Now Read This!

May 8, 2009May 6, 2009

Supermen: the First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941

By various, edited by Greg Sadowski (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-971-5

Long the bastion of the arcane, historic, esoteric and the just plain interesting arenas of the comic book marketplace, Fantagraphics Books fully enters the Fights ‘n’ Tights Game with this magnificent collection of (mostly) superhero tales from the very dawn of the American comic-book industry. Supermen gathers together a selection of stalwarts by names legendary and seminal from the period 1936-1941, combining 9 stunning covers, many interior ads (for further beguiling characters and publications) and twenty full stories of exotic heroes and Mystery-Men from a time when there was no genre, only untapped potential…

After Jonathan Lethem’s introduction the wonderment begins with a two page instalment of Dr. Mystic, the Occult Detective by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, from Comics Magazine #1, May 1936, which after a selection of covers leads into ‘Murder by Proxy’ an adventure of The Clock, by George E. Brenner, from Detective Picture Stories #5 (April, 1937). The Clock has the distinction of being the first masked comic-book hero whereas Dan Hastings by Dan Fitch and Fred Guardineer is accounted the first continuing science fiction hero in comic books, with this appearance from Star Comics #5, 1937.

Dirk the Demon is a boy hero by young Bill Everett, from Amazing Mystery Funnies vol.2 #3 (March 1939), closely followed by a tale of the Flame from Wonderworld Comics #7 (November 1939) by Will Eisner and Lou Fine using the pen-name Basil Berold, whilst super-magician Yarko the Great first appeared in Wonderworld Comics #8, written and drawn by Eisner.

The unique Dick Briefer is represented hereby the Rex Dexter of Mars episode from Mystery Men Comics #4 (November 1939) and Jack Kirby makes his first appearance, working as Michael Griffiths on a tale of Cosmic Carson for the May 1940 issue of Science Comics (#4).

The work of troubled maestro Fletcher Hanks was lost to posterity until recently rediscovered by comics’ intelligentsia in such magazines as Raw! and his woefully short career in comic-books is represented here by two pieces. The first of these is the stunningly surreal and forceful Stardust, the Super Wizard from Fantastic Comics #12, (November 1940). From Pep Comics #3, in April of the same year comes a turning point in the brutal career of Jack Cole’s murderous superhero The Comet, followed by Al Bryant’s monster-hunting vigilante Fero, Planet Detective, (Planet Comics #5, May 1940) and the second Hanks offering, pseudonymously working as Barclay Flagg, is the truly bizarre Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle from Jungle Comics #4 (April 1940).

Big Shot Comics combined reprints of established newspaper strips with original characters and material. From the first issue in May 1940 comes another Mandrake inspired crusader, Marvello, Monarch of Magicians by Gardner Fox and Fred Guardineer and a plainclothes mystery-man named Tony Trent who fought crime by putting on a hideous mask and calling himself The Face, also written by Fox and drawn by the wonderful Mart Bailey working together as “Michael Blake”. The other major all-new star of Big Shot was the fabulous blend of Batman, G-8 and Doc Savage called Skyman, and this yarn by “Paul Dean” (Fox and Ogden Whitney) is a real cracker.

Jack Cole returns as Ralph Johns to tell a tale of super-speedster Silver Streak (Silver Streak Comics #4, May 1940) which is followed by one of the most famous tales of this era as a daring hero battled the God of Hate in #7’s ‘Daredevil Battles the Claw’ (from January 1941).

The legendary Basil Wolverton is represented here by the cover of Target Comics #7 and a startling story of Spacehawk, Superhuman Enemy of Crime from issue #11, (December 1940) whilst icy hero Sub-Zero stopped crime cold in an episode from Blue Bolt #5, courtesy of rising star Bill Everett, before the pictorial magic concludes with an episode of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s incredible Blue Bolt fantasy strip from the tenth issue of the magazine that bore his name (cover-dated the same month as another S&K classic entitled Captain America)…

Augmented by comprehensive background notes on the contents of this treasury of thrills, Supermen is a perfect primer for anyone seeking an introduction to the Golden Age, as well as a delightful journey for long-time fans. I’m sure there’s very little here that most of us have seen before, and as a way of preserving these popular treasures for a greater posterity it is a timely start. Much, much more, please…

May 7, 2009May 6, 2009

The Question: the Five Books of Blood

By Greg Rucka & various (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-4012-1799-0

Spinning out of DC’s 52 and Countdown to Final Crisis year-long mega-series, ex-Gotham City cop Renee Montoya took up the faceless mask and obsessions of the shadowy hero known as The Question and sought to track down the physical copies and adherents of the gospel of All Things Evil alternatively known as the Books of Blood or the Crime Bible.

This legendary tome is said to counter all that is good in the world and justify and codify all that is wrong. Driven by a need to understand the evils she fights and stop the spread of this monstrous belief, the driven martial artist hunts for the remaining copies of the book and the distinct factions that protect them promote their teachings. She begins by following – or perhaps being stalked by – a diabolical missionary of sin: a monk of darkness. But as she closes on the secret master of the “Dark Faith” she inexorably nears her own ultimate corruption…

Originally released as five inter-related one-shots entitled Crime Bible: the Five Books of Blood, each chapter of her quest is preceded by a salutary lesson excerpted from the dreadful chronicle, with each Book of Blood illustrated by a different artist or team. ‘The Lesson of Deceit’ leads off with art by Tom Mandrake, followed by ‘The Lesson of Lust’ by Jesus Saiz, ‘The Lesson of Greed’ by Matthew Clark and ‘The Lesson of Murder’ by Diego Olmos, culminating in ‘The Parable of the Faceless’ by Manuel Garcia and Jimmy Palmiotti. But the shock ending is not what it appears as Greg Rucka’s grim tale and Montoya’s dark voyage was designed to lead directly into the final part of the mega-series triptych Final Crisis.

