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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….

© 2008 The Book Palace. Introduction and all artwork © Look and Learn. Used with permission. All Rights Reserved.

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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!

© 2006, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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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 23rd 1963, and in 1964 his decades-long association with TV Comic began in #674 with the premier instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’. On 11th October 1979 (although adhering to the US off-sale cover-dating system so it says17th ) Marvel’s UK subsidiary  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 © BBCtv.  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 © Marvel. Published 2009. All rights reserved.

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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 21st 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…

For more, check out his website.
© 2008 John Kerschbaum. All Rights Reserved.

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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!

© 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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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.