling stolen hospital drugs…

Before the exiled prince is ready to act, Perrikus attacks New York City, demanding a duel with the Odin-son and threatening to kill Lady Sif if the Thunderer doesn’t show. With the gateway to Asgard clear, Thor’s rapid response finds the city as bad as ever and his loved ones broken toys of the Dark Gods. Enraged, he attacks but the blockbusting battle sees his magic mallet cloven in half and he feels himself impossibly transforming back into mortal Jake…

Taking cover in a sewer, Olsen discovers an horrific underworld beneath the shattered city and is taken by trolls to the very bowels of Asgard. Soon, the frail human is being worked to death whilst far above the black pantheon are unable to detect any trace of vanished Thor. However, the broken hero feels untrammelled hope and joy when he discovers many of his missing Asgardian comrades are also enslaved in the noisome pits…

Sadly, before Olsen can even attempt to rescue them, vile Tokkots appears and whisks him back to the throne-room and the waiting Narcissons. Perrikus is furious that he cannot battle his true enemy, only a mortal shell, but everything changes when the broken, battered Midgardian falls on the remnant of Mjolnir and is mystically metamorphosed into a fighting mad Storm Lord…

Unexpectedly, Thor flees into inter-dimensional space, realising that pride and fury are not enough and that what he really needs are potent allies…

The fearsome finale comes in ‘The Dark Wars: part III’ as the conflicted champion convinces the deadly Destroyer and Hercules to raid his once-Golden Realm in a blistering last charge against the Dark Ones and their massed minions whilst he raids the depths to free Asgardian survivors and activates a cleverly concealed ally. Soon Odin, Sif and Balder are free and the fall of the Narcissons is seemingly assured – but the malignant invaders still have one last nasty card to play…

It proves not enough and eventually the brutalised Asgardians are triumphant, after which epilogue ‘The Work of Odin’ answers many questions; such as the identity of manipulative schemer Marnot, the ultimate fate of the human trapped within the deadly Destroyer’s shell and the future of both light and dark gods…

Backed up by a wealth of covers and variants by Romita Jr., Janson, Hanna, Bernado, Jurgens Joe Jusko & Mark Farmer; developmental sketches; house and trade press ads (from Marvel Vision, Marvel Catalog, Marvel Monthly, Wizard #80) supplemented with interviews & previews – ‘Juggling with Jurgens’, ‘Dan Jurgens’ and ‘Working the Second Shift with John Romita Jr.’ – the extras also include the cover to rushed-out reprint Thor: Resurrection by Romita Jr., Janson & Gregory Wright and editor Tom Brevoort’s Afterword from it, before closing on Thor #7’s stunning original art cover.

This almost excessively action-packed if plot light chronicle is an all-out, rocket-paced return to comic book basics, and, whilst perhaps not to everyone’s taste (it’s woefully short of anything even approaching a funny moment), is a blistering epic to delight the Fight’s ‘n’ Tights faithful, with the artwork undeniably some of the best of the modern Marvel Age. If you want your pulses to pound and your graphic senses to swim, this is the ideal item for you.
© 2025 MARVEL.

Today in 1921 Len Dworkins was born. He took over drawing the Buck Rogers newspaper strip in 1949 and also handled aviation standard Skyroads from 1939 using nom de plume Leon Gordon. More significantly, today is the anniversary of The Dandy’s debut in 1937, which I’ve gone on about incessantly for the last few months. Feel free to scroll back and check…

In 1961 cartoonist Don “Megaton Man” Simpson was born and in 1984 the UK saw the last War Picture Library comic digest released into newsagents, sweetshops and railway kiosks. It was #2103 if you’re counting…

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Krampus: The Devil of Christmas


By various, edited by Monte Beauchamp (Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-747-1 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Horrid Holiday Cheers… 8/10

In the spirit of the times, I thought I’d get some Christmas fare in early – or even pre-emptively. Oddly, that’s also the way I like my retaliation…

When I lived in New York, the morning after Thanksgiving was when retailers committed Christmas. Staggering out into chilly morning air (I wonder if they still have that?) after a surfeit of absolutely everything, one’s eyes would boggle at a profusion of tinsel, glitter and lights with entire buildings done up like stockings or giant parcels. These utterly mindboggling tributes to understatement would make any stolid Englander quail with disquiet and I still get tremors occasionally around postmen bearing packages…

Another way to bring on Christmas chills is with a good book, and this delightfully engrossing celebration from artist, historian and designer Monte Beauchamp (a welcome expansion on his 2004 book The Devil in Design) is a lost classic, focusing on a long-sidelined aspect of the Season of Good Will that’s found renewed interest in modern times thanks to a film franchise and the general malaise affecting increasing glum and despondent humans…

For decades Monte Beauchamp’s iconic, innovative narrative and graphic arts magazine Blab! highlighted the best and most groundbreaking trends and trendsetters in cartooning and other popular creative fields. Initially published through the auspices of much-missed Kitchen Sink Press, it moved first to Fantagraphics and carried on courtesy of Last Gasp as snazzy hardback annual Blabworld. Here however Beauchamp looks not forward but back, revelling in the lost exuberance and dark creativity of a host of anonymous artists whose seasonal imaginings spiced up the Winter Solstice for generations of guilty-until-proven-innocent tots & tykes.