Moody and stylish, this hardcover edition also contains rare promotional materials distributed to retailers in the form of Montoya’s notes collected as a hunting journal.

Although highly readable with many excellent set pieces, this book is inextricably wedded to a much larger story and is pretty much impenetrable to casual readers, and the lack of a conclusive ending (pending the events of the aforementioned Final Crisis) pretty much relegates it to the limited attention of the already converted… which is in many ways the biggest crime.

May 6, 2009May 6, 2009

Boody: the Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers

Edited by Craig Yoe (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-961-6

The one true invention of American Comic-books is undoubtedly the super-hero, but the pervasiveness of that almighty icon has prevented the wider world from discerning what the readers, fans and collectors have always known, even if they choose nowadays to disregard: the fact that our masters and artisans have always been just as effective and creative in established genres such as crime, horror, westerns and especially comedy.

A perfect exemplar of that fact has finally had his first long overdue retrospective in this fabulous if unstructured collection from Fantagraphics: Gordon “Boody” Rogers.

Born in 1904 he began his drawing career in the 1920s after studying at the Cartoon Academy of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the Chicago Institute. At this time he palled around with Harold Gray, Frank Engli, Chester Gould, and Tex Avery among many other talented art-stars in waiting. When his roommate Zack Mosely began his long-lived aviator strip Smilin’ Jack in 1933, Rogers was his assistant from day one. As a jobbing cartoonist he also worked for such magazines as Life, Judge, Colliers and the Saturday Evening Post on syndicated features and gag strips like ‘Deadwood Gulch’ and ‘Possum Holler’

He was a major contributor to ‘The Funnies’ the very first comic book, published in 1936 (there’s a fascinating example, ‘Rattlesnake Pete’, from this landmark leading off the compilation) before developing his own newspaper strip ‘Sparky Watts’ in early 1939 which he wrote and drew until America joined the war, at which point he enlisted.

On his return he revived Sparky (a physical superman, sans costume, whose wild and wacky adventures were at once a spoof of the ubiquitous mystery men and a snappy, surreal satire on the American Way) for Columbia Comics and created a number of other properties, all in the comedy, teen and gag genres that rose in popularity as the costumed heroes diminished. Obviously seeing another sea-change coming, Rogers retired from the industry at age 48 to open a small chain of art shops in Arizona. He passed away in 1996.

Boody Rogers’ style of work is far more amenable to a British audience reared on Desperate Dan, Pansy Potter and the unrestrained genius of Ken Reid or Leo Baxendale than the rather anodyne fare of post-war America. His wild perambulations and freewheeling style of gag-upon-gag narrative often skirted bounds of taste (as all great humour should) and his influence, as much as Basil Wolverton and EC Comics, can be clearly seen throughout the Underground Comix revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

The material collected here all comes from Sparky Watts, Babe, Dudley and the anthology title Big Shot Comics and the years 1948-1950. Although to my mind inadequately referenced (I’d love to know which stories appeared exactly when and where), the broad range of tales perfectly illustrates the kind of manic energy and absurdist invention typified by the “Screwball comedies” of the thirties and the madcap pace of the teen movement as immortalised by Bob Montana’s Archie, with arcane dialogue, quick-fire set-ups and punch-lines building one upon another. Rather than being dated, these works – at least to this old coot – have great resonance with the youth culture of today.

They’re also beautifully drawn and a total hoot.

Babe (“the Amazon of the Ozarks”) was a rustic and rambunctious take on Li’l Abner; a physically perfect hottie no man could resist – or beat -Â who appeared in Big Shot and Sparky Watts Comics as well as eleven issues of her own title. Following her premiere appearance, we’re also treated to ‘Hideout’ as movie heartthrob Clark Sable tries to escape the onerous attentions of his fans by masquerading as Babe’s dowager cousin Fanny, ‘the Secret of Lighting Juice Tea’ reveals the origins of the hillbilly lass’ rude health, ‘Mrs. Gooseflesh’ is a murderous lady-wrestler who met Babe in the Canvas ring, and ‘the Mysterious Case of Mystery Mountain!’ recounts the peculiarly fetishistic lives of Ozark centaurs living on top of an isolated plateau. Fans in the know will be intrigued to discover that Bondage artist Eric Stanton began his drawing career as Rogers’ assistant…

Jasper Fudd is a prim and prudish, dim-witted yokel who unexpectedly goes to college where he discovers he can run like the wind – given the right motivation – and this was decades before Forest Gump’s mum ever got her first box of chocolates, whilst Dudley, the Prince of Prance is a excellent – if now bewildering – example of the teen oriented strip that spread like measles in the post-war years. Following the Archie/Andy Hardy model, every publisher chased the older kid market with impenetrable tales of Sock-Hops, Jalopies, music that parents couldn’t stand, young love and obnoxious siblings. Gosharootie, how things have changed…

Sparky Watts is the undisputed star, an affable everyman with amazing powers who always seems to be getting into scrapes. He doesn’t fight crime, but empowered by Cosmic Rays which tend to shrink him to microscopic sizes when they fade, he often found himself in strange places meeting the most peculiar creatures, aided (although that’s not really the correct term) by his assistant Slap Happy and the eminent Doc Static.

