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Batgirl: Death Wish


By Kelley Puckett, Chuck Dixon, Damion Scott & Robert Campanella (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-707-8

Here’s another chronologically complex but swift-moving, sure-footed combat classic featuring Cassandra Cain, the third and by far most competent and compelling Batgirl.

When Gotham City was devastated by an earthquake and abandoned by the US government (Batman: Cataclysm ISBN13: 978-1-56389-527-2 and Batman: No Man’s Land Volumes 1-3, ISBN 13’s: 978-1-56389-564-7, 978-1-56389-599-9 & 978-1-56389-634-7 respectively), a few heroes stayed to protect the innocent. One of these was a new, mute incarnation of Batgirl.

The crisis ended and a semblance of normality returned to the battered metropolis. The new heroine was brought under the wing of Barbara Gordon, wheelchair-bound crime-fighter Oracle (and the previous Batgirl) who now runs the Birds of Prey.

Cassandra, unable to communicate in any manner but fluent in gesture reading and body-language, was raised as an experiment by super-assassin David Cain. Her brain’s language centres opened by a telepath, Cassandra was beginning to adapt to a normal world, when she encountered Lady Shiva – the most dangerous person on Earth.

This ultimate martial artist was initially defeated but the two agreed to meet again in a year – in one final death match.

This fourth collection of tales gathers together Batgirl #17-20, 22, 23, 25, and Batgirl Secret Files #1: a seemingly disjointed array of stories that read perfectly well in this order and clearly show how the old-fashioned stand-alone story can still work in a modern milieu.

Kelley Puckett is a master of fast-paced, visual story-telling, allowing the artist to carry the tales in frenetic bursts of information in motion. Pages go by without a single word and this discipline carries the reader through the adventures at dizzying speeds. Here Damion Scott and Robert Campenella give full rein to their cinematic impulses as the new Batgirl prepares for her date with death by invading a US government spook base in search of a corrupt agent, repeatedly trips over Boy Wonder Robin as both discover they’re working the same case from opposite ends, and explores the ramifications of the death penalty – by far and away the best and most troubling tale in the book – when she intervenes in the execution of a felon she’d previously captured…

Throughout these tales (if I’m vague it’s because most of the little gems are inexplicably untitled) Cassandra’s problems with speech and inability to read are handled cleverly and with sensitivity, and when Chuck Dixon guest-scripts a telling and bitterly funny parable about families that singular McGuffin is the trigger for Batgirl to join Stephanie Brown (the hero-in-training called Spoiler) in an attempt to handle the fallout of a kidnapping gone bad.

Puckett resumes with a moody tale as David Cain returns to Gotham with a contract to kill one of the “Bat-Squad”, and in the penultimate story ‘Little Talk’ Batman and Oracle debate the young hero’s motivation in meeting Shiva again in a moody prelude to the climactic ‘I am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds’ which features the ultimate confrontation between the two greatest martial artists on Earth – a tale full of style and surprise which still finds room to reveal a deep well of psychological subtext.

These gripping tales of flash and razzle-dazzle are picture-perfect examples of comics combat, with just the right ratio of action to plot, to keep the reader’s pulses pounding and eyes wide. Great, great stuff…

© 2001, 2002, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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House of M: Avengers


By Christopher Gage, Mike Perkins & Andrew Hennessey (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2750-5

In the company crossover event House of M reality was rewritten (yes, again!) when the sometime Avenger Scarlet Witch had a breakdown and altered Earth continuity so that Magneto’s mutants took control of society and where normal humans (“sapiens”) are an acknowledged evolutionary dead-end living out their lives and destined for extinction within two generations.

Collecting the ancillary miniseries House of M: Avengers this volume is set in a world of perfect order, but one where certain malcontents and criminals are determined not to go quietly. Rallying around escaped convict and artificial superman Luke Cage, a gang of criminals calling themselves the Avengers fight to survive and get by however they can, inadvertently becoming a rallying point for Sapiens in a world only too eager to see them all gone…

With the likes of Hawkeye, Tigra, Mockingbird, Moon Knight, Iron Fist, Misty Knight (no relation, not even close), Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu, Mantis, Swordsman, White Tiger and the Punisher on hand, as well as villains such as Kingpin, Elektra, Bullseye, Taskmaster, Black Cat, Typhoid Mary, the brotherhood of Evil Mutants and Gladiator among the cast there’s plenty of familiar faces and lots of action, but as the countdown ticks towards a big climax and the re-establishment of “real” continuity it’s hard to muster any sense of connection.

Marvel has used this plot to kill off and resurrect our favourites purely for momentary cheap effect so many times its difficult to care…

Weaving established Marvel continuity skilfully into their portion of the overarching epic Gage and Perkins tell an intriguing but frustratingly quick and facile tale that just can’t stand alone (so you will need to read at least some of the other House of M collections for the full picture) that doesn’t fairly reflect their great talents nor deliver the punch we were all hoping for. Pretty, but not for the casual or occasional reader

© 2007, 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Blackhawk Archives Volume 1


By Will Eisner, Chuck Cuidera, Reed Crandall & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-700-8

The early days of the American comicbook industry were awash with both opportunity and talent and these factors also coincided with a vast population hungry for cheap entertainment. Comics had no fans or collectors; only a large market-place open to all varied aspects of yarn-spinning and tale-telling. Thus, even though loudly isolationist and more than six months away from active inclusion in World War II, creators like Will Eisner and publishers like Everett M. (better known as “Busy”) Arnold felt that Americans were ready for the themed anthology title Military Comics.

Nobody was ready for Blackhawk.

