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A Guest in the House


By Emily Carroll (Faber & Faber)
ISBN: 978-0-571-35545-7 (HB)

It’s perhaps a little odd to be looking at terrifying tales of supernatural darkness at the height of summer, but as Emily Carroll proves here, sunny skies and enticingly gleaming lake waters don’t always equate with idyllic rests and restorative downtimes…

Born in 1983 in London, Ontario, Carroll now hails from Stratford (still Ontario): studying animation before redirecting her talents in 2010. The immediate beneficiaries of the career change are we comics fans and horror devotees, as her webcomic His Face All Red became a hot sensation on Halloween and went – as the kids and their grandparents say – viral.

Since then Carroll has got even better, working her dark magic for video game Gone Home (2013) and assorted publishers whilst contributing to numerous books and anthologies, garnering Ignatz, Eisner and British Fantast Awards among many others for first book Through the Woods – an anthology of scary comics stories.

Throughout she has continued crafting chilling webcomics like The Hole the Fox Did Make, Margot’s Room, Baba Yaga’s Assistant, Speak, When I Arrived at the Castle and Some Other Animal’s Meat (adapted in 2022 as “The Outside” for Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix).

A Guest in the House is her second book and first full novel; and I don’t want to tell you very much about it. Narrated by dowdy, introspective, uninspired Abigail, it plays on the institutionalised uncertainty and self-doubt of women and offers a fantastic, ferocious dreamscape to outline a creepy, uneasy slice of domestic tragedy in what should be an idyllic retreat from care.

Abby lives by a beautiful lake in a sedate town with nice new husband David and Crystal, his daughter by a previous marriage. Abby’s not happy but she is settled, and if her husband seems a bit harsh or intolerant it’s only because he works so hard and his first wife Sheila died so tragically. The biggest bone of contention between them is his extreme reactions to Crystal getting near the lake…

When not working at the Valu-Save, Abby inhabits a rich fantasy life filled with knights, dragons and princesses, but as summer progresses she becomes increasingly concerned about the real-world inconsistencies in David’s stories of vivacious, clever, talented Sheila. Even before one of his work colleagues accidentally reveals how her predecessor really died, Abby starts seeing ghosts and talking to what remains of Sheila…

Whatever you think happens next is probably wrong. Cunning, twisty plotting fuels intense and expressive fantasmagoria blended with powerfully understated, almost documentarian narrative illustration as all concerned – especially the reader – are forced to confront and question everything thus far. Soon the tale heads into unexplored country and comprehension…

In so many ways this story acts as like an inverted take on Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, with an all-powerful past presence not just imprinted but actually working on and communicating with an embattled and distraught protagonist. However, even that’s not what’s really going on in this haunting tale of grief, ghosts, quiet desperation, suspicion and identity – submerged or otherwise. In the end it’s all-beguiling moments clouding the big question: is this materialised internal monologue or actual spiritual infestation?

Chilling and unforgettable, this is a summer storm that demands your full attention.

© Emily Carroll, 2023. All rights reserved.

A Guest in the House is published on August 17th 2023 and available for pre-order now.

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The Epic of Gilgamesh


Translated by Kent H. Dixon & illustrated by Kevin H. Dixon (Seven Stories Press)
ISBN: 978-1-60980-793-1 (TPB): 978-1-60980-794-8 (eBook)

The infinite realm of comics is the most expansive medium we have for extolling heroic deeds, combining a facility for depicting all aspects of character with an unlimited budget for special effects; all whilst communicating instantaneous visceral understanding and appreciation to and on the part of the audience.

Such was not always the case: once upon a time all we had was words, originally spoken or chanted but eventually translated into permanent marks on durable surfaces.

As of this writing, The Epic of Gilgamesh is still the oldest known work of human literature. A truly timeless heroic saga, its earliest incarnation is actually five Sumerian poems lauding the accomplishments of Bilgamesh, King of Uruk, dating from the Third Dynasty of Ur. That’s approximately 2100 BCE as you, I and most modern Mesopotamians would reckon it.

As is so often the case, some smart wordsmith long ago appropriated the texts and reconditioned the snippets into something grander, with the saga surviving into our era via a series (still incomplete) of Babylonian tablets. The material is open to frequent interpretation and has been translated into many languages since first discovered.

What source material we have comes from tablets of cuneiform logographs discovered back in 1853 by Hormuzd Rassam amidst the remains of the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh (near modern Mosul in Iraq). In the early 1870s western historian George Smith published his first translation and, after more hands-on study and research, a full and final version in his 1880 book The Chaldean Account of Genesis. The first direct Arabic translation – by Iraqi Taha Baqir – only appeared in 1960. Many modern scholars have had a bash, with 2003’s 2-volume critical work by Andrew George being generally accounted as the most definitive thus far.

I, however, am no scholar (or gentleman, by all accounts) and the graphic novel on point today has my vote for perhaps the most honest and genuine treatment yet. It’s certainly the least pompous with the most laughs…

Gilgamesh is the prototype and template of all modern hero-myths, with a demigod king, alternatively beloved and despised, stricken and emboldened by his own greatness triumphing over all odds and odd monsters, but ultimately brought low by his own humanity.

It’s also a story with creation myth motifs (man brought forth from clay; god-touched, animal-saving survivors of great floods; resurrection from the dead) that reoccur over and over again in later religions. Has anyone told Dwayne Johnson about this book yet?

This version is replete with earthy humour, casual smut and everyday venality. It feels like – despite the mystical trappings – the characters at its heart are all too human. This is most cool, as artefacts dating back to 2600 BCE were recently uncovered that indicate the actual existence of some of the actors in this particular passion play…

What also lends this superb monochrome marvel much of its compelling veracity and beguiling attraction is a somewhat unique collaboration. Kent H. Dixon is an award-winning poet, screenwriter, novelist and educator who spends his days teaching and translating literary works from Japanese hibakusha to classics by Rilke and Mallarmé.

Kent Dixon is a social activist, underground radio show host and the award-winning cartoonist who created …And Then There Was Rock and subversive milestone Mickey Death in the Winds of Impotence. He might be the only aging rebel in the world happy to work with his dad…

Their slowly-unfolding, decade-long collaboration on The Epic of Gilgamesh caught the attention of top bloke Russ Kick (You Are Being Lied To and Everything You Know is Wrong; and data archive thememoryhole2.org) who quickly made it – and them – a key part of the superb Graphic Canon series.