As well as 10 issues of his own title and the 1943 one-shot Columbia Comics, Boody’s Sparky appeared in Big Shot from #14 (June 1941) through #42, and again from #77-104, whilst other, lesser lights handled the strip during Roger’s war service. The six episodes included here are all from the post-war period but wonderfully display the surreal punch and eye for visual characterisation that exemplified Roger’s work.

This comfortingly substantial tome is a wonderful introduction to a comics master who never disappointed, working in a genre most comics fans won’t even be aware of these days. That’s their loss: don’t let it be yours…

May 5, 2009May 4, 2009

Two Will Come Book 2

By Kyungok Kang (NetComics)
ISBN: 978-1-60009-116-2

Set at the close of the 20^th century, this is the story of Jina, a young Korean girl with all the usual problems of the comfortable modern miss, but with a family secret that threatens to tear her cosy world apart…

Hundreds of years ago her ancestors were Kings. One vain and foolish monarch ordered the death of a magical serpent called an Imugi just as it was preparing to ascend to Heaven. It cursed his family for eternity, decreeing that in every generation one of them would die as a result of the actions of two people close to them. The fear, distrust and misery of this most subtle pronouncement blighted the family through the centuries and no attempts to forestall their doom with priests, fortune tellers or exorcisms have worked. Long ago they decided to keep all knowledge of the curse from the children, only revealing the secret when – or if – they reach a certain age.

Jina has few friends but as her birthday approached her school rivalry with the obnoxious Jaesuk seemed to be turning into something more. The girls in class picked on her less and her cousin Myunghyun returned from America after three years, bringing with him a gorgeous and enigmatic young man named Yoojin Lee. As she grew closer to them all her parents began acting oddly: as though dreading her new and maturing relationships…

When the latest soothsayer determined that Jina was the most probable target of this generation’s curse it had to mean that two people close to her would cause her death…

The second book begins when Jina’s scary aunt accosts her whilst she’s out with Myunghyun and Yoojin. The traumatised woman reveals more facets of the family curse, and believing that she must soon die Jina listens attentively, especially after her aunt reveals that she killed the last victim: her own sister…

Meanwhile Jaesuk has decided to stop playing the field and dedicate himself to Jina alone, but his ex-girlfriends (Jina’s best friend and worst enemy respectively) don’t take the news too well… Worst of all, the curse seems to have mutated as a ghastly presence invades her house, possessing first her mother and then the exorcist, driving them to murderous attacks upon the young girl. It seems as if any friend, family member or even random associate could now be her predestined killer.

Confused and despondent, haunted by dreams of a ghostly young woman with death in her eyes, Jina goes on a road-trip. Accompanied by the two boys, who are rapidly becoming her truest friends and allies, she visits another broken family member, but the awful tale he tells does little to comfort her. And when Myunghyun reveals that he also sees the Ghost woman – and knows her identity – Jina finally realises just what her life may mean…

The promised edge of tragic horror in book 1(ISBN: 978-1-60009-116-2) of this compelling contemporary Gothic Romance strikes tellingly home here as with beautiful pictures revealing an inescapable and fatalistic, the star-crossed doom of young Jina gathers unstoppably about her. Can courage, fortitude and true love overcome the power of the centuries-long curse?

As much teen-soap as thriller, this manhwa fantasy’s subtle undercurrents and classical precedents raise it far above the usual manga arena to deliver a truly powerful tragedy which any lover of great fiction will adore. I advise you to get aboard and keep watching… the rewards should be huge and very fulfilling.

May 4, 2009May 3, 2009

Essential Marvel Team-Up volume 1

By various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2376-6

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 en masse creation of horror titles in response to the industry down-turn in super-hero sales – a move expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

The concept of team-up books – an established star pairing or battling (often both) with less well-selling company characters – was not new when Marvel decided to award their most popular hero the lion’s share of this new title, but they wisely left their options open by allocating an occasional substitute lead in the Human Torch. In those long-lost days editors were acutely conscious of potential over-exposure – and since super-heroes were actually in a decline they may well have been right.

Nevertheless Marvel Team-Up was the second full-Spider-Man title (an abortive companion title Spectacular Spider-Man was created for the magazine market in 1968 but had died after two issues) and it launched in March 1972, with the Wall-Crawler and his friendly flaming rival reluctantly spending the holidays together as an old foe reared his gritty head in the charming ‘Have Yourself a Sandman Little Christmas!’ by Roy Thomas, Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. (Merry Marvelite Maximii can award themselves a point for remembering which martial arts heroine debuted in this issue but the folk with lives can simply take my word that it was Iron Fist’s sometime squeeze Misty Knight.)

Gerry Conway assumed the writer’s role and Jim Mooney the inker’s for ‘And Spidey Makes Four!’ in the next issue as our heroes then took on the Frightful Four and Annihilus and seemingly without pause went after Morbius the Living Vampire in #3’s ‘The Power to Purge!’ (inked by Frank Giacoia).

