Now Read This!

By Jim Starlin, Mike Mignola, Carlos Carzon & Steve Oliff (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-56389-051-8

Here’s a good old-fashioned piece of super-hero fluff built to shock and awe the ten-year-old in all of us. Originally a four-part miniseries, this stellar melodrama teams Superman, Batman, some of Jack Kirby’s greatest creations plus a few other superheroic aliens in a classical interplanetary slugfest to save the entire Milky Way galaxy from the depredations of a malevolent sentient Concept out of the Great Beyond.

Jim Starlin’s plot is light but the action and drama are top-notch, especially when depicted by the magnificent pre-Hellboy Mike Mignola. With The Demon and Darkseid involved, betrayal and disaster are never far away but the double-dealing and tragedy still result in glorious triumph.

Fast fun, mind-boggling adventure and the inevitable victory of everything good, it’s what all feel-good fantasy should be like… Buy it and be a wide-eyed kid all over again.

© 1988, 2003 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Craig Conlan (Slab-O-Concrete)
ISBN: 1-899866-12-4

This vibrant and engaging little minx is a wonderful antidote to all those stuffy, ponderous melodramas and teen-angst soaps. Hairy Mary is a fun-loving lass with magical hair which can do anything she wants. What she usually wants is fun and confectionery, but that never stops her from having bright, breezy and surreal adventures in a world uniquely suited to her and brilliantly depicted by the tremendously talented Craig Conlan, in what he calls his “Bubblegum Drag Manga” style. Just one cautionary note – all this jollity is aimed at big kids: If you can’t vote yet, you’d best check with a responsible adult first.

In this first volume she defeats Dragzilla whilst on a desperate search for biscuits, battles sentient – but Evil – cake at a party in ‘Happy Birthday, Megabucket!’ and thwarts that ice-cream stealing little yob Crabula in the beach-bash ‘Gazpatcho!’.

Before a hilarious and eerily charming Mr Men spoof ‘Hairy Miss Mary’ riotously ends the hi-jinks, there’s even the hirsute hero-ette’s special recipe for the delicious aforementioned cold soup treat; extra added value in this glorious package of fat-free fun, fun, fun.

C’mon, Get Some!

© 1998 Craig Conlan. All Rights Reserved.

 

(aka FICTION ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 3)
By Steranko (Byron Preiss Visual Publications Inc/Pyramid Books)
ISBN: 0-515-04241-2

Steranko is an artist with many strings to his bow. Whether as publisher, typographer, graphic designer, artist, storyteller, historian, or musical performer he has excelled. As a magician and escapologist he found celebrity and even inspired Jack Kirby to create the Super Escape Artist Mister Miracle, but it’s as a comics creator that he has most memorably succeeded.

With Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. he revolutionised the telling of graphic stories. His retro-revisionist take on Captain America is reverently remembered nearly forty years later and his experimental forays in Marvel’s horror and romance titles were high-points in style, and cinematic design.

He left Marvel to pursue his other interests and began the publication Mediascene Prevue but has returned occasionally to the comic medium. In partnership with Byron Preiss he created this experimental form of the graphic novel that is a vivid tribute to the hard-boiled detective and film noir genres, if not altogether to the tastes of the contemporary comics consumer.

Chandler is a private eye, in the iconic myth-country of 1940’s New York City, where one night a desperate man comes looking for someone to find his killer. Bramson Todd saw a mob hit and has somehow been poisoned because of it. With seventy-two hours to live he wants proactive revenge, and as well as a vast amount of money he offers Chandler the chance to save the other three witnesses from the same fate or worse.

The familiar iconography of the seedy, noble gumshoe is augmented by two-fisted action, flying bullets, sundry thugs and scoundrels, memorable, glamorous women and a ticking clock in this loving and effective pastiche, but the stumbling block for many readers will be the unconventional format of this book.

Each page is divided into two columns – in the manner of the classic pulps – with each column comprising an illustration above a block of accompanying text. Despite Steranko’s superb draughtsmanship and design skill (some spreads form extended visual continuities with four single pictures becoming one large illustration) there is an element of separation between prose and picture that can take a little adapting to. Nevertheless even after three decades this is still a powerful tale, well told and worth any extra effort necessary to enjoy it. Another contender for immediate reissue, I think…

This book was released in both full-sized graphic novel and pocket digest editions.

© 1976 Byron Preiss Visual Publications Inc.
The character Chandler © 1976 James Steranko.

 

By Harvey Pekar & various (Titan Books)
ISBN: 1-84023-787-2

Before finding relative fame in the 21st century, Harvey Pekar occupied that ghastly niche so good at trapping the truly creative individual: Lots and lots of critical acclaim, the occasional heart-breakingly close brush with super-stardom, but never actually getting enough ahead to feel secure or appreciated.