So, what do you get here that other translations don’t offer? Following Kick’s scene-setting, context-establishing Introduction, Kent Senior’s Translator’s Note relates how the literary wizard retranslated the original tablets – including only just unearthed Tablet 5 – and offers a few hints regarding narrative direction whilst Kevin Dixon’s Artist’s Note spills a few secrets on producing a classic everybody “knows” as an out of sequence part-work…

As for the story: an arrogant hero-king wanders the Earth and realms of gods and monsters. He’s pretty vile to women and beats up whom he pleases until the gods create a perfect enemy who ends up becoming his truest (if not only) friend. When he dies the Hero defies the universe and challenges Hell to get him back. You’ve heard it all before but you’ve never seen it quite like this…

Bold and brash, raw and raucous, this inviting interpretation also manages to maintain a graceful poetic rhythm and deftly incorporate the philosophy and instructions-for-living that permeate and underscore the original without missing a beat. A magnificent tale with a big heart and supremely engaging, this funny, scary, action-packed pictorial fable is a brilliant achievement and I for one am hungry for more. Spenser’s Faerie Queene or Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West anyone?
© 2018 by Kent H. Dixon and Kevin H. Dixon. All rights reserved.

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Breaking Cat News: Cats Reporting on the News That Matters to Cats


By Georgia Dunn (Andrews McMeel)
ISBN: 978-1-4494-7413-3 eISBN: 978-1-4494-7927-5

As I eagerly await the imminent release of the next feline frenzy fact file from Georgia Dunn (Gosh! When willit bee Septemphber?) I feel the need to revisit how it all began… 

Cats rule the world. Just ask the internet. Now, now, now. Those of us with moggies also learn pretty quickly that they run the house too. However, illustrator and cartoonist Georgia Dunn found a way to make her indolent furry overlords earn their keep after watching them converge on a domestic accident and inquisitively and interminably poke their little snouts into the mess.

Thus was born Breaking Cat News: a hilariously beguiling series of strips detailing how – when no-one’s looking – her forthright flurry of felines form their own on-the-spot news-team with studio anchor Lupin, and field reporters Elvis (investigative) and Puck (commentary) delivering around-the-clock reports on the events that really resonate with cats – because, after all, who else matters?

The history and development of the feature is covered in Dunn’s Introduction (which you can read if your own murder-mittened mates give you some time off) before this superbly engaging full-colour digest-sized (165 x 203 mm) paperback concentrates on crucial domestic and foreign issues.

Drawing attention on the home front are items such as ‘Everything is Broken and We Don’t Know Who Did It’, ‘The Food Bowl is Still Empty’, ‘The People Bought Some Stupid-Looking Thing For the Dining Room’, ‘The Woman is Cooking Bacon’, ‘The Woman is Trying to Use a Laptop’, ‘The Woman is Trying to Make the Bed’ and ‘The People Bought a Different Kind of Kibble’ whilst long-range outside broadcasts confirm ‘The Man is in the Backyard’, ‘The Neighborhood is Under Attack’ and ‘The Trees are Falling Apart’…

The rolling news is backed up by In-Depth packages devoted to ‘The People Are Going Insane’ (moving house to us two-foots) and the entire team undertake a dedicated series on a lengthy brush with maternity (‘The Woman is Feeling Under the Weather’, ‘The Spare Room is Filled With New Cat Furniture’, ‘The Woman has a Hair Ball’ and ‘The People are Awake in the Middle of the Night’) to prove that cats don’t just want vapid snippets of information for mayfly attention spans, but can also handle complex issues with no simple solutions…

Smart, witty, imaginative and deliciously whimsical, Breaking Cat News is a fabulously funny regularly re-readable feel-good feature rendered with great artistic elan and a light and breezy touch that will delight not just us irredeemable cat-addicts but also anyone in need of good laugh.
© 2016 Georgia Dunn. All rights reserved.

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Showcase Presents Legion of Super-Heroes volume 2


By Otto Binder, Jerry Siegel, Edmond Hamilton, Jim Shooter, Curt Swan, John Forte & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1- 4012-1724-2 (TPB)

Once upon a time, in the far future, a band of super-powered kids from a multitude of worlds took inspiration from the greatest legend of all time and formed a club of heroes. One day those Children of Tomorrow came back in time and invited their inspiration to join them…

And thus began the vast and epic saga of the Legion of Super-Heroes, as first envisioned by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino in early 1958, just as the revived comicbook genre of superheroes was gathering an inexorable head of steam. Since that time the fortunes and popularity of the Legion have perpetually waxed and waned, with their future history tweaked and rebooted, retconned and overwritten over and again to comply with editorial diktat and popular whim. Happy 65th Anniversary, teams!

This splendid, charm-soaked, action packed second monochrome collection continues to re-present those early tales from assorted Superman Family titles in chronological order: the sagas from their own feature spanning Adventure Comics #316, 322-348, and 365 with guest-shots from Superboy #117, 124-125 and pertinent portions of Superman Annual #4, covering July 1964 to September 1966.

From Adventure #322 the fun-filled futurism opens with ‘The Super-Tests of the Super-Pets!’ by Edmond Hamilton, John Forte & Sheldon Moldoff, wherein the Legion’s mighty animal companions – Krypto, Streaky the Super Cat, Beppo, the monkey from Krypton and magical Super-horse Comet – are left to guard Earth as the humanoid players continue to pursue the elusive Time Trapper. When Chameleon Boy’s pet Proty II applies to join the bestial bunch, they give him a series of extremely difficult qualification tasks…

‘The Eight Impossible Missions!’ (#323 by Jerry Siegel, Forte & George Klein) see the incomprehensibly smart Proty setting the human Legionnaires a set of challenges to determine their next leader, after which the tone switches to deadly danger for ‘The Legion of Super-Outlaws!’ (Hamilton & Forte), as a grudge-bearing mad scientist manipulates a super-team from far distant Lallor into attacking the United Planets champions…

Issue #325 reveals how ‘Lex Luthor Meets the Legion of Super-Heroes!’ (Siegel & Forte) in a cunning tale of deadly deception whilst a ‘Revolt of the Girl Legionnaires!’ (Siegel, Forte & Klein) finds the female heroes attempting to eradicate their male comrades. Of course, they don’t mean it and a sinister mastermind is behind it all…

Superboy #117 (cover-dated December 1964) offers a classy thriller wherein Chameleon Boy, Invisible Kid, Ultra Boy, Element Lad and Brainiac 5 seemingly travel back 1000 years to attack the Boy of Steel in Siegel, Curt Swan & Klein’s ‘Superboy and the Five Legion Traitors!’ whilst over in Adventure #327 ‘The Lone Wolf Legionnaire!’ introduces bad boy Brin Londo in a clever thriller from Hamilton, Forte, Klein & Moldoff. This troubled teen is framed for appalling crimes but will one day become a valued member of the team…

Siegel & Jim Mooney began an engaging run of tales in #328, opening with ‘The Lad who Wrecked the Legion!’ as insidious Command Kid joins the superhero squad to dismantle it from within.

Narrowly escaping that fate, the heroes confront the topsy-turvy threat of their own imperfect doppelgangers in #329’s ‘The Bizarro Legion!’ after which another evil juvenile infiltrates the organisation, intent on destroying them all in ‘Secret of the Mystery Legionnaire!’. The dastardly plan proceeds without a hitch until victorious Dynamo-Boy recruited malevolent Lightning Lord, Cosmic King and Saturn Queen and falls victim to ‘The Triumph of the Legion of Super-Villains!’ in #331.