The new horror-star was still the villain in MTU #4 as the Torch was replaced by most of the mutant team (The Beast having gone all hairy – and solo) in ‘And Then… the X-Men!’ a pacy thriller illustrated by the magnificent Gil Kane at the top of his form and inked by Steve Mitchell. Kane became a semi-regular penciller, and his dynamic style and extreme anatomy lifted many quite ordinary tales such as #5’s ‘A Passion of the Mind!’, (Conway script and Esposito inks) pitting Spidey and The Vision against Puppet Master and robotic assassin the Monstroid and its follow-up ‘…As Those Who Will Not See!’ (with the Thing against the Mad Thinker) that most other pencillers could only dream of…

‘A Hitch in Time!’ by Conway, Andru and Mooney guest-starred Thor as Trolls froze Earth’s time-line as a prerequisite step to conquering Asgard, whilst issue #8 is a perfect example of the team-up comic’s other function – to promote and popularise new characters.

‘Man-Killer Moves at Midnight!’ was most fans first exposure to The Cat, (later retooled as Tigra) in a painfully worthy if ham-fisted attempt to address feminist issues from Conway and Jim Mooney. Iron Man began the three-part tale ‘The Tomorrow War!’ (Conway, Andru & Frank Bolle) as he and Spidey were kidnapped by Zarkko the Tomorrow Man to battle Kang the Conqueror; the Torch returned to help deal with the intermediate threat of ‘Time Bomb!’ (Conway, Mooney & Giacoia) but it took the entire race of Black Bolt’s Inhumans to help Spidey stop history unravelling in ‘The Doomsday Gambit!’ – with Len Wein scripting Conway’s plot for Mooney and Esposito to illustrate.

The same writing team produced ‘Wolf at Bay!’ from MTU #12 as the Wall-Crawler met the Werewolf (By Night) and the malevolent Moondark in foggy San Francisco, drawn by Andru and Don Perlin, and Kane and Giacoia returned for ‘The Granite Sky!’ where Wein pitted Spider-Man and Captain America against Hydra and the Grey Gargoyle. ‘Mayhem is… the Men-Fish!’ (inked by Wayne Howard) matched him with the savage Sub-Mariner against Tiger Shark and Doctor Dorcas as well as mutant sea-beasts.

Wein, Andru and Perlin created The Orb to bedevil Spidey and the Ghost Rider in ‘If an Eye Offend Thee!’ in #15 whilst Kane and Mooney illustrated ‘Beware the Basilisk my Son!’, a gripping romp featuring Captain Marvel, which concluded in ‘Chaos at the Earth’s Core!’ (inked by “everybody”!) as Mister Fantastic joined the fracas to stop the Mole Man from inadvertently blowing up the world.

The Human Torch teamed with the Hulk in MTU #18 to stop Blastaar in ‘Where Bursts the Bomb!’ inked by Giacoia & Esposito, but Spidey was back with Ka-Zar to witness ‘The Coming of… Stegron, the Dinosaur Man!’ (Wein, Kane & Giacoia) whose plans to flatten New York by releasing ‘Dinosaurs on Broadway!’ was foiled with the Black Panther’s help – as well as the artistic skills of Sal Buscema, Giacoia and Esposito.

Dave Hunt replaced Esposito for ‘The Spider and the Sorcerer!’ in #21 as Spidey and Doctor Strange once more battles Xandu, a wizard first seen in Spider-Man Annual #2, whilst ‘The Messiah Machine!’ pitted Hawkeye and Spidey against Quasimodo and a mechanoid invasion. The Torch and Iceman teamed to stop Equinox, the Thermo-Dynamic Man on ‘The Night of the Frozen Inferno!’ (Wein, Kane & Esposito) and the first two dozen tales conclude with the defiantly quirky ‘Moondog is another Name for Murder!’– illustrated by Mooney and Sal Trapani – as the web-spinner met the decidedly offbeat Brother Voodoo to quash a Manhattan murder cult.

These stories are of variable quality but nonetheless all have an honest drive to entertain and please whilst artistically the work is superb, and most fans of the genre would find little to complain about. Although not really a book for casual or more maturely-oriented readers there’s lots of fun on hand and young readers will have a blast, so there’s no real reason not to add this tome to your library…

May 3, 2009May 3, 2009

Frank Bellamy’s Robin Hood: the Complete Adventures

By Clifford Makins & Frank Bellamy, edited by Steve Holland (Book Palace Books)
ISBN: 978-0-9551596-3-3

Retailer/art dealers turned Publisher The Book Palace (welcome to the jungle, chaps!) have done something all we powerless fans have always dreamed of: preserved a lost yet beloved portion of our comics heritage – because nobody else would.

Robin Hood hopefully needs no coverage here, but these strips of arguably Britain’s greatest hero were drawn by one of our nation’s greatest comics illustrators and have been long-neglected due, I suspect, solely to their point of origin.

When Eagle revolutionised the British marketplace in 1950 other companies soon followed suit. Keen to keep their newly won pre-eminent position, and never ceasing the march of expansion, Hulton Press’s Managing Editor Marcus Morris, steeped in religious tactics, designed ancillary titles to shepherd different segments of the child-consumers towards his confirmed goal – their hearts, minds and pocket money.

Eagle was a magazine with superlative production values aimed at boys. Morris followed this in 1951 with a distaff counterpart, Girl, before returning to his feathered theme with Robin in 1953 (intended for parents and toddlers) and Swift, (1954) which targeted 5-7 year olds of both sexes. The Hulton child would join for and with Robin, be trained and enlightened by Swift (which had many TV related and classical story features) before being confirmed as either an Eagle boy or a Girl… girl (the urge to type “chick” there was almost irresistible and I’m sure we’re all glad I didn’t).

