Now Read This!

 

By Roman Dirge (Titan Books)
ISBN 13 9781845760908

Lenore is a sweet little girl who has cute, if somewhat surreal, little adventures. Did I mention that she is also dead and has been for quite some time? Bleak, eccentric, and darkly comic strips featuring this little charmer and her strange coterie of acquaintances have been entertaining audiences since 1992 when she first appeared in the alternative arts magazine Xenophobe in San Diego. Slave Labor Graphics eventually picked up the character and this volume is a compilation of the first four issues, with the veiled threat of two more volumes to follow.

Richly dipped in the traditions of Charles Addams, and appealing to the same skewed and twisted audiences that follow “Squee!” and “Johnny the Homicidal Maniac” from Jhonen Vasquez or the more Goth inspired series such as “Gloom Cookie”, or even Giffen and Roman’s “i Luv Halloween”, not to mention the animated films of Tim Burton, these weird and wonderful fables are an unwholesome treat for those kids of all ages with a taste for the darker flavours of life and it’s inevitable cessation. Try it, you might like it!

™ & © 2006 Roman Dirge. All Rights Reserved.

By various (Marvel)
ISBN 0-7851-0564-6

I’ve said some harsh things about the work produced by Marvel (nee Timely) Comics in its golden age incarnation, so it’s only fair that I redress the balance with this tome that collects a bunch of tales that show the company in its most flattering light during those dark times. Edited by the inestimable Tom Brevoort, it gathered and remastered a selection of material (admittedly much of which the company had already reprinted during its first large scale expansion in the late 1960s in such comic specials as Marvel Tales and Fantasy Masterpieces), that combined historical significance with the best quality work that the archives could offer.

First is Bill Everett’s Sub-Mariner from Motion Picture Funnies Weekly which actually pre-dated the company, but which was re-packaged as part of Marvel Comics #1 (1939). It is followed by the team-up/cross-over with the Human Torch from that venerable magazine’s eighth issue (June 1940) with art by Carl Burgos and Everett.

Another collaboration of both the artists and their most famous creations follows with ‘The Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner Fighting Side by Side’ (Marvel Mystery Comics #17, March 1941), and Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s ‘Horror Plays the Scales’ stars the gruesome Red Skull in an adventure from Captain America Comics #7 (September 1941).

Simon and Kirby also produced ‘The Vision’ from Marvel Mystery Comics #25, in November of that year. A second Cap story ‘The Cobra Ring of Death’ comes courtesy of Captain America Comics # 22, drawn by Syd Shores in 1943. Sub-Mariner returns in ‘Terror of the Boiling Sea’ from Marvel Mystery Comics #42, April 1943, drawn by Carl Pfeufer, and that issue also provides ‘Quarantine for Murder’ a swashbuckling adventure of the Angel, credited to Ron Garn and Gustav “Gus” Schrotter.

Mike Sekowsky drew the Mighty Destroyer tale ‘The Beachhead Blitz’ from All-Winners Comics #12 (Spring 1944), technically perhaps the last truly Golden Age story in the book, as the Marvel Boy adventure that follows, ‘The Deadly Decision’ comes from 1951. This was produced (from Astonishing #5) by Bill Everett at the absolute top of his creative form, as he still was with the ‘Tidal Wave of Fear’ reprinted from Venus #18, February 1952.

In the mid-1950s Marvel tried to revive their ‘big three’ and super-hero comics in general, on the back of a putative Sub-Mariner television series to cash in on the success of the Superman show. This led to some impressively creative comic work, but no appreciable results.

Young Men Comics #24 (December 1953) is represented in its entirety here, and featured ‘The Return of the Human Torch’ by Russ Heath, Captain America was ‘Back From the Dead’ as was a now mysteriously communistic Red Skull, in a tale drawn by John Romita Sr., and Bill Everett returned to his greatest triumph with ‘The Sub-Mariner’. The Star-Spangled Avenger gets one more bite of the cherry in ‘Captain America Turns Traitor’ (Young Men Comics #26, March 1954) with Romita Sr. once again providing the visuals.