Rescued and restored, the good kids are back in Adventure #332, facing ‘The Super-Moby Dick of Space!’ (Hamilton & Forte) as recently resurrected Lightning Lad suffers crippling injuries and an imminent nervous breakdown…

‘The War Between Krypton and Earth!’ (#333, by Hamilton, Forte & Klein), has the time travelling wonders flung back into Earth’s antediluvian past and split into internecine factions on opposite sides of a conflict forgotten by history, after which Hamilton, Forte & Moldoff’s ‘The Unknown Legionnaire!’ poses a perilous puzzle with an oppressed race’s future at stake.

The same creative team introduce sinister super-villain ‘Starfinger!’ in #335, framing one luckless Legionnaire for incredible crimes before ‘The True Identity of Starfinger!’ (inked by Klein) reveals the real culprit.

Superboy #124 (October 1965, Otto Binder & George Papp) features Lana Lang as ‘The Insect Queen of Smallville!’: rewarded with a shape-changing ring after rescuing a trapped alien. Naturally, she uses her new abilities to ferret out Clark Kent’s secrets…

Adventure #337 highlights ‘The Weddings that Wrecked the Legion!’ (Hamilton, Forte & Moldoff) as two couples resign to marry. However, there’s serious method in the seeming marital madness…

Long absent Bête Noir Time Trapper at last returns in #338, as Siegel & Forte expose ‘The Menace of the Sinister Super-Babies!’, with sultry siren Glorith of Baaldur using the Chronal Conqueror’s devices to turn everybody but Superboy and Brainiac 5 into mewling infants. When they turn the tables on the villains a new era dawns for the valiant Tomorrow Teens…

Cover-dated November 1965 and by Binder & Papp, Superboy #125 signals darker days ahead by introducing a legion reservist with a tragic secret in ‘The Sacrifice of Kid Psycho!’, after which Hamilton, Forte & Moldoff tell a bittersweet tale of disaffected, tormented Lallorian hero Beast Boy who turns against humanity in Adventure Comics #339’s ‘Hunters of the Super-Beasts!’…

The slow death of whimsy and light-hearted escapades culminates in #340 when Brainiac 5’s latest invention goes berserk, with ‘Computo the Conqueror!’ (Siegel, Swan & Klein): attacking humanity and killing one of the superheroes before ‘The Weirdo Legionnaire!’ (inked by Moldoff) begins the team’s fight-back and eventual triumph.

‘The Legionnaire who Killed!’ (#342, Hamilton, Swan, Moldoff & Klein) sees Star Boy forced to take a life and facing the harshest of consequences, whilst ‘The Evil Hand of the Luck Lords!’ (Hamilton, Swan & Klein) finds the bold band of heroes assaulting the stronghold of a sinister cult claiming to control chance and destiny.

The same creative team ramps up tensions in Adventure #344 in ‘The Super-Stalag of Space!’, wherein the Legion – and many other planetary champions – are incarcerated by malicious alien overlord Nardo; an epic thriller completed in #345 with ‘The Execution of Matter-Eater Lad!’…

With Adventure #346 (July 1966) the dramatic revolution culminated in ‘One of Us is a Traitor!’ as Jim Shooter – barely a teenager – sold script and layouts (finished and inked by veteran Sheldon Moldoff) for a spectacular Earth invasion yarn. Here the sinister Khunds attack the UP, and the depleted Legion inducts four new members to bolster their strength. Sadly, although Princess Projectra, Nemesis Kid, Ferro Lad and Karate Kid are all capable fighters, it is soon apparent that one is an enemy agent…

With Earth all but fallen, ‘The Traitor’s Triumph!’ (Shooter, Swan & Klein) seems assured, but there’s one last surprise to come in a spectacular debut yarn from one of the industry’s most innovative creators…

This superb second compendium concludes with a tense thriller by Shooter & Papp from Adventure #348, as the secret origin of Sun Boy is revealed when radioactive rogue Dr. Regulus attempts unjustified vengeance in ‘Target-21 Legionnaires!’

But wait! There’s more!

Before the end, an expanded illustrated pictorial check-list and informational guide to the entire team by Swan, Klein & Al Plastino, culled from Superman Annual #4 (1961), Adventure Comics #316 and #365 (January 1964 & February 1968, respectively) reveals all you need to know about the youthful champions.

The Legion is one of the most beloved and bewildering creations in comic book history and largely responsible for the growth of the groundswell movement that became American Comics Fandom. Moreover, these sparkling, simplistic and devastatingly addictive stories as much as the legendary Julie Schwartz’s Justice League fired up the interest and imaginations of a generation of young readers and built the industry we all know today.

These naive, silly, joyous, stirring and utterly compelling yarns are precious and fun beyond any ability to explain – even if we old lags gently mock them to ourselves and one another. If you love comics and haven’t read this stuff, you are the poorer for it and need to enrich your future life as soon as possible.
© 1961, 1964, 1965, 1966, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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X-Men: The Hidden Years volume 1 (of 2)


By John Byrne, Tom Palmer, Joe Sinnott & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9048-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

During its initial 1960s run, X-Men was never one of young Marvel’s top titles, but it did secure a devout and dedicated following. Launching with moody, manic creative energy, dripping with Jack Kirby’s inspired heroic dynamism, the series comfortably transited into the slick, sleek illumination of Werner Roth, even as the blunt tension of alienated outsider-kids settled into a pastiche of college and school scenarios familiar to the students who were the series’ main audience.

The core team comprised tragic Scott Summers/Cyclops, ebullient Bobby Drake/Iceman, golden rich boy Warren Worthington/Angel and erudite, brutish genius Henry McCoy/Beast, in constant heart- and back- breaking training with Professor Charles Xavier. The wheelchair-bound (and even temporarily deceased) telepath was dedicated to brokering peace and fostering integration between the masses of humanity and emergent mutant race Homo Superior.

After a brief time trying to fit in the normal world, Jean Grey/Marvel Girl returned to the team, which was also occasionally supplemented by Scott’s brother Alex – a cosmic ray fuelled powerhouse codenamed Havok – and mysterious magnetic minx eventually dubbed Polaris, although she was usually referred to as Lorna Dane.

Nobody knew it at the time – and sales certainly didn’t reflect it – but with X-Men #56 superhero comics changed forever. A few years previously Neal Adams had stunned the comics-buying public with his horror anthology work and revolutionary superhero stylings on Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Batman. Now, on this relatively minor title – aided and abetted by writer Thomas in iconoclastic form and inker Tom Palmer producing some of the finest work of his career – the artist expanded the horizons of graphic narrative through boldly innovative, intensely paranoid dramas pitting mutants against an increasingly hostile world.