All joking aside, Swift was an ideal example of the kind of publication we just don’t do anymore. Clear simple storytelling, fantastic art, games, puzzles and factual features tailored to a specific age-range and acuity, this sort of “younger-juveniles” publication elucidated, entertained, and best of all drew children into the habit of reading – both comics and books.

At the time Frank Bellamy was just starting his impressive career, but his raw ability is still astonishing to see. His facility with scenery and locations, historical research, staging, angles and especially expressions can all be seen in the two extended adventures reproduced here, although the “pic and block” format (each panel sat above a few lines of prose, with speech balloons included as necessary) mandated by the editors meant that the artist’s legendary layout and page design are not demonstrated.

After a fascinating background feature from editor Holland the first strip ‘Robin Hood and his Merry Men’ relates the tale of the Saxon Robin, Earl of Huntingdon, whose father was murdered and his lands confiscated by the Norman Robber-Baron Robert Braisse-Neuve – called “The Wolf”. Full of stirring fights and chases, this is very much a traditional Emerald Archer, even though the source material is apparently the 1940 novel Robin of Sherwood, written by Major Charles Gilson, rather than the traditionally “consulted” Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle (ISBN13: 978-0451522849).

That first tale ran 42 two-page episodes and came to a perfect storybook conclusion, but was clearly popular enough for a sequel. ‘Robin Hood and Maid Marian’ at 25 instalments sent the newly restored Earl back to Sherwood Forest when his benefactor Richard the Lion Heart was killed in France and the feckless, vengeful Prince John assumed the throne.

Joined in the greenwood by Maid Marian and her trusty companion Gwen, the heroic band fought injustice and foiled the plots of John, The Sheriff of Nottingham and the Saxon turncoat Guy of Gisborne with dazzling skill and doughty hearts – and that’s where scripter Clifford Makins (Bellamy’s writer of choice for many years) wisely left them, carrying on into the eternal forever…

Written for a youthful general audience these good-old-fashioned tales of adventure are more accessible and welcome than ever and this beautiful black and white book is a pearl beyond price that every kid should be given as present – and you might as well have one yourself….

May 2, 2009May 3, 2009

Blue Beetle: Road Trip

By John Rogers, Keith Giffen, Cully Hamner, Rafael Albuquerque & various (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-4012-1361-9

As the most recent incarnation of the venerable Blue Beetle brand settles into comic-book limbo, at least with trade paperback editions around there’s still a chance that this wonderfully exuberant version can find the audience it deserves: hopefully to rise like the immortal scarab it references…

At the height of the Infinite Crisis (ISBN: 978-1-4012-0959-9) El Paso teenager Jaime Reyes found a strange blue bug-shaped jewel. That night it attached itself to his spine transforming him into a bizarre beetle-like warrior. He was promptly swept up in the chaos, aiding Batman and other heroes in a space battle. He was lost for a year…

Returned home, he revealed his secret to his family and tried to do some good in El Paso but had to rapidly adjust to some big changes. His best bud Paco had joined a gang of super-powered freaks, the local crime mastermind was the foster-mom of his other best bud Brenda and a really scary military dude named Peacemaker started hanging around claiming the thing in Jaime’s back was malfunctioning alien tech not life-affirming Egyptian magic…

The second volume (collecting issues #7-12 of the fun-filled monthly comic) begins with ‘Brother’s Keeper’, a guest-star filled recap of his career to date before ‘Road Trip’ itself in which Jaime, Brenda and Peacemaker go looking for answers by consulting young Dan Garrett, cyber-geek and self-proclaimed expert on the previous Blue Beetles. As the first hero’s granddaughter she also has a fair claim to being the rightful owner of the gem, but a potential squabble and their research is interrupted by the return of a monstrous hunchbacked maniac determined to destroy the “demonic” new hero.

Following is ‘Inside Man’, the true story behind Peacemaker’s unwilling involvement in Jaime’s life and then Brenda finds herself in a world of trouble… She lives with her aunt who is secretly La Dama, crime boss of El Paso, and a felonious clearing house for stolen super-technology and magical artifacts, so it was only a matter of time before Brenda stumbled upon something really dangerous. Whisked to an far-distant world in ‘Should’ve Taken that Left Turn at Albuquerque…’ and ‘The Guns of Forever’ Beetle and La Dama come to an uneasy truce so that the Jaime can rescue Brenda, consequently encountering a selection of New Gods and hungry aliens.

The book ends on a thematic cliffhanger with ‘Meet the New Boss’ as Beetle and peacemaker investigate cattle mutilations, battle a giant bug monster and are introduced to its owner – an extraterrestrial envoy from The Reach who claims to be the creator of the scarab…

There are precious few comic-books that combine action and adventure with fun and wit, but authors John Rogers and Keith Giffen make this look easy in an innovative and wryly engaging saga impossible to resist, especially with the artistic endeavours of Cully Hamner, Rafael Albuquerque, Duncan Rouleau and Casey Jones making each page a visual treat.

So the latest Blue Beetle is still a fresh and delightful joy to me – and as I’m eager to pass on that feeling to all the other fuddy-duddies who are alive enough to locate an internet connection… Go Read This!

May 1, 2009May 3, 2009

Doctor Who: vol.11 Cold Day in Hell

By various (Panini Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-410-2

The British love comic strips and they love celebrity and they love “Characters.”