Military Comics #1 launched on May 30th 1941 (with an August off-sale or cover-date) and included in its gritty, two-fisted line-up Death Patrol by Jack Cole, Miss America, Fred Guardineer’s Blue Tracer, X of the Underground, the Yankee Eagle, Q-Boat, Shot and Shell, Archie Atkins and Loops and Banks by “Bud Ernest” (actually aviation-nut and unsung comics genius Bob Powell), but none of the strips, not even Cole’s surreal and suicidal team of hell-bent fliers, had the instant cachet and sheer appeal of Eisner and Powell’s “Foreign Legion of the Air” led by the charismatic Dark Knight known only as Blackhawk.

Chuck Cuidera, already famed for creating The Blue Beetle for Fox, drew ‘the Origin of Blackhawk’ for the first issue, wherein a lone pilot fighting the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 was shot down by Nazi Ace Von Tepp, who then went on to bomb the farmhouse sheltering the pilot’s family. Rising from his plane’s wreckage the distraught pilot vows vengeance…

Two years later, with the Nazis in control of most of Europe Von Tepp’s unassailable position is threatened by a mysterious paramilitary squadron of unbeatable fliers, dedicated to crushing injustice and smashing the Axis war-machine…

Eisner wrote the first four Blackhawk episodes and Cuidera stayed aboard until issue #11 – although the artist would return in later years. Many of the stories were originally untitled but have been conveniently characterized with such stirring designations as issue #2’s ‘The Coward Dies Twice’ wherein the team – “the last free men of the conquered countries” offer a deserter from a Spitfire Squadron a chance to redeem himself…

The easy mix of patriotism, adventure and slapstick was magnified by the inclusion of Chop-Chop in ‘The Doomed Squadron’: a comedy Chinaman painful to see through modern eyes, but a stock type considered almost as mandatory as a heroic leading man in those dark days, and not just in comics. At least the man was a brave and formidable fighter both on the ground and in a plane.

‘Desert Death’ took the team to Suez for the first of many memorable Arabian adventures as Nazi agitators attempted to foment a revolution among the tribesmen that would destroy the British. This tale was also notable for the introduction of a type of sexy siren beloved of Eisner and Quality Comics that would populate the strip until DC bought the property in 1957. There was also a secret map of Blackhawk Island, mysterious base of the ebon-clad freedom fighters.

With issue #5 Dick French assumed the writing role and ‘Scavengers of Doom’ tells a biting tale of battlefield looters allied to a Nazi mastermind setting an inescapable trap for the heroic fliers. More importantly French began to provide distinct and discrete characters for the previously anonymous minor players. In #6 the rapidly gelling team joined the frantic hunt for a germ weapon the Gestapo were desperate to possess in the spectacular alpine adventure ‘The Vial of Death’ whilst #7 (the first issue released after America joined the War – although the stories had not yet caught up to reality) found the boys prowling the Mongolian Steppe on horseback to thwart ‘The Return of Genghis Khan’.

‘The Sunken Island of Death’ from #8 was a striking maritime romp as the warring powers battled to possess an island freshly risen from the Atlantic depths strategically equidistant between The US, Britain and Festung Europa (that’s what the Nazis called the fortress they had made of mainland Europe). Although complete in itself it was also the first of an experimental, thematic three-part saga that stretched the way comics stories were told.

There were many melodramatic touches that made the Blackhawks so memorable in the eyes of a wide-eyed populace of thrill-hungry kids. There was the cool, black leather uniforms and peaked caps. The unique – but real – Grumman F5F-1 Skyrocket planes they flew from their secret island base and their eerie battle-cry “Hawkaaaaa!” But perhaps the oddest idiosyncrasy to modern readers was that they had their own song which André, Stanislaus, Olaf, Chuck, Hendrickson and Chop-Chop would sing as they dived into battle. And just to be informative and inclusive the music and lyrics were published in this issue and are re-presented here – just remember this is written for seven really tough guys to sing while dodging bullets…

Military #9 led with ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’ as the team discovered that a fallen comrade did not actually die but was hideously disfigured saving them, whilst the next issue’s tale ‘Trapped in the Devil’s Oven’ was another desert adventure which focused on the new science of plastic surgery and restored said hero to full fighting trim. Issue #11, Cuidera’s last, saw the squadron turn their attention to Japan – as reality caught up with publishing schedules. Intriguingly, ‘Fury in the Philippines’ starts quietly with the entire team calmly discussing carrying on against the Nazis or switching their attentions to the Pacific Theatre of Operations, until comedy relief Chop-Chop sways the debaters with an impassioned stand. Though inarguably an offensive stereotype visually, the Chinese warrior was often given the best lines and most memorable actions. A subversive attempt to shake up those hide-bound prejudices, perhaps?

Notwithstanding, the resultant mission against the Japanese fleet was a cataclysmic Battle Royale, full of the kind of vicarious pay-back that demoralized Americans needed to see.

‘The Curse of Xanukhara’ added fantasy elements to the gritty mix of blood and iron as the team’s hunt for a stolen code book led them to occupied Borneo and even Tokyo; a classy espionage thriller that marked the start of a superlative run of thrillers illustrated by the incredible Reed Crandall. The artist’s realistic line and the graceful poise of his work – especially on exotic femmes fatale and trustworthy Girls-next-door – made his strips an absolute joy to behold.