Subtly – and bravely – pitched at an older audience, the succession of gripping, addictively beautiful epics captivated and enchanted a small band of amazed readers – and completely escaped the attention of the greater mass of the buying public. Without those tales the modern X-phenomenon could not have existed, but back then they couldn’t save the series from cancellation. The cruellest phrase in comics is “ahead of its time…”

The series died despite every radical innovation devised by a succession of supremely talented creators. The last published original tale saw the mutants hunting The Hulk – or rather Bruce Banner – in an attempt to save Professor X from a coma induced by his psychic war against merciless, marauding extraterrestrials the Z’nox.

Adams ended his artistic tenure in grand style in that astounding alien invasion epic, but had moved on by the final outing (X-Men #66, cover-dated March 1970).

Although gone, the mutants were far from forgotten. Standard policy at that time to revive defunct characters was to pile on guest-shots and release reprints. Cover-dated December 1970, X-Men #67 saw them return, reliving early classics whilst a campaign of cameos carried them until the “All-New” team debuted in 1975.

One of the many kids utterly beguiled by the series’ transformation under Thomas & Adams was John Byrne. In 1999 he created a retroactive series in-filling untold events and exploits in the days between cancellation and the birth of the modern team. Pencilling in a passable blend of Adams and his own unique style, with Palmer triumphantly back on inks, Byrne took up where Thomas had left off, detailing untold secret adventures crafted with the advantage of 20-20 hindsight in respect to the decades of continuity that had since passed…

This first of two compilations collects X-Men: The Hidden Years #1-12 (originally published between December 1999- November 2000), and opens with a short teaser/prologue used to promote the series in other Marvel releases.

Featuring a younger, headstrong team far more fractious, aggressive and uncertain than ever seen in contemporary times, the uncanny action sees ‘Test to Destruction’ find the weary mutant heroes seemingly battling an ambush of old foes, only to discover that their peril is a cruel workplace assessment by their surprisingly militant and harsh “resurrected” tutor.

Continuity completists should note this mini-saga occurs between panels of X-Men: The Hidden Years #1, which launched a month later and – whilst recapping all those 1960s classics – dictated that the team revisit ‘Once More the Savage Land’’. This they do without Iceman, who had hot-headedly quit over Xavier’s callous tests and patronising attitude. If he was honest, though, the fact Alex was monopolising Drake’s dream girl Lorna didn’t help…

The team’s voyage south is to confirm the death of archenemy Magneto, but the disgruntled disenchanted heroes quickly fall foul of the steadfast principle dictating that somehow no modern vehicle reaches the primordial preserve without crashing. Narrowly surviving disaster, Angel, Beast and Cyclops are ministering to comatose Jean when they are ambushed by savages, and upon awakening learn Marvel Girl is dead and has been despatched to the Land of the Dead…

The shock is somewhat ameliorated in #2’s ‘The Ghost and the Darkness’ when erudite scholar Henry McCoy deduces exactly what that means here, before saving despondent Scott from suicide-by-T-Rex, and leading his chums in search of her.

Meanwhile in America, Bobby learns of the mission’s failure and that Xavier has sent X-novices Alex and Lorna after them, even as a continent away, Angel’s ultra-wealthy girlfriend Candace Southern buys herself into the crisis…

In a hidden city of freaks at the bottom of the world, the apparent corpse of Marvel Girl has been harvested by eerie priests of an exploitative cult able to raise the dead and rejuvenate the aged and decrepit. The Keepers of the Way have been exploiting the outer tribes’ practice of abandoning their old and sick for centuries, covertly building a monumental forced-labour camp of grateful slaves in an artificially extended underclass. Now, however, that dark paradise and the unstable radioactive volcano it’s built on is nearing its end.

Moreover – as quietly recovering Marvel Girl overhears – the secret rulers have recently started taking survival advice from what appears to be the ghost of Magneto…

Breaking into the citadel, the male X-Men dispel one ancient myth when Cyclops is killed and spontaneously resurrects without the actions of Keepers, leading to the exposure of another factor sustaining the priest-caste’s autonomy…

With enemies all around, Warren is separated from his teammates in ‘On Wings of Angels’ meeting another avian outcast even as Alex and Lorna beat the odds and land mostly in one piece. Even greater fortune blesses them when jungle wonders Ka-Zar and his sabretooth Zabu spot them and take charge of the rescue mission…

In the Keeper city, as Jean is overcome by Magneto, the truth of its imminent explosive doom is uncovered by her fellow X-Men. Angel and mute ally Avia reunite with the other guys in the hangar of a truly unique survival vehicle designed by the Keepers, just as the kingdom is engulfed in boiling lava. Their rush to escape latterly extends to and includes a fully alive master of magnetism in #4’s ‘Escape to Oblivion’…

As the reunited mutants are carried every way the wind blows, Iceman has made his own way to the Savage Land and Candy Southern breaks into the X-Mansion for a ferocious confrontation with Professor X. Unaware that Ka-Zar, Alex and Lorna are still trekking through the green hell of the Savage Land, the X-Men and Magneto’s mob of mutant minions are helpless ‘Riders of the Storm’, with the escape vehicle disintegrating around them. When the maelstrom intensifies and the fragmenting vessel is blown thousands of miles adrift, McCoy falls overboard…

Some of that aforementioned hindsight then manifests in issue #6 as ‘Behold a Goddess Rising…!’ reveals how The Beast’s plummet to earth lands him in rural Kenya at the feet of a young weather goddess called Ororo…

As Professor X and Candy come to an “arrangement” in Westchester County, on the outskirts of the dinosaur-infested Savage Land, Iceman – battered, bruised and briefly amnesiac – is saved from Pteranodons by energy-leach Karl Lykos. In Africa, McCoy is in earnest conference with the weather-warper. She had created a storm to serve her followers, but somehow the event was usurped by some mystery force, expanding to lethal, continent-spanning dimensions.

Having landed but separated but safely, Jean searches for her teammates, unaware Scott is helpless before the culprit, another mutant who has learned to predate on other Homo Superior…

When the other X-Men – past and future – converge on monstrous Deluge, they are easily overcome whilst back in the Savage Land, Ka-Zar, Alex and Lorna aid the survivors of the resurrection volcano, whilst hundred of miles distant, under that now-diminishing storm in the South Atlantic, the trawler “Sigurd Jarlson” pulls a couple of winged freaks out of its nets…

‘Power Play’ in #7 finds the defeated Kenyan contingent rally, escape certain death and apply all their wits, strength and a venerable old tactic to defeat Deluge, whilst under Antarctica, Lykos and Drake bond with the hero utterly oblivious to who Lykos is and what he did to Iceman when they first met. At sea, Angel and Avia learn that their saviours plan to sell them to a unique freak show just as the main X-team reach home in time to be pressured into another manic mission.