The history of our graphic narrative has a peculiarly disproportionate amount of radio comedians, Variety stars and film and television actors such as Charlie Chaplin, Flanagan & Allen, Shirley Eaton (“The Modern Miss”), Arthur Askey, Winifred Atwell, Max Bygraves, Jimmy Edwards, Charlie Drake and their ilk as well as actual shows and properties such as Whacko!, ITMA, Our Gang, (there was a British version of the Hal Roach film sensation by Dudley Watkins in Dandy as well as the American comicbook series by Walt Kelly), Old Mother Riley, Supercar, Pinky and Perky and literally hundreds more.

Anthology comics such as Radio Fun, Film Fun, TV Fun, Look-In, TV Tornado, TV Comic and Countdown among others all translated our viewing and listening favourites into pictorial joy every week, and it was a pretty poor star or show that couldn’t parley their day job into a licensed comic property.

Doctor Who launched on television with the first episode of ‘An Unearthly Child’ on November 23^rd 1963, and in 1964 his decades-long association with TV Comic began in #674 with the premier instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’. On 11^th October 1979 (although adhering to the US off-sale cover-dating system so it says17^th ) Marvel’s UK subsidiaryÂ launched Doctor Who Weekly, which became 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.

Marvel/Panini is in the ongoing process of collecting every strip from its archive in a uniform series of over-sized graphic albums, each concentrating on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer. This particular one gathers stories from issues #130-150, (originally published in the early 1990s) a time when regular artist John Ridgway gave way to a succession of rotating creators as part of the company’s urgent drive to cut costs – although there’s no appreciable drop in quality that I can see. These yarns all feature the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy – my second favourite after Patrick Troughton – but I’m sure I’ll be advised why that’s so very wrong by somebody in due course…)

This all black and white collection kicks off with the eponymous ‘Cold Day in Hell!’ by writer Simon Furman, Ridgway and inker Tim Perkins, a four part thriller featuring an attack by Martian Ice Warriors on a tropical resort planet, which leads directly into the moody, single story ‘Redemption!’ by Furman, Kev Hopgood and Perkins.

At that time and in this book Marvel sanctioned some controversial crossovers with other Marvel UK characters. The first of these was Death’s Head, a robotic bounty hunter from the Transformers comic in Furman and Geoff Senior’s ‘The Crossroads of Time’ (Doctor Who Monthly #135), but it was back to sounder stuff with the freak-filled three-part Victorian Great Exhibition epic ‘Claws of the Klath!’ by Mike Collins, Hopgood and David Hine.

Fresh-faced young scribe Grant Morrison wrote the charmingly different ‘Culture Shock!’ for equally neophytic (no, it means new or fresh) ascending star Bryan Hitch to draw, before John Higgins illustrated Furman’s ‘Keepsake’, a classy space opera about an indigent salvage man. John Freeman and Lee Sullivan started their long association with the magazine in the two-part ‘Planet of the Dead’ (DWM #141-142), which featured an ambitious, spooky team-up of all seven regenerations of the Time Lord on a world filled with the Companions who had died in their service…

‘Echoes of the Mogor!’ (DWM #143-144) by Dan Abnett and Ridgway was an eerie chiller set on a mining planet where Earth workers are mysteriously dying, whilst ‘Time and Tide’ by Richard Alan and John Carnell, illustrated by Dougie Braithewaite & Dave Elliott (DWM #143-144), marooned the Doctor on a drowning world amidst aliens who don’t seem to care if they live or die…

Carnell wrote the other crossover I mentioned earlier, a far less well-regarded romp with the imbecilic detectives the Sleeze Brothers. ‘Follow that Tardis!‘ was illustrated by Andy Lanning, Higgins, Braithwaite and Elliot, and the volume’s strip content concludes with Alan grant’s three-part ‘Invaders from Gantac!’, wherein a colony of alien torturers invade 1992 London by mistake in a tale as much comedy as thriller, drawn by Martin Griffiths and Cam Smith.

Supplemented with lots of text features, pin-ups, creator-biographies and commentaries, this is a great book for casual readers, a fine shelf addition for dedicated fans of the show and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our particular art-form to anyone minded to give comics one more go…

All Doctor Who material Â© BBCtv.Â Doctor Who, the Tardis and all logos are trade marks of the British broadcasting corporation and are used under licence. Death’s Head and The Sleeze Brothers Â© Marvel. Published 2009. All rights reserved.

April 30, 2009April 29, 2009

Petey & Pussy

By John Kerschbaum (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-979-1

Finally generally available in England (as well as from your usual online sources) is this latest compilation from Xeric-Award winning cartoonist (for The Wiggly Reader) John Kerschbaum who regularly dispatches the strangest and most engrossing cartoon treats from his lair in 21^st century Brooklyn.

Petey & Pussy is surreal, rude, crass, crude with studied obnoxiousness, and bitterly, bitingly funny in a perfect post-modern manner. Petey is the foulest of all dogs and he’s got a balding human head on his shoulders. His best pal is a sleek, short-sighted house-cat, afflicted with the same sort of bonce. Both drink, smoke and talk far, far too much. To themselves, each other, all the animals and even humans – especially Joe the Barman who keeps them supplied with booze and smokes…

Blending gross-out comedy, wry observation and sheer manic invention Kerschbaum takes the imagined lives of ordinary urban house-pets – such as Bernie the suicidal yet unkillable caged bird or Hercules, the Boa Constrictor of Death – and mixes them with the tribulations of modern society – senile dementia, thieving relatives, lost eye-glasses, bars where you can’t smoke and the inescapable fact that everybody is a total jerk – to reveal an utterly captivating world of bawdy, grown-up laughs that only the most po-faced conservative could resist.