‘Blackhawk vs. The Butcher’ (#13, November 1942) written by new regular scripter Bill Woolfolk returned the team to Nazi territory as a fleeing Countess turned the team’s attention to the most sadistic Gauleiter (Nazi regional leader in charge of a conquered territory) in the German Army. What follows is a spectacular saga of justice and righteous vengeance, whilst ‘Tondeleyo’ was a different kind of thriller as an exotic siren used her almost unholy allure to turn the entire team against each other.

The quasi-supernatural overtones held firm in the stirring ‘Men Who Never Came Back’ when the team travelled to India to foil a Japanese plot, in a portmanteau tale narrated by three witches, Trouble Terror and Mystery, eerily presaging the EC horror classics that would cement Crandall’s artistic reputation more than a decade later.

‘Blackhawk vs. the Fox’ pitted the heroes against a Nazi strategic wizard (a clear reference to the epic victories of Erwin Rommel) in the burning sands of Libya, one of the most authentic battle tales in the canon, and this volume concludes with a racy tale of vengeance and tragedy as Japanese traitor Yoshi uses her wiles to punish the military government of Nippon, with Blackhawk as her unwitting tool in ‘The Golden Bell of Soong-Toy!’

These stories were produced at a pivotal moment in both comics and world history, a blend of weary sophistication and glorious, juvenile bravado. Like the best movies of the time, Casablanca, Foreign Correspondent, Freedom Radio, Captain of the Clouds, The Day Will Dawn, The First of the Few, In Which we Serve and all the rest with their understated, overblown way of accepting duty and loss, these rousing tales of the miracles that good men can do are some of the Golden Age’s finest moments. In fact these are some of the best comics stories of their time and I sincerely wish DC had proceeded with further collections. And so will you…

© 1941-1942, 2001 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Batgirl: Fists of Fury


By Kelley Puckett, Scott Peterson, Damion Scott, Vincent Giarrano, Phil Noto & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-820-4

After Gotham City was devastated by an earthquake (Batman: Cataclysm ISBN13: 978-1-56389-527-2) it was abandoned by the US government in a prescient foretaste of what happened to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina (see also Batman: No Man’s Land Volumes 1-3, ISBN 13’s: 978-1-56389-564-7, 978-1-56389-599-9, and 978-1-56389-634-7 respectively). From the rubble, a few heroes struggled to protect the innocent. One of these was a new incarnation of Batgirl.

The crisis ended, a semblance of normality returned to the battered metropolis, and the new heroine got her own series. Mentored by Babs Gordon, the wheelchair-bound crime-fighter called Oracle (and the previous Batgirl) who now runs the Birds of Prey, the new wearer of the cape-and-cowl is something of a problem.

Raised as an experiment by martial arts super-assassin David Cain, she could not speak or communicate in any normal manner since her language centres were over-ridden by Cain to make combat her only method of expression. An apparent runaway, she was adopted by Batman as a weapon in his never-ending battle, but the more humane Oracle has become her guardian and teacher.

Her learning disabilities alleviated by a telepath, Cassandra Cain is beginning to adapt to a normal world, but things are still skewed since she defeated Lady Shiva – the most dangerous person on Earth – in a martial arts duel. By beating someone even Batman never could, she’s forced her close circle of new friends to look at her in a different way, and the inevitable challengers for Shiva’s title are now dogging her tracks…

This third collection of tales gathers together Batgirl #15, 16, 21, and 26-28: a seemingly disjointed array of stories that actually blend together surprisingly well.

Puckett and Peterson’s scripts are always lightning paced, sparsely dialogued and both have perfect ears for the great one-liner. The art from Damion Scott, Vincent Giarrano, Phil Noto, Robert Campenella and Jesse Delperdang is light and brisk with a delightful flavour of anime – if not quite manga – about it, and three of the six untitled stories (don’t ask me why) run the range from the dramatic tale of a mad scientist’s murder ray, a boy’s desperate plea to stop his dad becoming a killer and a purely manic tie-in to the Last Laugh company crossover event (Batman: the Joker’s Last Laugh ISBN: 978-1-84576-843-0) featuring a startling battle with intangible villain Shadow Thief.

The remaining three adventures deal with the fallout of Batgirl’s defeat of Shiva (set during the time of Batman: Bruce Wayne Murderer? – ISBN-13: 978-1-56389-913-3): a fast-paced, captivating treatise on girl friends a la Thelma and Louise (or perhaps Buffy and Faith) as Robin-in-training Spoiler briefly becomes Batgirl’s best buddy to train, talk trash about dads and generally take care of Gotham in the Big Man’s absence.

Spellbinding, overwhelmingly rapid-paced and brilliantly executed, these tales are a breakneck, supercharged thrill-ride that concentrates on non-stop action yet still manages to be heavily plot-based with genuine empathy and emotional impact. A perfect book to remind you just why and how comics are so great…

© 2001, 2002, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Middle Earth – The World of Tolkien Illustrated


By David Wenzel, with an introduction by Lin Carter (Centaur Books Inc.)
ISBN: 0-87818-014-1

With all the fuss being generated by the perpetual hubbub in regard to the upcoming Hobbit movie I thought I’d take refuge in the distant past, to a time when the Ralph Bakshi animated feature had so soured most fans to the concept of film adaptations that the only acceptable visual interpretations of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien were those generated by devoted fan-artists.

By 1977 The Lord of the Rings and its test-run The Hobbit were world classics of literature. There had even been a consequent fantasy novel revolution which spawned hundreds if not thousands of similar tales from dozens of publishers. Even comic books were slowly making inroads into this new-ish sub-genre (in Marvel Super Action #1, 1976, Doug Moench and Mike Ploog produced a delightful strip called Weirdworld that eventually evolved via Marvel Premier #38 into the groundbreaking Warriors of the Shadow Realm specials) and the independent phenomenon Elfquest was not too far on the horizon…

Still and all, dedicated, passionate purists had the field mostly to themselves and foremost among these was a young illustrator and sometime comics creator named David Wenzel.