In Western Europe – especially the German-speaking countries but also as far afield as Northern Italy and the Balkans – St Nicholas used to travel out with gifts for good children, but was accompanied by a goat-headed, satanic servant. Fur-covered, foul, furtive, chain-bedecked, sinister and all-knowing, the beast-man with a foot-long tongue and one cloven hoof wielded a birch switch to thrash the unruly and a copious sack to carry off disobedient kinder.

The Krampus was a fixture of winter life in Austria, Switzerland and German Principalities, with his own special feast-day (December 5th,  just before St. Nikolaus’ Day so brace yourselves and batten down any wayward hatches!); parades; festivals and highly enjoyable – for parents, at least – ceremonial child-traumatising events. Back then, we really knew how to reward the naughty and the nice…

This compelling and enchanting tome – still readily available but still not as a digital delivery – celebrates the breathtaking dark edge of the Christmas experience as depicted through the medium of the full-colour postcards that were a crucial facet of life in Europe from 1869 to the outbreak of World War I.

However, even with fascinating histories of the character and art-form related in ‘Greetings From Krampus’, ‘Festival of the Krampus’ and ‘Postal Beginnings’, the true wide-eyed wonder and untrammelled joy of this compendium is its glorious cacophony of paintings, prints, drawings collages – and even a few primitive and experimental photographic forays – depicting the delicious debilitating dread of the legendary deterrent as he (it?) terrifies boys and girls, explores the new-fangled temptations of airplanes and automobiles and regularly monitors the more mature wicked transgressions of courting and cavorting couples..

A feast of imagination and tradition ranging from the wry, sardonic and archly-knowing to the outright disturbing and genuinely scary, this magical art book is a treasure not just for Christmas but for life – as long as you have it…

And it’s not nearly as environmentally harmful as coal…
© 2010 Monte Beauchamp. All rights reserved.

Today in 1924 superstar illustrator Jack Davis was born so go look for his stuff here and elsewhere. You won’t regret it, and the same applies to Sergio (Tex Willer, Zagor) Bonelli born in Italy in 1932. Author/Editor Andy (Gay Comics) Mangels was born in 1966 and in 1971, Frank Cho joined the party. You can see his non-superhero oeuvre in action by checking out Liberty Meadows: Sundays Book One . In 1994 we lost UK strip master Tony Weare. One day SOMEONE will collect his masterful western Matt Marriott… and I’ll be waiting…

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The Forever People by Jack Kirby


By Jack Kirby, Vince Colletta, Don Heck, Mike Royer, Murphy Anderson, Al Plastino & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-77950-230-8 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Monumental Masterpieces… 9/10

Today in 1970 American comic books changed forever. On December 1st newsstands saw Superman meet the counterculture head on courtesy of Jack Kirby in a title like no other ever before. Moreover it was only one crucial component part of a bold experiment that quite honestly failed, but still undid and remade everything. It was Forever People #1…

When Jack Kirby returned to the home of Superman in 1970 he brought with him one of the most powerful concepts in comic book history. The epic grandeur of his Fourth World saga grafted a complete new mythology onto and over the existing DC universe and blew the developing minds of a generation of readers. If only there had been a few more of them…

Starting in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, where he revived his 1940s kid-team The Newsboy Legion, introduced large-scale cloning in the form of The Project and hinted that the city’s gangsters had extraterrestrial connections, Kirby moved on to a main course beginning with The Forever People, intersecting where appropriate with New Gods and Mister Miracle to form an interlinked triptych of finite-length titles that together presented an epic mosaic. Those three groundbreaking titles collectively introduced rival races of gods, dark and light, risen from the ashes of a previous Armageddon to battle forever… and then their conflict spreads to Earth…

Kirby’s concepts, as always, fired and inspired contemporaries and successors. Gods of Apokolips & New Genesis became a crucial keystone of DC continuity and integral foundation of that entire fictional universe, surviving the numerous revisions and retcons which periodically bedevil long-lived comics fans. Many major talents dabbled with the concept over decades and a host of titles have come and gone starring Kirby’s creations. That’s happening now even as I type this…

As previously stated, the herald of all this innovation had been Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, which Kirby had used to lay groundwork since taking it over with #133. There readers first met Darkseid, Intergang, The Evil Project and so much more, but it was also used as an emotional setup for a fascinating notion that had seldom if ever previously troubled the mighty, generally satisfied and well situated Man of Tomorrow…

The Forever People #1’s ‘In Search of a Dream!’ saw Kirby & contractually assigned inker Vince Colletta open with a spectacular and contemporarily astute UFO sighting.