Adult fun for slacker smart-asses of all ages guaranteed to make your beer spurt out of your nose so read carefully…

April 29, 2009April 30, 2009

Essential Spider-Man volume 1

By Stan Lee & Steve Ditko (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2192-3

Marvel is often termed “the House that Jack Built” and King Kirby’s contributions are undeniable and inescapable in the creation of a new kind of comic book story-telling, but there was another unique visionary at Atlas-Comics-as-was; one whose creativity and even philosophy seemed diametrically opposed to the bludgeoning power, vast imaginative scope and clean, broad lines of Kirby’s ever-expanding search for gods and the infinite.

Steve Ditko was quiet and unassuming, voluntarily diffident to the point of invisibility though his work was both subtle and striking: innovative, meticulously polished, always questing for detail he ever explored the man within. He found heroism – and humour and ultimate evil – all contained within the frail but noble confines of human scope and consciousness. His drawing could be oddly disquieting… and, when he wanted, almost creepy.

Drawing monster and mystery tales for Stan Lee, Ditko had been given his own title. Amazing Adventures/Amazing Adult Fantasy featured a subtler brand of yarn than Furry Underpants Monsters, invading aliens and the ilk which, though individually entertaining, were slowly losing traction in the world of comics since National/DC had reintroduced costumed heroes. Lee and Kirby had responded with Fantastic Four (and the ahead-of-its-time Incredible Hulk) but there was no indication of the renaissance to come when Amazing Fantasy #15 (the last issue) cover featured a brand new adventure character: Spider-Man.

In 11 captivating pages ‘Spider-Man!’ told the parable of Peter Parker, a smart but aloof High School kid who was bitten by a radioactive spider. Discovering his body had developed arachnid abilities which he augmented with his own natural engineering genius, he did what any lonely, geeky nerd would do when given such a gift – he tried to cash in for girls, fame and money.

Making a costume to hide his identity secret in case he made a fool of himself, Parker/ Spider-Man became a minor celebrity – and a self-important one. To his eternal regret, when a thief fled past he didn’t lift a finger to stop him, only to find a burglar had murdered his uncle Ben when he returned home.

Crazy for revenge Parker hunted the thief who had made his beloved Aunt May a widow and killed the only father he had ever known, only to find that it was the felon he couldn’t be bothered with. His social irresponsibility had led to the death of the man who raised him and the boy swore to use his powers to help others…

It wasn’t a new story, but the setting was one familiar to every kid reading it and the artwork was downright spooky. This wasn’t the gleaming high-tech world of moon-rockets, giant monsters and flying cars- this stuff could happen to anybody… Amazing Fantasy #15 came out the same month as Tales to Astonish #35 (cover-dated September 1962) which was the first to feature the Astonishing Ant-Man in costumed capers, but it was the last issue of Ditko’s Amazing playground.

However the tragic last-ditch tale had struck a chord with the reading public and by Christmas a new comicbook superstar was ready to launch in his own title, with Ditko eager to show what he could do with his first returning character since the demise of the Charlton hero Captain Atom (see Action Heroes Archive volume 1, ISBN 1-4012-0302-7). Holding on to the “Amazing” prefix to help jog reader’s memories, the bi-monthly Amazing Spider-Man #1 had a March cover-date and two stories. It prominently featured the Fantastic Four and took the readers by storm. The first tale, again simply entitled ‘Spider-Man!’ recapitulated the origin whilst adding a brilliant twist to the conventional mix.

The wall-crawling hero was feared and reviled by the general public thanks in no small part to J. Jonah Jameson, a newspaper magnate who pilloried the adventurer from spite and for profit. With typical comic book irony, Spider-Man then had to save Jameson’s astronaut son John from a faulty space capsule… The second story ‘Vs the Chameleon!’ found the cash-strapped kid trying to force his way onto the roster of the Fantastic Four whilst a spy impersonated the web-spinner to steal military secrets, in a perfect example of the high-strung, antagonistic crossovers and cameos that so startled the jaded kids of 1963. Heroes just didn’t act like that…

With the second issue our new kind of hero began a meteoric rise in quality and innovative storytelling. ‘Duel to the Death with the Vulture!’ found Peter Parker chasing after a flying thief as much for profit as justice. Desperate to help his widowed Aunt make ends meet, the hero began to take photos of his cases to sell to Jameson’s Daily Bugle, making his personal gadfly his sole means of support. Along with comedy and soap-operatic melodrama Ditko’s action sequences were imaginative and magnificently visceral, with odd angle shots and quirky, mis-balanced poses adding a vertiginous sense of unease to the fight scenes. But crime wasn’t the only threat to the world and Spider-Man was just as (un)comfortable battling science-fictional menaces like ‘The Uncanny Threat of the Terrible Tinkerer!’

Amazing Spider-Man #3 introduced one of the young hero’s greatest enemies in ‘Versus Doctor Octopus’, a full-length epic wherein a dedicated scientist survived an atomic accident which grafted mechanical tentacles to his body. Power-mad, Otto Octavius even thrashed Spider-Man, sending the lad into a depression until an impromptu pep-talk from the Human Torch galvanized Spider-Man to one of his greatest victories.