Now the most memorable thing about those times is the perpetual cries you’d hear at every convention, launch or bookshop. You couldn’t move for the plaintive “That’s not what Hobbits look like!” At all those occasions I heard it least about this book and this artist’s interpretations…

Wenzel moved from comics to the field of fantasy and especially children’s illustration in the 1980s where he’s worked with icons like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and creators like Maurice Sendak, but his greatest achievement is probably the three part adaptation of The Hobbit he produced with Chuck Dixon and Sean Deming for Eclipse Comics in 1989 (and which I’m saving for a later date).

Before that though there was this lovely piece of work featuring extracts of Tolkien’s prose wedded to 15 lovely line drawings and 11 beautiful, sensitive watercolours with such titles as ‘Bagend’s Quiet is Shattered’, ‘Spiders and Swords in Mirkwood’ and ‘Conversations with Smaug’ that perfectly display the artist’s love of and reverence for the source material and his debt to cited influences Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, , Howard Pyle, Alphonse Mucha, Barry Windsor-Smith and Frank Frazetta; as well as Dutch painters Pieter Bruegel and Jan Steen.

Probably impossible to find in its original low-print-run original, I hope some enterprising entrepreneur is preparing this lovely art-book for a timely re-issue…
© 1977 Centaur Books Inc. Art ©1977 David Wenzel. All Rights Reserved.

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Essential Hulk volume 2


By Stan Lee, Herb Trimpe, Marie Severin & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-0795-8

Bruce Banner was a military scientist who was caught in a gamma bomb blast. As a result stress and other factors can cause him to transform into a giant green monster of unstoppable strength and fury.

After an initially troubled few years the gamma-irradiated goliath finally found his size 700 feet and a format that worked, swiftly becoming one of young Marvel’s most popular features. This second Essential volume, covering Tales to Astonish #92 -101, Incredible Hulk #102-117 and his first Annual (plus a rather tasty page-filler from Hulk #147) in bombastic black and white, covering his last days of shared occupancy before regaining a solo title when the company expanded its publishing output in early 1968.

Following directly on from the previous volume (ISBN: 978-0-7851-2374-3) this blockbuster tome opens with ‘Turning Point!’ (Tales to Astonish #92, June 1967) by Stan Lee, the superb and criminally underrated Marie Severin and inker Frank Giacoia, which saw the Jade Giant hunted through a terrified New York City as a prelude to a cataclysmic guest-battle in the next issue. The Hulk didn’t really team-up with visiting stars, he just got mad and smashed them. Such was certainly the case when he became ‘He Who Strikes the Silver Surfer!’ ironically driving off a fellow outcast who held the power to cure him of his metamorphing affliction.

Herb Trimpe, associated with the character for nearly a decade, began his tenure as Marie Severin’s inker with #94’s ‘To the Beckoning Stars!’ a terrific three-part thriller that found the Hulk transported to the interstellar retreat of the High Evolutionary to battle against recidivist beast-men on ‘A World He Never Made!’ before escaping a feral bloodbath in #96’s ‘What Have I Created?’. Returned to Earth, the Man-brute fell into a plot to overthrow America in ‘The Legions of: the Living Lightning!’, but the subversives conquest of a US military base in ‘The Puppet and the Power’ soon faltered ‘When the Monster Wakes!’ (this last inked by John Tartaglione).

Tales to Astonish was a “split-book”, with two star-features sharing billing, a strategy caused by Marvel’s having entered into a highly restrictive distribution deal to save the company during a publishing crisis at the end of the 1950s. At the time when the Marvel Age Revolution took fandom by storm, the company was confined to a release schedule of 16 titles each month, necessitating some doubling-up as characters became popular enough to carry their own strip. Fellow misunderstood misanthrope the Sub-Mariner had proved an ideal thematic companion since issue #70, and to celebrate the centenary of the title Tales to Astonish #100 featured a breathtaking “who’s strongest?” clash between the two anti-heroes as the Puppet Master decreed ‘Let There be Battle!’ and Lee, Severin and Dan Adkins made it so.

The next issue was the last. With number #102 the comic would be renamed The Incredible Hulk and the character’s success was assured. Before that however Lee, Severin and Giacoia set the scene with ‘Where Walk the Immortals!’ as Loki, Norse god of Evil transported Ol’ Greenskin to Asgard in an effort to distract all-father Odin’s attention from his other schemes.

The premiere issue (#102) of The Incredible Hulk launched with an April, 1968 cover-date. ‘…This World Not His Own!’ completed the Asgardian adventure and included a rehashed origin. The issue was written by rising star Gary Friedrich, drawn by Marie Severin and inked by veteran artist George Tuska. With extra pages came not extra plot but more action: issue #103’s ‘And Now… the Space Parasite!’ and #104’s ‘Ring Around the Rhino!’ (both inked by Giacoia) are paeans to the Green Goliath’s destructive potential and visceral appeal before a longer plot-strand, tinged with pathos and irony began in Incredible Hulk #105, courtesy of surprise scripters Roy Thomas and Bill Everett, ably illumined by Severin and Tuska.