With additional inking by Joe Sinnott, #8 reveals a ‘Shadow on the Stars’ as the Fantastic Four of that era (Mr. Fantastic, The Thing, Human Torch and Inhuman princess Crystal) accompany Xavier and the X-Men after the Z’Nox. Although his epic psionic endeavours saved Earth from the marauding space parasites, it only served to unleash them upon other civilisations and now the Professor and Reed Richards intend to rectify that callous dereliction of duty. However, as the star trek unfolds something ancient, cosmic and fiery waits in anticipation for Jean Grey…

And in the Savage Land, the last remnants of the scattered X-Men reunite when Ka-Zar leads Alex and Lorna to Iceman… and Lykos…

X-Men: The Hidden Years #9 anticipates calamities and tragedies to come as ‘Dark Destiny’ finds Marvel Girl test-driven by the Phoenix Force, before being driven off, leading to a spectacular final confrontation with the Z’Nox.

Back on Earth, another plot thread is attached as in suburban Illinois, a little girl discovers a new trick she can play with her dolls…

As Xavier and McCoy investigate a potential New Mutant and learn that ‘Home is Where the Hurt is…’. the remaining team hunt for missing Warren and walk into a trap laid by the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (Mastermind, Unus the Untouchable, The Blob and evil Professor X analogue Kreuger).

Happily, in ‘Destroy All Mutants’, Candy provides a very human X-factor to tip the scales, but nothing can help the Illinois embassage as little Ashley Martin is corrupted by her power and loses control of the Sentinel she’s “befriended”, forcing Xavier into a pragmatic but cruel sanction…

In the Savage Land, the illusory period of peace ends for the heroes when Magneto and his Mutates attack, sparking the return of Bobby’s memories and triggering the transformation of repentant Lykos into rapacious monster Sauron. ‘And Death Alone Shall Know My Name’ wraps up the first year of untold tales as the scattered mutants reunite to rescue Iceman, Havoc and Lorna, bombastically battling Magneto’s minions and closing with a cameo by Sub-Mariner that segues neatly into the classic saga told decades ago in Fantastic Four #101-104 (That’s not included here. You’ll need another collection for that slice of magnificence.).

Closing this fan-friendly compilation is a cover and variant gallery sans text for all art lovers.

Fast and furious, but ridiculously convoluted, this is a huge thrill for anyone drenched in X-lore and superbly illustrated in prime Fights ‘n’ Tights mode, but I fear might be a stretch for casual readers or newcomers to the many worlds of X.
© 2017 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Smilin’ Jack: The Classic Aviator book 1


By Zack Mosley (Classic Comic Strips)
No ISBN, no digital editions

Here’s another forgotten birthday boy seriously in need of an archival revival…

Modern comics evolved from newspaper comic strips. Those pictorial features were – until relatively recently – hugely, incredibly popular with the public and highly valued by publishers who used them as an irresistible weapon for guaranteeing and increasing circulation and profits.

It’s virtually impossible for us to understand the overwhelming power of the comic strip in America from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. With no social media or television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most poor to middle-income folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from comic sections in daily and especially Sunday newspapers.

“The Funnies” were the most common and practically communal recreation for millions who were well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality. From the very start humour was paramount – hence the terms “Funnies” and “Comics” – and from these gag and stunt beginnings came hybrids like Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Comedic when it began in 1924, it evolved from mock-heroics to light-action to become a full-blown, rip-roaring adventure series with the introduction of prototype swashbuckler Captain Easy in 1929. From there it wasn’t such a leap to full-on action blockbusters like Tarzan (debuting on January 7th 1929) and Buck Rogers (the same day). Both were adaptations of pre-existing prose properties, but the majority of drama strips that followed were original creations.

The tidal-wave began in the early 1930s when an explosion of action/drama strips (tastefully tailored for a family audience and fondly recalled as “Thud and Blunder” yarns by those who read them) were launched with astounding frequency and rapidity.

Not only strips but entire genres were born in that decade, material that still impacts on not just today’s comic books but all our popular fiction. Always most common, however, were and are general feel-good humour strips with an occasional child-oriented fantasy…

Arguably the most welcome of the new adventure genres was the Aviator serial. With air speed, distance and endurance records bring broken every day, travelling air-circuses barnstorming across rural America and real-life heroes like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart plastered across front pages and in movie newsreels, it wasn’t difficult to grasp the potential of comics strip analogues joining the horde of prose, radio and movie flyers.

The first was Glenn Chaffin & Hal Forrest’s Tailspin Tommy – story of boy pilot Tommy Tompkins. It ran from May 21st 1928 (almost exactly one year after Lindbergh’s epic transatlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis) until 1942, and was swiftly followed by both Lester J Maitland & Dick Calkins Skyroads (May 20th 1929, to 1942) and John Terry’s Scorchy Smith which soared from 1930 -1961. Close on their high-flying heels came such late-arriving classics as Flyin’ Jenny, Buz Sawyer and latterly, Steve Canyon.

Zack Mosley was an enterprising young cartoonist who assisted Calkins on both Skyroads and the legendary Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. He was also a dedicated pilot and avaition enthusiast, and when he heard that Captain Joe Patterson (influential editor of The Chicago Tribune) was taking flying lessons, Zack swiftly pitched a series to the kingmaker of comic strips.

On the Wing debuted as a Sunday page on October 1st 1933, but the name never took off and with the December 31st episode the feature was more snappily re-titled Smilin’ Jack. Apparently, Moseley was surreptitiously called “Smiling Zack” around the Tribune office…

The strip steadily gained interest and syndication subscribers and, on June 15th 1936, was augmented by a monochrome daily strip.

Jack Martin was a nervous student pilot, and the series originally played safe by vacillating between comedy and hairsbreadth thrills as he and his fellow unqualified pilots learned the ropes. Never a top-tier series, Smilin’ Jack nevertheless always delivered terrific entertainment to the masses, moving and morphing with the times into a romance, war-feature, crime thriller (complete with Dick Tracy style villains) and even a family soap opera.

More importantly, the strip progressed in real time and when it closed on 1st April 1973, Jack was a twice-married air veteran with a grown son and a full cast of romantic dalliances in tow. It wasn’t lack of popularity that ended it either. At 67 years of age, Mosley wanted to spend his final years in the air, not crouched over a drawing board…

This fabulous (and shamefully scarce) collection gathers a splendid selection of rousing romps, beginning with that name-changing first episode from December 31st 1933, before concentrating on some classic sequences from the roaring Thirties.

Meet here or be reintroduced to Jack, comedy foil Rufus Jimpson (a hillbilly mechanic), eye-candy air hostess and love interest Dixie Lee (subject of an extended romantic triangle), Latin spitfire (the curvy sort, not the fighter plane kind) Bonita Caliente and sundry spies, thugs, imbecilic passengers, South American revolutionaries and even a foreign Legion of the Skies, with an eerily prescient stiff-necked Prussian flyer named Von Bosch whose type would soon be plastered all over strips and comic books once WWII broke out…

This kind of strip is, I suspect and fear, an acquired taste today like films by Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder or George Cukor, requiring the reader contribute a little intellectual and historical concentration, but the effort is absolutely worth it, and if this kind of stuff is good enough for the likes of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg it’s perfectly good enough for you and me…

A grand adventure and one you should definitely undertake if the chance comes. Maybe one day it will even be properly curated and collected for all to re-enjoy…
© 1989, 2009 Chicago Tribune Syndicate. All Rights Reserved. (I’m going on best evidence here: if somebody else actually owns the rights now, let me know and I’ll happily amend the entry).