‘Nothing Can Stop… the Sandman!’ was another instant classic as a common thug gained the power to transform to sand (another pesky nuclear cock-up) and invaded Parker’s school, whilst issue #5 found the web-spinner ‘Marked for Destruction by Dr. Doom!’ and not so much winning as surviving his battle against the deadliest man on Earth. Presumably he didn’t mind too much as this marked the transition from bi-monthly to monthly status for the series.

Sometime mentor Curtis Connors debuted in #6 when Spidey came ‘Face-to-face with… The Lizard!’ as the hero fought his battle away from the concrete canyons of New York – specifically in the murky Florida Everglades, but he was back in the Big Apple in #7 to tackle ‘The Return of the Vulture’. Fun and youthful hi-jinks were a signature feature of the series, as was Parker’s budding romance with “older woman” Betty Brant.

She was Jameson’s secretary at the Bugle and youthful exuberance was the underlying drive in #8’s lead tale ‘The Living Brain!’ a robot calculator that threatened to expose Spider-Man’s secret identity before running amok at beleaguered Midtown High, just as Parker was finally beating the stuffings out of school bully Flash Thompson. This 17 page joy was accompanied by ‘Spiderman Tackles the Torch!’ (a 6 page vignette drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Ditko) wherein a boisterous wall-crawler gate-crashed a beach part thrown by the flaming hero’s girlfriend with explosive consequences.

Amazing Spider-Man #9 was a qualitative step-up in dramatic terms as Aunt May was revealed to be chronically ill – adding to Parker’s financial woes – and the action was supplied by ‘The Man Called Electro!’ a super-criminal with grand aspirations. Spider-Man was always a loner, never far from the streets and small-scale-crime, and with this tale wherein he also quells a prison riot single handed, Ditko’s preference for tales of gangersterism began to show through; a predilection confirmed in #10’s ‘The Enforcers!’ a classy mystery where a masked mastermind known as the Big Man used a position of trust at the Bugle to organize all the New York mobs into one unbeatable army against decency. Longer plot-strands are also introduced as Betty Brant disappears, but most fans remember this one for the spectacularly climactic seven-page fight scene in an underworld chop-shop that has still never been topped for action-choreography.

‘Turning Point’ and ‘Unmasked by Dr. Octopus!’ saw the return of the deadly scientist and the revelation of Betty’s dark secret in a tragedy-filled tale of extortion and non-stop that stretched from Philadelphia to the Bronx Zoo and again tempered the melodrama with spectacular fight scenes in unusual and exotic locations.

A new super-foe premiered in #13 with ‘The Menace of Mysterio!’ hired by Jameson to capture Spider-Man but with his own dark agenda, whilst the next issue was a true landmark as a criminal mastermind manipulated a Hollywood studio into making a movie about the wall-crawler. With guest-stars the Enforcers and the Incredible Hulk ‘The Grotesque Adventure of the Green Goblin’ is most notable for introducing Spider-Man’s most perfidious and flamboyant enemy.

Jungle superman and thrill-junkie ‘Kraven the Hunter!’ made Spider-Man his intended prey at the behest of the Chameleon in #15, whilst the Ringmaster and his Circus of Evil prompted #16’s dazzling ‘Duel with Daredevil’ but separating those two classics here are the varied and captivating contents of Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 (Summer 1964), starting with a 41 page epic peppered with guest-stars from the burgeoning Marvel Universe as the Web-Spinner battled Doctor Octopus, Kraven, Sandman, Mysterio, Electro and the Vulture, collectively known as ‘The Sinister Six!‘ This bombastic clash was augmented by a pin-up gallery of Famous Foes, fact-features ‘The Secrets of Spider-Man’, ‘Spidey’s Super Senses’, ‘Secrets of Spider-Man’s Mask’, a selection of posters and the legendary comedy short ‘How Stan Lee and Steve Ditko Create Spider-Man!’

An ambitious three-part saga began in Amazing Spider-Man #17, which saw the hero touch emotional bottom before rising to triumphant victory over all manner of enemies. ‘The Return of the Green Goblin!’ saw the hero endure renewed print assaults from the Daily Bugle as the Goblin began a war of nerves using the Enforcers, Sandman and a host of thugs to publicly humiliate the hero, just as Aunt May’s health took a drastic downward turn.

Continued in ‘The End of Spider-Man!’ and concluded in ‘Spidey Strikes Back!’ featuring a telling team-up with friendly rival the Human Torch, this extended tale proved that the fans were ready for every kind of narrative experiment (single issue and even two stories per issue were still the norm in 1964) and Stan and Steve were prepared to try it.

The book closes with ‘The Coming of the Scorpion!’ wherein Jameson let his obsessive hatred for the arachnid hero get the better of him, hiring scientist Farley Stillwell to give a private detective Scorpion-based superpowers. Unfortunately the process drove the subject mad before he could capture Spidey, leaving the wall-crawler with yet another super-nutcase to deal with…

Such was the life of comic’s most misunderstood hero and this gloriously economical collection is especially welcome because of a secret I can now reveal:

Colour printing has never really been Steve Ditko’s friend.

His wealth of line variety, his blend of moody blacks and nuanced shading as well as his simplified, almost “big-foot” style of design and drawing is most powerful as dark against light – Black on White. These landmark tales still resonate with power and creativity and they’re at their very best without the pretty tints and hues – although don’t let me stop you from buying other versions of these oft-reprinted gems – just read this book first!

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