‘This Monster Unleashed!’ found a radioactive and violently mutating victim of Soviet aggression dumped in New York, and easily capable of burning our dull-witted hero into glowing ashes. The second part, ‘Above the Earth… A Titan Rages!’ by Thomas and Archie Goodwin, was pencilled by Trimpe over Severin’s breakdowns, with Tuska inking; a muddle nearly as great as the story itself since the action abruptly switched from New York to Russia when the battling behemoths were abducted by Yuri Breslov, the Soviet counterpart to Nick Fury and his agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. who promptly lost them over the a rural farm collective.

The story neatly segued into a much more polished yarn in #107’s ‘Ten Rings Hath… the Mandarin’(Friedrich and Trimpe with wonderfully rugged inking from the great Syd Shores) as the oriental despot tried to enslave the emerald engine of destruction. The extended tale concluded with epic success as Stan Lee and Trimpe, inked by the legendary John Severin (yep, big brother) pulled all the strands together in the action-packed ‘Monster Triumphant!’ guest-starring Nick Fury, Yuri Breslov and even Chairman Mao Tse Tung!

The Incredible Hulk Annual #1 was one of the best comics of that year. Behind an iconic Steranko cover, Friedrich, Marie Severin and Syd Shores (with lots of last-minute inking assistance) had concocted a passionate, tense and melodramatic parable of alienation that nevertheless was one of the most action-stuffed fight fests ever seen. In 51 titanic pages ‘A Refuge Divided!’ saw the Hulk stumble upon the hidden Great Refuge of genetic outsiders The Inhumans, overpower Maximus the Mad and his band of super-rebels before fighting the immensely powerful Black Bolt to a standstill. This is the vicarious thrill taken to its ultimate, and still one of the very best non-Lee-Kirby tales of that period.

Incredible Hulk #109 takes up from the end of the Mandarin saga with the Hulk rampaging through Red China, but still without a settled creative team in place. ‘The Monster and the Man-Beast!’ was written by Stan Lee, laid out by Giacoia, pencilled by Trimpe and inked by John Severin, wherein the Hulk trashes the Chinese Army and interferes with a Red super-missile, only to be blasted into the Antarctic paradise known as the Savage Land. This preserve of dinosaurs and cavemen is a visually perfect home for the Hulk and the addition of Tarzan analogue Ka-Zar and an alien device designed to destroy the world ramped up the tension nicely.

‘Umbu the Unliving!’ (Lee, Trimpe John Severin) was another extraterrestrial device left to facilitate Earth’s demise, but Banner and his green alter-ego dispatch it with Ka-Zar’s assistance, leading to a two-part outer space epic ‘Shanghaied in Space!’ and ‘The Brute Battles On!’ which sees the planet-destroyer’s builders come looking for the saboteurs at the behest of the cosmic overlord, Galaxy Master.

Issue #113 returned the Hulk to Earth to battle an upgraded Sandman in ‘Where Fall the Shifting Sands!’ and the sinister silicon villain popped right back with the Mandarin beside him in #114’s ‘At Last I Will Have My Revenge!’, two fast-paced yarns that whetted the appetite for the extended return of the Jade Giant’s greatest foe.

‘The Leader Lives!’ began with the man-monster a prisoner of the US Army, when the Gamma Genius – as smart as the Hulk is strong – takes over the base for his own nefarious purposes. ‘The Eve… of Annihilation!’ revealed the Leader’s plans for our pitiful planet as the Hulk escaped and the saga – and this volume – explosively concludes in the ticking clock thriller ‘World’s End?’ notable not just for its tense dramatic denouement, but also for Herb Trimpe’s taking over the inking of his own pencils.

At least that’s where the book should have ended. Obviously a few pages short, the editors have included a wonderful short tale by Roy Thomas, Herb Trimpe and John Severin entitled ‘Heaven is a Very Small Place!’, a dream-like, wistful taste of a better world for the embattled emerald innocent that is both clever and genuinely poignant, but which here acts as an abrupt antidote to the emotional high generated by all the pulse-pounding, cathartic destruction and villain-foiling that immediately preceded it. If you can, try reading this tale after the Annual segment, because that’s the last slow-moment before the rollercoaster ride starts…

These tales, in raw and gritty black and white, are the dawning of a renaissance in pure-action adventures that carried the Hulk to the large and small screen and proved a constant reminder that sometimes “breaking-stuff” is a primal thrill and necessary delight for the destructive eight-year-old in everyone. Just remember to read, not do…

© 1967, 1968, 1969, 2001, 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume I


By Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill (America’s Best Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-858-7

The Victorian era saw the birth of both popular and populist publishing, especially in the sub-genres of fantasy and adventure fiction. Writers of varying skill but with unbounded imaginations explored the concepts of honour and heroism, wedded unflinchingly to the underlying belief of English Supremacy in matters of culture and technology. In all worlds and even beyond them the British gentleman took on all comers for Right and Decency, viewing danger as a game and showing “Johnny Foreigner” just how that game was played.

For all the faults our modern sensibilities can detect in those stirring sagas, many of them remain unshakable classics of adventure and the roadmap of all modern fictional heroes. Open as they are to charges of Racism, Sexism (even misogyny), Class Bias and Cultural Imperialism, the best of them remain the greatest of all yarns.

As heroic prototypes a gaggle of these Imperialist icons were deputized by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill for a six-issue miniseries in 1999 that managed to say as much about our world as that far ago one, and incidentally tell a captivating tale as compelling as any of its antecedents.

Wilhemina Murray survived a clash with a supernatural monster but was forever altered. Recruited by the British Secret Service chief Campion Bond, she was charged with organising a team of superior operatives to defeat an insidious foreign menace growing within the very heart of the British Empire. To this end she travelled the globe and convinced the greatest hero and most iniquitous outlaws of the time to band together.