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Night and the Enemy


By Harlan Ellison & Ken Steacy (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels/Graphitti Designs)
ISBN: 978-0-486-79961-2 (Dover TPB/Digital edition) 978-0-936211-07-7 (Graphitti Designs Limited Editions HB)

Harlan Ellison’s dark and chilling space war tales are always eminently readable. This gloriously impressive re-issued volume – good luck on getting your hands on the 1987 premium hardback! – gathers five of the best and most celebrated, taken from the long-running sequence of novellas and short-stories detailing Mankind’s extended intergalactic struggle against a race of star-spanning rivals. They’re adapted and interpreted in a variety of visual formats by air-brush wizard and aviation-addict Ken Steacy, together with a new prose framing-sequence from the author.

Humanity’s literary battle against the Kyben spanned ten generations and involved all manner of technologies, up to and including time-travel. Probably the most famous of them is the award-winning Demon with a Glass Hand, adapted as both an episode of The Outer Limits TV show in 1964 and as one of the very best of the long-gone and much-lamented DC Graphic Novel series, but that’s a graphic extravaganza we’ve already covered elsewhere…

Right here, right now, this classy full-colour album-sized paperback resurrects a glorious artefact first released by Comico and Graphitti Designs in 1987, just as the market for English-language graphic novels was taking off. It also piles on the treats by adding a brace of fabulously informative and keenly reminiscent Introductions: ‘In these Pages, the War Still Wages’ from author Ellison and ‘…As We Go Forward, Into the Past!’ by astoundingly multi-talented adaptor Ken Steacy.

Closing down the show are more goodies: an eye-popping glimpse at Steacy’s visual virtuosity in the feature ‘Afterwords & Pictures’, sharing unpublished art, roughs, layouts and finished covers, as well as working models and more, and the original Afterwords ‘War Artist’ and ‘Whispers from the Telling Box’ by Steacy & Ellison respectively from the 1987 edition.

Following a specially created ‘Prologue’ by E & S, the pictorial panoply shifts seamlessly into the earliest tales of the epic conflict, beginning with the apocalyptic ‘Run for the Stars’: a traditional panels and balloons strip describing life and its imminent end on Deald’s World after the hordes of Kyba drop in. It’s followed by ‘Life Hutch’, a grim survival tale combining blocks of text with big bold images in both lavish colour and stark monochrome, highlighting a soldier-survivor’s battle against a malfunctioning robot…

‘The Untouchable Adolescents’ is a bright and breezy art job disguising a tragic and powerful parable of good intentions gone awry, whilst sardonic 2-pager ‘Trojan Hearse’ rates just one powerful, lonely illustration for its cunning tale of invasion. ‘Sleeping Dogs’ is a moody epic which fittingly concludes the short sagas with the story of a force of liberating Earthmen who trample all over a few aliens in their rush to defeat the Kyben… and realise too late they’ve poked the wrong bear…

Fans will be delighted to find this volume also carries an original entry in the annals of the Earth-Kyba conflict with prose & picture piece ‘The Few… The Proud’: at the time of this collection’s original release, Ellison’s first new story for the sequence in 15 years.

This epic tome was a groundbreaking landmark at the time of its original release and remains an innovative, compelling treat for both old and new fans of the writer, lovers of seductively unconventional graphic narrative and of course comic readers in general.

Written by Harlan Ellison ®. © 1987, 2015 The Kilimanjaro Corporation. All Rights Reserved. New material by Harlan Ellison®. © 2015 The Kilimanjaro Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Cover and illustrations © 1987, 2015 Ken Steacy. All Rights Reserved.

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Werewolf by Night Marvel Masterworks volume 1


By Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Roy & Jean Thomas, Mike Ploog, Werner Roth, Ross Andru, & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-3346-3 (HB/Digital edition)

Now a star of page and screen, Werewolf by Night could be described as the true start of the Marvel Age of Horror. Now technically supplanted by modern Hopi/Latino lycanthrope Jake Gomez – who’s shared the designation since 2020 – these trials of a turbulent teen wolf opened the floodgates to a stream of Marvel monster stars and horror antiheroes.

Inspiration isn’t everything. In 1970, as Marvel consolidated its new position of market dominance – even after losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators, Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby – they did so employing a wave of new young talent, but less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties. The only real exception to this was a mass-move into horror titles (or more accurately “monster titles” – the CCA still vetoed “horror”): a response to an industry down-turn in superhero sales, and a move expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

Almost overnight scary monsters became again acceptable fare on four-colour pages and whilst a parade of 1950s pre-code reprints made sound business sense (so they repackaged a bunch of those too), the creative aspect of the revived fascination in supernatural themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public.

As always, the watchword was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics would be incorporated into the print mix and shared universe mix as readily as possible. When proto-monster Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel launched a line of sinister superstars – beginning with a werewolf and a vampire…

Werewolf by Night debuted in Marvel Spotlight #2 (preceded by western-era hero Red Wolf in #1, and followed by Ghost Rider). In actuality, the series title, if not the actual character, was recycled from a classic pre-Comics Code short suspense-thriller from Marvel Tales #116, July 1953. Marvel always favoured using old (presumably already copyrighted) names and titles when creating new series and characters. The Hulk, Thor, Magneto, Doctor Strange and many others all got nominal starts as hairy underpants monsters or throwaways in some anthology or other.

Accompanied by an introductory reminiscence from Roy Thomas, this copious compendium collects the early adventures of a young West Coast wild one by re-presenting the contents of Marvel Spotlight #2-4, Werewolf by Night volume 1 #1-8 and a guest-shot from Marvel Team-Up #12 cumulatively covering February 1972 to August 1973.

The moonlit madness begins with that landmark first appearance, introducing teenager Jack Russell, who is suffering some sleepless nights…

Cover-dated February 1972 and on sale as 1971 closed, ‘Werewolf by Night!’ (Marvel Spotlight #2) was written by Gerry Conway and moodily, magnificently illustrated by Mike Ploog in the manner of his old mentor Will Eisner. The character concept came from an outline by Roy & Jeanie Thomas, describing the worst day of Jack’s life – his 18th birthday – which began with nightmares and ends in something far worse.