One of those aforementioned brushes came in 1980s with the release of a couple of compilations of selected strips by mainstream publisher Doubleday that even to this day are some of his most powerful, honest and rewarding. With art by some of his most individualistic collaborators including Kevin Brown, Gregory Budgett, R. Crumb, Gary Dumm and Gerry Shamray, and selected from a most adventurous decade, these tales of working life, self-esteem, achievement and failure, religion, the media, Nazi atrocity and survivor’s guilt, the value of friends and colleagues, getting on with women, not to mention his constant re-examination of his own creative worth and self are even now a superb insight into the mind and heart of a truly original comics creator.

With these two books reprinted in one splendid package the reader has another chance to see the humour, confusion and frustration of being an American thinker in a world that simply doesn’t value brains and spirit anymore.

Compulsive, brilliant stuff, and if there’s any justice, incurably infectious and addictive too.

© 1976-1986, 2004 Harvey Pekar, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

March 24, 1946 – December 23, 1947

By Lee Falk & Ray Moore (Pioneer Books)
No ISBN

For such a long-lived and influential series, The Phantom has been very poorly served by the English language market. Various small companies have tries to collect the strips – one of the longest continually running adventure serials in publishing history – but in no chronological order and never with any sustained success.

This particular edition is a lovely large paperback, printed in landscape format, displaying one complete Sunday strip (a complete instalment of two tiers every week) per page, in black and white.

Lee Falk created the Phantom at the request of his publishers who were already making history with his first strip Mandrake the Magician. The first ever hero to wear a skin-tight body-stocking, and the first to have a mask with opaque eye-slits, the Phantom debuted on February 17th 1936. Falk wrote and drew the daily strip for the first two weeks before Ray Moore took over. The Sundays began in May 1939.

In the 17th century a British sailor survived an attack by pirates, and washing ashore in Africa, swore on the skull of his murdered father to dedicate his life and that of all his descendents to destroying pirates and criminals. The Phantom fought crime and injustice from a base deep in the Jungles of Bengali, and throughout Africa he was known as the “Ghost Who Walks”. Centuries later the latest wearer of the mask, indistinguishable from the first, continues the never-ending battle, whilst romancing American debutante Diane Palmer. After all, the line must go on.

These brief, all-ages adventures, taken from the immediate post-war period, are uncomplicated fare, full of whimsical, unrealistic kingdoms and tribes, but reassuring entertainment for all that. When Diana is mistaken for a jewel thief, the Phantom has to clear her name by defeating a man who can make animals do his bidding. Then the Rajah of Volara seeks aid when his young daughter is kidnapped for sacrifice to the ‘Scarlet Sorceress’.

When the thoroughly unpleasant Prince Pepe of Ptajar abducts Diana, with the intention of marrying her, The Phantom can only free her by completing the ‘The 12 Tasks’, and the eponymous ‘Dragon God’ threatens to revive the war-like depredations of the Wambesi, until the Ghost Who Walks reveals the true nature of the monsters behind its return.

Despite the annoyance of the last tale terminating mid-story this is still a welcome volume in a friendly format, which recaptures the thrills of mythical jungle realms, as valiant hero vanquishes evil gangsters, Nazi’s, witch-doctors and petty tyrants alike. Until such time as a serious methodical permanent collection becomes a reality, simple treats like this will have to do.

© 1989 King Features Syndicate, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Lise Myhre (Titan Books)
ISBN 1-84576-689-9

The newspaper strip is a dying beast in our modern world. What once was a defining aspect of both tabloid and quality periodicals throughout the world has very little effect on contemporary publishing, and if it wasn’t for the internet I’d probably be preparing an article on the entire sub-medium for my “pending obituaries” file. So it’s a delight to be able to review a book collecting a (relatively) new strip that’s accruing some international acclaim as well as wowing the daily readers of our own daily papers.

Running in Metro for the last few years, Lise Myhre’s Nemi recounts the adventures of a modern miss with a graphic twist. Nemi is a cute, irascible, temperamental Goth girl dealing with the world of work and the chronic lack of Great Nights Out in the best way she can.

The recurring themes include boyfriends, work, that darned computer, drinking, hangovers, and all those other bugbears that bedevil the contemporary scene. Not all the gags hit the mark, and sometimes the colour palette seems a little bright for such a darkly surreal and cynical minx, but it’s early days yet.

If you’re looking for something to give to the comic civilian, this is a solid, fresh choice.

© 2007 Lise Myhre/Iblis ANS, Norway. All Rights Reserved.