The aged Great White Hunter Allan Quatermain is unlikely company for the Invisible Man Hawley Griffin, Captain Nemo and Mister Hyde, although the diffident and cultured Dr. Henry Jekyll could be considered a suitable companion for a widow under almost any circumstance…

Together they foil a most dastardly plot only to discover that all is not as it seems…

This collected book probably best illustrates my discomfort with big budget movie adaptations, over and above the institutionalized and explicit slight that always comes with the blurb “now a major motion picture!”

The story grew beyond the authors’ avowed expectations of “a kind of Victorian Justice League” to become a steampunk classic, with fin de siècle technology, trappings, expectations and attitudes, becoming a powerful allegory for our own millennial events, and the act of its creation becoming a game for creator and reader alike as every character in the tale was culled from existing works of literature and the audience all-but challenged to identify them!

The wit, artifice and whimsy of the compelling mystery – for that, gentle reader is what it is – as well as the vast, complex array of sub-texts and themed extras such as faux advertising broadsheets woven into the text, must perforce be lost when building an entertainment for the widest possible audience: especially one that must conclude in under 120 minutes. The film might reach more sets of eyes but unless they then read the book have they actually been reached at all?

I admit I intensely disliked the film: The plot changes seem arbitrary, I could see no reason other than crass commerciality to include an American in the roster, completely counter to the covert nature of the mission – after all the USA was a rival foreign power. And if one why not all? Let’s see Davy Crockett, Huck Finn, Paul Bunyan, Ambrose Bierce and Lizzie Borden take on the Yellow Peril. Moreover I couldn’t stop laughing after the giant submarine with a draught of a couple of hundred feet surfaced from the canals of Venice – average depth 5 metres (on a good day).

I don’t hate films – I’d love them to make one from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; they just haven’t done it yet.

This book is an incredible work of scholarship and artistry recast into a fabulous pastiche of an entire literary movement. It’s also a brilliant piece of comics wizardry of the sort that no other art form can touch.

If you haven’t seen the film – and even more so if you have – I urge you to read this book. And then you can start in on Dickens, Rider Haggard, Stevenson, Wells, Verne, Conan Doyle, Stoker, Rohmer and all the glorious rest…

© 1999, 2000 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill.  All Rights Reserved.

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Stephen King’s Creepshow


By Stephen King & Berni Wrightson (Plume/NAL – Penguin)
ISBN13: 978-0452253803 Plume edition  ISBN13: 978-0452253803 Penguin edition

The EC comics of the Pre-code 1950s were possibly the most influential anthology strips of all time. The Crime, (anti-)War, Science Fiction and especially Horror tales that targeted mature readers before the term even existed, with sophisticated, cynical, sardonic and beautifully illustrated stories changed the lives of not only comics creators in waiting, laid the groundwork for the Underground Comix and counter-culture movements, but also spread far beyond the world of funny-book fans to influence novelists and film-makers.

In 1982 George A. Romero and Stephen King turned their fond childhood memories into another portmanteau film (Amicus Productions had already produced Tales from the Crypt in 1972 and The Vault of Horror the following year, directed by Freddie Francis and based on two paperback reprint collections issued in 1965) which used a horror comic-book as a maguffin and framing sequence for five darkly comedic tales of supernatural come-uppance’

To accompany the film comics star Berni Wrightson was commissioned to produce an actual graphic companion that delivered even more jolts than the surprise hit film. This volume, featuring some of the artist’s very best painted art, eschewed the framing sequence and plot bookends and simply presents the five component tales, complete with ghastly host narrator in all their gory glory beginning with ‘Father’s Day’. Written by King for the movie, it sees a murdered patriarch return to the bosom of his not-so loving family seven years after one of them murdered him…

‘The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill’ was adapted by the author from his previously published short-story “Weeds” and tells how a dim-wit hillbilly finds a meteor on his land. He thinks he’s found a means to financial security until the thing begins to mutate him… Famously King himself played the part of the bumpkin in the film (probably the inspiration for Cletus, the slack-jawed yokel on the Simpsons) – just as his son Jack played the kid who had his Creepshow comic confiscated.

‘The Crate’ was also a recycled yarn and detailed how a couple of college professor find an old packing case from an 1834 expedition to the Arctic in the college basement. Inside, still alive and very hungry is a slavering beast. Rather than academic kudos one of them thinks that it might be a foolproof way to rid himself of the harpy he married…

‘Something to Tide You Over’ wherein a cuckolded businessman suffers a grimly ironic fate after disposing of his wife and her lover is an original chiller as is ‘They’re Creeping up on You’ which closes the book on a truly creepy highpoint as a cleanliness obsessed millionaire determines to rid his apartment of bugs… at all costs!

Naturally these tales don’t have surprise endings – that’s not the point – but they are a delightfully gory and fun-filled tribute to spooky stories and the self-inflicted shocks of a misspent youth, lovingly crafted and perfectly rendered. Worth tracking down if you’re a comics connoisseur, and definitely an urgent candidate for a modern revival.
Text © 1982 Philtrum Corp. Illustrations ©1982 Laurel-Show, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents the Flash vol. 2


By John Broome, Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino, Joe Giella & Murphy Anderson (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1805-8

The second Flash triggered the Silver Age of comics, and for the first ten years or so, in terms of artistic quality and story originality, it was always the book to watch. Following his debut in Showcase #4 (cover-dated October 1956) police scientist Barry Allen was characteristically slow in winning his own title but finally after three more trial issues stood on his own wing-tipped feet in The Flash #105 ( a February-March 1959 cover-date so it was out for Christmas 1958).