Despite a promise of complete autonomy, the King had surrendered much to get his dream rolling. Crushing deadlines and ridiculous expected monthly page counts were one thing, but his choice of inkers was vetoed, and he had to compromise and accept insulting art edits drawn by regular Superman artists perennially pasted onto Superman’s trademarked face to present something DC demanded. Nevertheless, the work was everything and wonders unfolded when friends of Jimmy Olsen witnessed the arrival of a quartet of weird wild kids on the strangest bike on – or off – Earth. Because they took pictures, Clark Kent’s life changed forever.

He had just completed a bruising interview that made him question his role and purpose on Earth when Jimmsys snapshots of those weird kids offered Superman a glimpse of a place where he could be one guy among equals…

Curiosity and a painful need to find those newcomers drove the Man of Steel to find them, and brought him into first known contact with the absolute embodiment of intellectual and philosophical totalitarianism…

Darkseid was infiltrating our world, quietly seeking a unique mind concealing a metaphysical ultimate weapon. The “Anti-Life Equation” was the instant, irresistible negation of choice and free will and with it the right despot would command all that lives. Darkseid’s obsessive search for it had led him to Earth and now he had kidnapped a psychic youngster from a world called New Genesis. Her name was Beautiful Dreamer…

All this Superman learned later, after being ambushed by Intergang and saved by her friends Big Bear, Vykin the Black, Serifan and Mark Moonrider. They were all from that promised land Superman had glimpsed but had abandoned Eden to “get involved” helping their friend and Earth. They called themselves Forever People…

Apparently benevolent, curious kids open to new experiences and welcoming the myriad choices the future holds, they were also trained to handle trouble. When Darkseid’s forces counterattacked and took out Superman they revealed one final trick, combining into an unbeatable enigmatic being called Infinity Man…

When Darkseid ceded the day, he left a booby trap only Superman could tackle and in return the kids let him travel to Supertown on their fabled paradise planet New Genesis. However, they stressed that any decent right-thinking person’s place was here, fighting evil by facing Darkseid. For the briefest moment, need overwhelmed duty before, inevitably, the Man of Tomorrow turned back and took up the new never-ending battle…

Exuberantly enjoying their dalliance with a primitive culture, the reunited quintet joyously interact with toiling humanity, finding shelter in a mostly deserted slum with disabled kid Donnie and his aging Uncle Willie. The odd youngster’s urge to learn is sadly curtailed when Darkseid steps up his hunt for the equation. His reasoning says abject terror might shake loose the formula from whoever is afflicted with it, and to that effect he orders bug-like behemoth Mantis to declare shattering ‘Super War!’ on humanity.

Arguably marginally less powerful than the Master of Apokolips, Mantis can only be countered by Infinity Man, and the Forever People happily ask mystic computer Mother Box to perform the ritual that will call him and subtract them from existence…

After exploring isolation versus community, introducing outside negation of free will and the concept of terror as addictive sustenance (vile deputy DeSaad feasts on fear and torture), FP #3 tackle’s head-on the series’ core concepts.

‘Life vs. Anti-Life!’ explores conformity, personal freedoms, informed choices, organised bigotry and the tyranny of psychological and physical fascism as the wonder kids are tracked down by Justifiers: human zealots who have willingly surrendered individual autonomy to what appears to be a televangelist telling them what they want to hear. Defeat doubt by surrendering to Anti-Life. It is Good to kill those who are better or weaker than you…

Equipped with terrifying Apokolips weapons, Justifiers burn libraries, attack minorities and even drive the kids out of their tatty home and onto the attack, infiltrating Apokoliptian infiltrator/demagogue Glorious Godfrey’s appalling recruitment rally. Shockingly, when Infinity Man faces Darkseid, the devil defeats the mysterious angel and the traumatised kids are captured…

Forever People #4, horrifically subverts the American dream as fun theme park Happyland is revealed as ‘The Kingdom of the Damned’: a sprawling factory built to mass-produce terror by exploiting whimsy and fantasy. Here DeSaad torments countless human victims while others innocently observe nothing but toys and robots dancing and playing for their pleasure. To this set-up the captured waifs of New Genesis are added and DeSaad feeds, but they have all underestimated the power of Mother Box who seeks aid and finds it in the form of zen wrestler ‘Sonny Sumo’…