Jack’s mother and little sister Lissa are everything a fatherless boy could hope for, but new stepdad Philip and creepy chauffeur Grant are another matter. Try as he might, Jack can’t help but see them as self-serving and with hidden agendas…

At his party that evening, Jack has an agonising seizure and flees into the Malibu night, transforming for the first time into a ravening vulpine man-beast. At dawn, he awakes wasted on a beach to learn his mother has been gravely injured in a car crash. Something had happened to her brakes…

Sneaking into her hospital room, the distraught teen hears her relate the story of his birth-father: an Eastern European noble who loved her deeply, but locked himself away three nights every month…

The Russoff line is cursed by the taint of Lycanthropy: every child doomed to become a wolf-thing under the full-moon from the moment they reach 18 years of age. Jack is horrified on realising how soon his sister will reach her own majority…

With her dying breath Laura Russell makes her son promise never to harm his stepfather, no matter what…

Scenario set, with the traumatised wolf-boy uncontrollably transforming three nights every month, the weird, wild wonderment begins in earnest with the beast attacking the creepy chauffeur – who had doctored those car-brakes – but refraining – even in vulpine form – from attacking Philip Russell…

The second chapter sees the reluctant nocturnal predator rescue Lissa from a rowdy biker gang (they were everywhere back then) and narrowly escape the cops, only to be abducted by a sinister dowager seeking knowledge of a magical tome dubbed the Darkhold. This legendary spell-book is the apparent basis of the Russoff curse, but when Jack can’t produce the goods, he’s left to the mercies of ‘The Thing in the Cellar!’…

Surviving more by luck than power, Jack’s third try-out issue fetches him up on an ‘Island of the Damned!’: introducing aging Hollywood screenwriter Buck Cowan, who will become Jack’s best friend and affirming father-figure as they jointly investigate the wolf-boy’s evil stepdad.

Russell had apparently sold off Jack’s inheritance, leaving the kid nothing but an old book. Following a paper trail to find proof Philip had Laura Russell killed leads them to an offshore fortress, a dungeon full of horrors and a ruthless mutant seductress…

The episode ended on a cliffhanger, presumably as an added incentive to buy Werewolf by Night #1 (cover-dated September 1972), wherein Frank Chiaramonte assumed inking duties with ‘Eye of the Beholder!…

Merciless biological freak Marlene Blackgar and her monstrous posse abduct the entire Russell family whilst looking for the Book of Sins, until – once more – a fearsome force of supernature awakes to accidentally save the day as night falls…

With ‘The Hunter… and the Hunted!’ Jack and Buck deposit the trouble-magnet grimoire with Father Joquez, a Christian monk and scholar of ancient texts, but are still hunted because of it. Jack quits the rural wastes of Malibu for a new home in Los Angeles, trading forests and surf for concrete canyons but life is no easier.

In #2, dying scientist Cephalos seeks to harness Jack’s feral life-force to extend his own existence, living just long enough to regret it. Meanwhile, Joquez successfully translates the Darkhold: an accomplishment allowing an ancient horror to possess him in WbN #3, in ‘The Mystery of the Mad Monk!’

Whilst the werewolf is saddened to end such a noble life, he feels far happier dealing with millionaire sportsman Joshua Kane, who craves a truly unique head mounted on the wall of his den in the Franke Bolle inked ‘The Danger Game’. Half-naked, exhausted and soaked to his now hairless skin, Jack must then deal with Kane’s deranged brother, who wants the werewolf for his pet assassin in ‘A Life for a Death!’ (by Len Wein & Ploog) after which ‘Carnival of Fear!’ (Bolle inks again) finds the beast – and Jack, once the sun rises – a pitiful captive of seedy mystic Swami Calliope and his deadly circus of freaks.

The wolf was now the subject of an obsessive police detective too. “Old-school cop” Lou Hackett is an old buddy of trophy-hunter Joshua Kane – and every bit as cruelly savage – but his off-the-books investigation hardly begins before the Swami’s plans fall apart in concluding part ‘Ritual of Blood!’ (inked by Jim Mooney).

The beast is safely(?) roaming loose in the backwoods for #8’s quirky and penultimate monster-mash when an ancient demon possesses a cute little bunny in Wein, Werner Roth & Paul Reinman’s ‘The Lurker Behind the Door!’, after we which we pause for now with a slight but stirring engagement in Marvel Team-Up #12, where Wein, Conway, Ross Andru & Don Perlin expose a ‘Wolf at Bay!’

As webspinning wallcrawler meets wily werewolf, they initially battle each other – and ultimately malevolent mage Moondark – in foggy, fearful San Francisco before Jack heads back to LA for more feral fury in a future issue…

With covers by Neal Adams& Tom Palmer, Ploog, Gil Kane and John Romita, this collection is supplemented with an unused Ploog cover for Marvel Spotlight#4; a gallery of original Ploog art pages and a previous collection cover by Arthur Adams & Jason Keith. A moody masterpiece of macabre menace and all-out animal action, this tome shares some of the most under-appreciated magic moments in Marvel history: tense, suspenseful and solidly compelling chillers to delight any fear fan or drama addict. If you crave a few fun frightmares, go get your paws on this.
© 2022 MARVEL.

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Man I Hate Cursive – Cartoons for People and Advanced Bears


By Jim Benton (Andrews McMeel)
ISBN: 978-1-4494-7889-6 (PB) eISBN: 978-1-4494-8414-9

I love cartoons. Not animated films, but short, visual (although most often text-enhanced) stylised drawings which tell a story or potently and pithily express a mood or tone. In fact most people do. That’s why historians and sociologists use them as barometers of a defined time or era.

For nearly 200 years gag-panels and cartoon strips were the universal medium to disseminate wit, satire, mirth, criticism and cultural exchange. Sadly, after centuries of pre-eminence and ferocious power, these days the cartoon has been all but erased from printed newspapers – as indeed the physical publications themselves have dwindled in shops and on shelves.

However, thanks to the same internet which is killing print media, many graphic gagsters and drawing dramatists have enjoyed resurgence in an arena that doesn’t begrudge the space necessary to deliver a cartoon in all its fulsome glory…

Cartooning remains an unmissable daily joy to a vast global readership whose requirements are quite different from those of hard-core, dedicated comic fans, or even that ever-growing base of intrigued browsers just starting to dip their toes in the sequential narrative pool.

Even those stuck-up holdouts proudly boasting they have “never read a comic” certainly enjoy strips or panels: a golden bounty of ephemeral amusement demanding no commitment other than a moment’s close attention. Truth be told, it’s probably in our genes…

And because that’s the contrary nature of things, those gags now get collected in spiffy collections like this one, intended to be enjoyed over and over again like a beloved favourite song…

Jim Benton began his illustration work making up crazy characters in a T-Shirt shop and designing greetings cards. Born in 1960, he’d grown up in Birmingham, Michigan before studying Fine Arts at Western Michigan University.

Now tirelessly earning a living exercising his creativity, he started self-promoting those weird funny things he’d dreamed up and was soon raking in the dosh from properties such as Dear Dumb Diary, Dog of Glee, Franny K. Stein, Just Jimmy, Just Plain Mean, Sweetypuss, The Misters, Meany Doodles, Vampy Doodles, Kissy Doodles, jOkObo and It’s Happy Bunny in a variety of magazines and other venues. Latterly, he made a move into more conventional but no less entertaining delights. You should especially seek out Attack of the stuff and Fann Club: Batman Squad…

His gags, jests and japes are delivered in a huge variety of styles and manners: each perfectly in accord with whatever sick, sweet, clever, sentimental, whimsical or just plain strange content each idea demands. This particular collection is from 2016 but is still fresh, strange and irreverent enough to have you clutching your sides in approved cartoon manner…

Here you will explore the innocently horrific inner world of children and monsters, learn to appreciate anew the contributions to society of teachers and experience Benton’s satirical side as bigots and racists are convicted out of their own mouths.