He never looked back and his first experimental endeavours can – and should – be economically yours by purchasing the previous volume of this series (ISBN13: 978-1-4012-1327-5, covering Showcase #4, 8, 13 and 14 and Flash #105-119).

The comic-book had gelled into a comfortable pattern of two tales per issue alternating with semi-regular book-length thrillers and this volume begins with a glorious example of the latter from Flash #120 (May 1961). The majority of adventures were produced by peripatetic scripter John Broome and the slickly innovative art-team of Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella, and ‘Land of Golden Giants!’ saw them at their very best in a fanciful science fiction drama where a small expedition of explorers including Barry and his protégé Wally West – AKA Kid Flash – were catapulted back millennia to the very moment when the primal super-continent (or at least the parts that would become Africa and South America) was splitting apart.

Flash stories always found a way to make cutting-edge science integral and interesting. A regular filler-feature was the speed-themed “Flash-Facts” which became a component of the stories themselves via quirky little footnotes. How many fan-boys turned a “C” to a “B” by dint of their recreational reading? I know I certainly impressed the heck out of a few nuns at the convent school I attended! (But let’s not visualise; simply move on…)

Issue #121 saw the return of a novel old foe as ‘The Trickster Strikes Back!’. The costumed criminality was balanced by Cold War skulduggery in the gripping ‘Secret of the Stolen Blueprint!’ (guest inked by the brilliant Murphy Anderson). Another contemporary zeitgeist undoubtedly led to ‘Beware the Atomic Grenade!’, a witty yarn that introduced a new member to Flash’s burgeoning Rogues Gallery when The Top turned from second-rate thief to global extortionist by means of a rather baroque thermonuclear device.

In counterpoint Kid Flash dealt with smaller scale catastrophe in ‘The Face Behind the Mask’ wherein a pop-star with a secret identity (based, I believe, on a young David Soul who began his showbiz career as a folk singer known as “the Covered Man” because he performed wearing a mask) was blackmailed by a villainous gang of old school friends.

Gardner Fox didn’t write many Flash scripts at this time, but those few he did were all dynamite. None more so than the full-length epic that literally changed the scope of American comics forever. ‘Flash of Two Worlds’ introduced the theory of alternate Earths to the continuity and by extension resulted in the pivotal multiversal structure of the DCU, Crisis on Infinite Earths and all the succeeding cosmos-shaking crossover sagas that grew from it. And of course where DC led, others followed…

During a benefit gig Flash accidentally slips into another dimension where he finds that the comic-book hero he based his own superhero identity upon actually exists. Every adventure he had absorbed as an eager child was grim reality to Jay Garrick and his mystery men comrades on the controversially named Earth-2. Locating his idol Barry convinces the elder to come out of retirement just as three Golden Age villains, Shade, Thinker and the Fiddler make their own wicked comeback. And above all else, Flash #123 is a great read that still stands up today.

Utterly unaware of the stir that was brewing in fandom’s ranks, it was business as usual with #124’s alien invasion thriller ‘Space Boomerang Trap!’ which featured an uneasy alliance between the Scarlet Speedster, Elongated Man and the sinister Captain Boomerang whilst the back-up ‘Vengeance Via Television!’ tested our hero’s wits when a mad scientist used TV waves to expose his secret identity.

‘The Conquerors of Time!’ (Flash #125 December 1961) was another mind-boggling classic as time-travelling aliens attempted to subjugate Earth in 2287AD by preventing fissionable elements from forming in 100,842,246BC. Antediluvian lost races, another pivotal role for Kid Flash (easily the most trusted and responsible sidekick of the Silver Age), the introduction of the insanely cool Cosmic Treadmill plus spectacular action make this a benchmark of quality graphic narrative.

The drama continued unabated in the next issue when Mirror Master resurfaced in ‘The Doom of the Mirror Flash!’ whilst the second story looked into Barry Allen’s past in ‘Snare of the Headline Huntress!’ wherein childhood sweetheart Daphne Dean tries to rekindle Barry’s love to boost her Hollywood profile. In #127 ‘Reign of the Super-Gorilla!’ saw Grodd return, using his telepathy to run for Governor (not as daft as it sounds, honest!) whilst Kid Flash resolved parental problems in ‘The Mystery of the Troubled Boy!’ Flash #128 introduced time-travelling magician and psychotic egotist Abra Kadabra in ‘The Case of the Real-Gone Flash!’ but still had room for the intriguing vignette ‘The Origin of Flash’s Masked Identity!’

Fox and Earth-2 returned in #129’s ‘Double Danger on Earth!’ as Jay Garrick ventured to Earth-1 to save his own world from a doom comet, only to fall foul of Captain Cold and the Trickster. As well as double Flash action, this tale pictorially reintroduced Justice Society stalwarts Wonder Woman, Atom, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Doctor Mid-Nite and Black Canary. Clearly Editor Schwartz had something in mind…

For the meantime though it was back to basics with ‘Who Doomed the Flash?’; an intriguing mystery that seemingly pooled the threats of Trickster, Captain Cold, the Top, Captain Boomerang and the Mirror Master in a superb conundrum, brilliantly solved by the Vizier of Velocity whilst his junior partner had problems enough with the Weather Wizard when ‘Kid Flash Meets the Elongated Man!’