When this last gasp of super-heroic shenanigans failed, Marvel/Atlas once again concentrated on humour, horror, westerns, war and more or less straight adventure. From July 1955 (issue #2) comes a tale of the Black Knight, written by Stan Lee and drawn by the absolutely unparalleled Joe Maneely, and the book closes with a taste of what was soon to come with Jack Kirby’s scientific fantasy adventure ‘The Microscopic Army’, a tale of the insidious Yellow Claw (one of the comics industry’s many knock-offs of Sax Rohmer’s legendary Fu Manchu) from the third issue of his own short-lived magazine (February 1957).

Without exception these varied and excellent tales showed what the characters and creative forces at Marvel Comics could produce. Sadly much of the best comics work of the period covered here were produced in genres not considered particularly commercial in today’s superhero and space-opera dominated market-place. Here then, is a historical document that Marvel can feel proud of, and which does fit today’s market forces. Why isn’t it still in print then?

© 1939-1944, 1951-1955, 1957, 1997 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Stan Lee, Gene Colan & various (Marvel)
ISBN 0-7851-905239-1462-9

Marvel Comics built its fan base through strong and contemporarily relevant stories and art, but most importantly, by creating a shared continuity that closely followed the characters through not just their own titles but also through the many guest appearances in other comics. Such an interweaving meant that even today completists and fans seek out extraneous stories to get a fuller picture of their favourite’s adventures. In such an environment, series such as ‘Essential’ and DC’s ‘Showcase’ are an economical and valuable product that approaches the status of a public service for collectors.

This particular edition, reprinting the exploits of a very different Daredevil to the one popularised by Frank Miller and his successors from the 1980’s onwards, covers the period of March 1967 (#26) to January 1969 (#48), and includes the first Annual and Fantastic Four #73 where a long running storyline concluded (see what I mean about cross-collecting?).

The adventures are fairly typical 1960’s action-fodder. Matt Murdock is a blind lawyer whose other senses over-compensate, making him a formidable acrobat and fighter, and a human lie-detector. Very much a second-string hero, he was nonetheless a popular one, due in large part to the wonderfully humanistic art of Gene Colan. He fought gangsters and a variety of super-villains, and even the occasional alien invasion. He also joked and wise-cracked his way through life, unlike the grim and moody quasi-religious metaphor he’s been seen as in latter years.

In short order then, you will find here such foes as the Stilt-Man, Masked Marauder, sight-stealing Aliens, cheap hoods, The Cobra and Mr Hyde, The Beetle, and from the Annual, the Emissaries of Evil – that’s Electro, Leapfrog, Stilt-Man, Gladiator and the Matador. After some “Secrets of DD” information pages and lots of pin-ups the crime-fighting continues with the Trapster and Doctor Doom, which all concludes in the aforementioned Fantastic Four #73, drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Joe Sinnott.

The Unholy Three and the Exterminator are next, followed by a prolonged battle with the Jester only interrupted by a brief tiff with Captain America. A well-written change of pace featuring a blinded Viet Nam soldier shows a more human side to the adventurer and the book ends with the return of Stilt-Man for one last hurrah. Other guest stars include Thor and Spider-Man.

This is a good place to end as Stan Lee would hand over the scripting to Roy Thomas soon after this and the social turbulence that marked the end of the decade would begin to alter DD into something closer to his current archetype. But that’s another volume…

© 1967, 1968, 1969, 2004 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved

 

By Karl Zinsmeister, Dan Jurgens & Sandu Florea (Marvel Comics)
ISBN 0785115161

It’s always good to see Marvel venture outside its self-constructed ghetto of Proprietary Characters, rather than endlessly re-hash the names it’s already trademarked, and doubly so when it is to venture into genres that it has previously abandoned. Sadly, in some cases the question then becomes one of seeking new markets as opposed to simply looking for new resources to exploit. Comics have had a long and chequered history when it comes to militarism, ideological witch-hunting and band-wagon hopping.