There are heaping helpings of animal antics – both wryly sardonic and barbarously slapstick – and wicked observations on the dating scene, plus true love pictured in all its infamy, how robots need a little tenderness too as well as the inside track on what it means to be Death…

You’ll see some of the strangest and most disquietingly surreal gags ever penned – such as the dysfunctional band made of animate body parts or the bizarrely extrovert characters comprising ‘The Sideshow’ – and even a truly unique take on historical personages and superheroes of the screen and comics pages…

As ever, there are trenchant swipes at the worlds of Art and Big Business as well as incisive explorations of the relationship between us and our pets, the perils of inventing stuff and a pants-wetting selection debating the downsides of air travel…

And best of all, the artist sets aside time and space to share with us God’s Plan and proves that the Almighty’s sense of humour is both wicked and petty…

You might discover Not-Facts that will change your life after gleaning Benton’s take on loneliness, fast food, binge eating, farting, periods, disabilities, growing up, Big Pharma, and the business of medicine in single page giggle-bombs ranging from strident solo panels to extended strips; silent shockers to poetically florid and verbose tracts.

There are also some jokes about bears…

Another uproarious compilation to make the sourest persimmon laugh as sweetly as pie (there are no joke about pies in this volume)…
© 2016 Jim Benton. All rights reserved.

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Benny Breakiron volume 1: The Red Taxis


By Peyo, with backgrounds by Will: translated by Joe Johnson (Papercutz/NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-59707-409-4 (HB/Digital edition)

Pierre Culliford was born in Belgium in 1928 to a family of British origin living in the Schaerbeek district of Brussels. An admirer of the works of Hergé and American comics in Mickey, Robinson and Hurrah!, he developed his own artistic skills, but war and family bereavement forced him to forgo further education and find work.

After toiling as a cinema projectionist, in 1945 he joined C.B.A. animation studios, where he met André Franquin, Morris and Eddy Paape. When the studio closed, he briefly studied at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts before moving full-time into graphic advertising. In his spare time he submitted comic strips to the burgeoning post-war comics publishers. The first sale was in April 1946: Pied-Tendre, a tale of American Indians which saw print in Riquet, the comics supplement to the daily L’Occident newspaper. Further sales to other venues followed and in 1952 his knight found a permanent spot in Le Journal de Spirou. Retitled Johan et Pirlouit, the strip prospered and in 1958 introduced a strange bunch of blue woodland gnomes called Les Schtroumpfs.

Culliford – now using the nom de plume Peyo – would gradually turn those adorable little mites (known to us and most of the world as the Smurfs) into an all-encompassing global empire, but before being sucked onto that relentless treadmill, he still found time to create a few other noteworthy strips such as the titanic tyke on view here today.

In 1960, Benoit Brisefer – AKA Benedict Ironbreaker (Steven Sterk in Dutch) – debuted in LJdS #1183 (December 1960). With some slyly added tips of the beret to Siegel & Shuster’s Superman (check out that cover, fanboys!), what gently unfolds are wry bucolic romps of an extraordinary little lad living a generally quiet life in an unassuming little French – or maybe Belgian? – town.

Quiet, well-mannered and a bit lonely, Benny is the mightiest boy on Earth: able to crush steel or stone in his tiny hands, leap huge distances and run faster than a racing car. He is also generally immune to all physical harm, but his only real weakness is that all his strength deserts him whenever he catches cold… which he does with frightening ease and great frequency…

Benny never tries concealing his powers but somehow the adults never catch on. They usually think he’s telling fibs or boasting, and whenever he tries to prove he can bend steel in his hands the unlucky lad gets another dose of the galloping sniffles!

Most kids avoid him. It’s hard to make friends or play games when a minor kick can pop a football like a soap bubble and a shrug can topple trees...

Well-past-it Brits of my age and vintage might remember the character from weekly comics in the 1960’s. As Tammy Tuff – The Strongest Boy on Earth – and later as both Benny Breakiron and Steven Strong – our beret-wearing wonder appeared in Giggle and other periodicals from 1967 onwards.

With Peyo’s little blue cash-cows taking up ever larger amounts of his concentration and time, other members of his studio assumed greater responsibilities for Benoit as years passed. Willy Maltaite (“Will”), Gos, Yvan Delporte, Françoise Walthéry and Albert Blesteau all pitched in, and Jean Roba created many eye-catching LJdS covers. However, by 1978 the demands of the Smurfs were all consuming and all the studio’s other strips were dropped.

You can’t keep a good super-junior down though and, after Peyo’s death in 1992, his son Thierry Culliford & cartoonist Pascal Garray revived the strip, adding six more volumes to the eight generated by Peyo and Co. between 1960 and 1978.

Thanks to US publisher Papercutz, some – but not yet all! – of the gloriously genteel, outrageously engaging power fantasies are available to English-language readers again, both as robust full-colour hardbacks and eBooks, and this initial exploit begins in sedate micro-metropolis Vivejoie-la-Grande, where the sweet kid goes about his solitary life, doing good deeds in secret and being as good a boy as he can.

However, his sense of fair play is outraged when aging taxi driver Monsieur Dussiflard becomes the target of a dirty tricks campaign by new company Red Taxis. When he and the incensed cabbie challenge the oily company CEO in his flashy high-rise office, Benny is shooed away and the elderly driver vanishes.

Suspicions aroused, Benny investigates and is attacked by thuggish Red Taxi employees. Only after thrashing and humiliating the goons does Benny realise that he still doesn’t know where Dussiflard is, so he retroactively throws the fight…

Just as he is imprisoned with his fellow abductee, the worst happens and the bombastic boy comes down with a stinker of a cold! Helpless as any other 8-year old, he’s stuffed in a crate with the codger cabbie and loaded onto a freighter headed to the Galapagos Islands…

With all opposition ended, the Boss and his Red Taxi stooges begin the final stage of a devilish plot, utterly oblivious to the dogged determination of Benny – who escapes the ship and an alluring tropical paradise, impatiently waits for his cold to clear up and none too soon sets off on a race against time, the elements and his own woefully-lacking knowledge of geography if he is to stop the ruthless criminals…

A superbly sweet and sassy spoof and fabulously winning fantasy of childhood validation and agency, The Red Taxis offers a distinctly Old World spin to the notion of superheroes and provides a wealth of action, thrills and chortles for lovers of astounding adventure and incredible comics excellence.
© Peyo, 2013 – licensed through Lafig Belgium. English translation © 2013 by Papercutz. All rights reserved.