RSVP-ing to a landmark guest-shot in Green Lantern #13 (‘Duel of the Super-Heroes!’ – see Showcase Presents Green Lantern vol. 1, ISBN13: 978-1-4012-0759-5) the Emerald Crusader again joined with our hero to defeat alien invaders in the engrossing feature-length ‘Captives of the Cosmic Ray!’ whilst #132’s lead ‘The Heaviest Man Alive!’ returned the speedster to the dimension of Gobdor (‘The Man Who Stole Central City’ from #116 and the previous volume) for another tense, super-scientific puzzle that was also a sly poke at the new Television generation. The second tale featured ‘The Farewell Appearance of Daphne Dean’ as the starlet returned to make amends in a quirky little tearjerker.

Abra Kadabra stole a rather silly encore in ‘The Plight of the Puppet Flash!’ in #133, but this was more than compensated for by the witty and sensitive Kid Flash back-up ‘The Secret of the Handicapped Boys!’ as deaf, blind and mute classmates (one disability per boy, ok?) each discovered the young hero’s secret identity.

In Flash #134, Captain Cold was ‘The Man who Mastered Absolute Zero!’ in a flamboyant thriller that co-starred Elongated Man, whilst Iris West’s father (and Flash’s prospective father-in-law) paid an unwelcome call in the cleverly comedic ‘The Threat of the Absent Minded Professor!’, whilst Kid Flash got a beautiful new costume in the invasion thriller ‘Secret of the Three Super-Weapons!’ in #135.

‘The Mirror Master’s Invincible Bodyguards!’ actually weren’t but the scarlet Speedster had a lot more trouble when a seedy blackmailer claimed ‘Barry Allen – You’re the Flash – and I Can Prove It!’ This type of clever human-scaled story was slowly disappearing in favour of the more colourful costume epics – none more so than the wonderful ‘Vengeance of the Immortal Villain!’ Another incredible Earth-2 crossover, this saw the two Flashes unite to defeat 50,000 year old Vandal Savage and save the Justice Society of America: a tale which directly led into the veteran team’s first meeting with the Justice League of America and the start of all those aforementioned “Crisis” epics.

Garner Fox scripted ‘The Pied Piper’s Double Doom!’, a mesmeric team-up with Elongated Man, but once more the Kid Flash back-up stole the show, introducing the singular thespian Dexter Myles to the steadily growing cast in a charming comedy of errors ‘Mystery of the Matinee Idol!’

Flash #139 introduced the hero’s ultimate nemesis in Professor Zoom, a 25th century criminal who duplicated his super-speed to become the ‘Menace of the Reverse-Flash!’ a taut thriller that even found time to include a cunning sub-plot about nuclear Armageddon, and this volume closes with the contents of #140 (November 1963) which debuts the super arsonist Heat Wave in the stylish ‘The Heat is on for Captain Cold!’ and finally pitted the Monarch of Motion against ‘The Metal-Eater from Beyond the Stars!’ a bizarre energy being that could nullify the speedster’s powers.

As always the emphasis was on brains and learning, not gimmicks or abilities, which is why these tales still work nearly half-a-century later. Coupled with the astounding art of Infantino these tales are a captivating snap-shot of when science was our friend and the universe(s) was a place of infinite possibility.

These tales were crucial to the development of our art-form, but, more importantly they are brilliant, awe-inspiring, beautifully realised thrillers that amuse, amaze and enthral both new readers and old lags. This lovely collection is another must-read item for anybody in love with the world of words-in-pictures.

© 1961, 1962, 1963, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Runaways volume 5: Escape to New York


By Brian K Vaughan, Adrian Alphona, Takeshi Miyazawa & Craig Yeung (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-408-9

The Runaways are a bunch of super-powered kids whose parents were secretly a cabal of would-be world conquerors called “The Pride”. These villains controlled Los Angeles without the citizens even knowing about it – which was why all the baddies and monsters hung around New York. After many trials and tribulations – including the loss of some of the original kids – the young absconders overthrew their progenitors, with the unwelcome result that LA has become an easy target for ambitious costumed ne’er-do-wells.

Placed with social services, the surviving runaways and a few new recruits took to the streets again, preferring life together and driven to protect the city they unwittingly endangered.

The underlying premise of this series is that adults can’t really be trusted, only your friends and comrades, and this volume (collecting volume 2, issues #7-12 of the monthly comic-book) weaves two plot strands together with engaging dexterity to illustrate the point, as the series finally dives head-first into the swirling chaos of full-on Marvel Universe continuity.

Karolina is the daughter of two extraterrestrials intent on conquest, but now they’re gone an alien prince lands on Earth claiming that he is the husband they arranged for her as a condition of truce between their warring civilisations…

When they were fighting their parents one of the few super-heroes to befriend the kids was the teleporting mutant Cloak, and when he’s accused of attempting to murder his symbiotic partner Dagger, the kids zip off to the Big Apple to clear his name, encountering such obstructive and overbearing luminaries as Captain America, Iron Man Spider-Man, Luke Cage and Wolverine as well as the skeevy New York underclass who are their East Coast counterparts…

Whereas I’m certainly more comfortable with the direction taken here, I acknowledge that some readers drawn in by the stylistic similarities to teen-oriented TV soap-operas might miss the angsty traumas and conflicts that have of necessity been down-played to make room for extra-fights and chases. It’s still wonderfully scripted though, very witty and dry with laughs and tension held in perfect balance.

Escape to New York is the best volume yet and Runaways is still a great “outreach” title to get new readers into comics. If you’re already a fan you might think of it as the ideal gift for that stubborn hold-out or perhaps your kids if they think you’re a bit weird to still be getting your jollies from printed matter…

© 2005, 2006, 2008 Marvel Characters Inc. All Rights Reserved. A BRITISH EDITION RELEASED BY PANINI UK LTD