Combat Zone features the “real-life accounts” of US combatants in the 2003-2004 Iraq War, although “some incidents have been combined to make for a more condensed read”, and of course names have been changed to protect, etc. etc. …

Writer Zinsmeister was an embedded reporter during the conflict so I’m sure the events are as true as he saw them but the overall feeling after reading the book was one of tedious detachment. Maybe the modern military life is one of immense boredom, spent talking to buddies and telling everyone how cool your ordnance is, interlaced with the occasional skirmish, but if such is the case it shouldn’t be in a drama-oriented comic-book.

It’s hard not to compare this series with the excellent Real War Stories produced in the late 1980s by Eclipse or even such personal visions as Sam Glanzman’s A Sailor’s Story or Don Lomax’s gruelling, compelling and, above all, informative Viet Nam Journal, perhaps because all of these take the part, and the authorial voice, of the ordinary man, and there is an implicit understanding, that though necessary, the job at hand is neither easy or fun. Even Robert Kanigher’s Sgt. Rock tales had greater verisimilitude than what’s on offer here.

In Combat Zone even when a character eventually dies, the response is so anodyne that we know nobody really cares. There is more than the hint of the Press Release about it. Often it feels like the entire comic has passed through the same Pentagon ‘fact-checker’ that news reports do. A far cry, then, from Real War Stories #1, which the US government actually attempted to suppress.

On a purely dramatic level, the problem is one of heroic stature. When two desperate guys give their lives in a dramatic, doomed attempt to stop an onslaught of high-tech juggernauts from crushing their homeland, with nothing more than an old pick-up truck and a machine gun, those ought to be the heroes, not the bad guys!

There’s nothing but platitudes in each character’s mouth here to show the reader how justified the war might be, and no mention of the disastrous early days of allied blunders or numerous friendly fire incidents. ‘Those didn’t happen where I might see them’ is not an excuse in a documentary which has been subjectively edited “to make for a more condensed read”. You don’t get to pick and choose between Dramatic Authenticity and Journalistic Veracity at will, and not expect a few hits for it.

With lacklustre art masquerading as realism from comic super-star Dan Jurgens adding to the overall dullness of the mix (is it me or are all US soldiers darned good looking fellers?) the overall response to this is one of disappointment. It felt as if the neither the creators nor the characters were in the least bit emotionally engaged. I certainly wasn’t.

© 2005 Marvel Characters Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

By John Wagner & Vince Locke (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84576-212-6

Once again Vertigo reaps the benefits of the experimental exploits of DC’s all but defunct Paradox Press venture when another barely noticed graphic crime thriller got the big-time Hollywood seal of approval. Following on the heels of Road to Perdition, David Cronenberg’s film adaptation furthered the trend away from flashy superhero spectacular movies with this tale of small, brave people who can only be pushed so far. The film itself was nominated for a Palme D’Or at Cannes where it premiered.

Veteran British comics writer John Wagner continues his life-long explorations of human nature with the tale of an ordinary guy who loves his family and runs a diner. When two thugs try to rob the place he manages to subdue them, but that’s where his troubles begin. Seeing his picture in the news, a team of New York Wise Guys turn up, claiming that he’s someone they used to know and they’re disturbingly not keen on taking “no” for an answer.

In typical Wagner tradition, there’s as much action as mystery before the startling and grisly denouement, and the vital, edgy drawing of Vince Locke reinforces the mundane nature of the characters and settings whilst capturing the shock and disorientation as these normal lives of ordinary people are permanently disrupted.

In a time where not one comic-based blockbuster movie has materially increased the readership of the core material, perhaps a few more creators might be enticed to make comics that are to the tastes of the wider world rather than a dwindling die-hard group of unreconstructed post-adolescents. Only so many consumers can handle that fetishistic costuming and power-tripping, but any reader can be sucked in to great story-telling, as long as they’re not put off by ludicrous trappings.

A History of Violence is a tight, dramatic crime-suspense thriller, with subversively sharp visuals, strong but accessible characterisation and a memorable climax. I know, because I read it, and I might even see it eventually. That’s an order of events I urge all comic fans to emulate.

™ & © 1997 John Wagner. All Rights Reserved.
Art © 1997 Vince Locke. All Rights Reserved.