With the living computer boosting his remarkable gifts, the pacifist warrior executes a one-man rescue that demonstrates the true horror of the Anti-Life Equation: a battle so fast and furious that even Darkseid is panicked and overreacts…

At this juncture DC comic books expanded to 52 pages and as well as reprints, Kirby’s Korner ran short background vignettes. The lost history of the previous war of pantheons was filled in as here when ‘The Young Gods of Supertown Introducing Lonar’ finds a wandering historian picking through cosmic rubble on New Genesis and uncovering a living, breathing remnant of that cataclysmic conflict

Cover-dated January 1971 FP #6 was inked by Mike Royer and revealed how the Master of Apokolips resorts to his personal ultimate weapon ‘The Omega Effect!!’: scattering Sumo and the triumphant New Genesisians throughout key moments of Earth’s history. All but sensitive Serifan who retreats bereft and shellshocked to their sentient Super-Cycle and a final brutal battle with Godfrey’s Justifiers…

Inked by Colletta, back-up The Young Gods of Supertown’ also focuses on the kid with cosmic cartridges as a sneaky ‘Raid from Apokolips’ ruins his and Big Bear’s meditation moment and makes them unpardonably rude in response…

Time travel travails are sorted in concluding episode ‘I’ll Find You in Yesterday!!’ as on New Genesis, Supreme Leader Highfather puts everyone back where they belong by use of almighty Alpha Bullets, and the kids find out how destiny dealt with their saviour Sonny Sumo. That’s bookended by ‘Lonar of New Genesis and his Battle-Horse Thunderer!!!’ as the survivor of the first fall meets current war god Orion…

Everything Darkseid ransacks humanity’s subconscious for is found in #8 as manipulative human parasite Billion-Dollar Bates reveals he has ‘The Power!’ of the Anti-Life Equation. Every vice readily embraced, he thinks he’s evil incarnate until the Apokolips crowd show up, but Darkseid’s joy turns to ashes as the Forever People rush in and fate takes a hand that even gods cannot turn aside…

The Fourth World was a huge risk and massive gamble for an industry and company that was a watchword for conservatism. It was probably incredibly tough for editors and publishers to stop themselves interfering, and they often didn’t. With numbers low, spooky stories proliferating everywhere and popular wisdom saying character crossovers boosted sales, Kirby eventually caved to pressure and agreed to host another creator’s star in his epic. Thus Forever People #9 hosted (failed) horror hero Boston Brand, AKA Deadman who was made marginally manifest by a seance and another Cosmic Cartridge. The vengeance hunter accepted an artificial body to pursue the man who killed him in an intriguing, action-packed but ultimately ridiculous aside that began by introducing a ‘Monster in the Morgue!’ It rampaged through town before tech bandits ‘The Scavengers’ sought to steal Brand’s new “mobile home”, and drew the wrath of ghost and teen godlings. The yarn actually ended with a plug for Kirby’s forthcoming series The Demon…

After that peculiar and extremely wearisome divertissement the war came for the interstellar innocents with ‘Devilance the Pursuer’. It was the last issue and at least the King had time enough to prepare a narrative pause if not proper conclusion. Simply put, Darkseid’s top killer is despatched to end the pesky brats and is unstoppable. Chased across Earth they appear doomed until the long missing Infinity Man is contacted, returning for one last hurrah that sees the Forever People vanished from the world and human ken…

And that was that. This title and New Gods were axed although Mister Miracle continued on with a definite change of emphasis until time and tastes brought sequels and, at long last, Kirby’s return to craft a proper ending… of sorts.

But that’s a tale for another day…

This handy compendium also offers bonus material including ‘Mother Box Files’ re-presenting dozens of pertinent Kirby characters as revisited by himself and others in various editions of the DC Who’s Who fact files. Here a group treatment of The Forever People augments solo entries for Beautiful Dreamer, Big Bear, DeSaad, Infinity Man, Mantis, Mark Moonrider and The Pursuer by Kirby & Greg Theakston; with Glorious Godfrey inked by Bob Smith, Serifan inked by Gary Martin and Vykin the Black inked by Karl Kesel. Augmenting them are Kirby pin-ups from the original run: the four guys in ‘The Forever People’, ‘Beautiful Dreamer versus Darkseid’ and ‘The Infinity Man’ plus a self-portrait of the King, all from FP #4 and inked by Colletta.

We close with a selection of stunning pencilled pages in ‘The Art of Jack Kirby’, what more do you need to know?
© 1970, 1971, 1972, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Lucky Luke creator Morris was born today in 1923, and in 1945 Shazam/Captain Marvel spinoff Hoppy the Marvel Bunny debuted in Funny Animals Comics #1. Five years later cartoonist Gary Panter was born. I’m sure there’s no connection but just in case why not see Jimbo in Paradise.