Author: NowReadThis

Posted on

The Philosopher, The Dog and the Wedding


By Barbara Stok, design & colours by Ricky van Duuren: translated by Michele Hutchison (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: (978-1-914224-09-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

It’s long been a truism of the creative arts that the most effective, efficient and economical method of instruction and informational training is the comic strip. If you simply consider the medium’s value as a historical recording and narrative system, the process encompasses cave paintings, hieroglyphs, pictograms, oriental prints, Stations of the Cross, the Bayeux Tapestry and so much more: and pretty succinctly covers the history of humanity…

For well over a century and a half, advertising mavens exploited the easy impact of words wedded to evocative pictures, whilst public information materials frequently used sequential narrative to get hard messages over quickly and simply. In a surprisingly short time, the internet and social media restored and enhanced the full universal might of image narratives to transcend language. Who doesn’t “speak” emoji?

Since World War II, strips have been used as training materials for every aspect of adult life from school careers advice to various disciplines of military service – utilising the talents of comics giants as varied as Milton Caniff, Will Eisner (who spent decades producing reams of comic manuals for the US army and other government departments), Kurt Schaffenberger and Neil Adams. The educational value and merit of comics is a given.

The magnificent Larry Gonick in particular uses the strip medium to stuff learning and entertainment in equal amounts into weary brains of jaded students with his webcomic Raw Materials and such seasoned tomes as The Cartoon History of the Universe, The Cartoon History of the United States and The Cartoon Guide to… series (Genetics, Sex, The Environment et al). That’s not even including his crusading satirical strip Commoners for Common Ground, and educational features Science Classics, Kokopelli & Company and pioneering cartoon work with the National Science Foundation. He never stops: his most recent books are Hypercapitalism: The Modern Economy, Its Values, and How to Change Them and The Cartoon Guide to Biology. Gotta Get ‘Em All…

Japan has employed manga textbooks in schools and universities for decades and even releases government reports, documents and business prospectuses in comics formats to get around the public’s apathy towards reading large dreary volumes of information. So do we and everybody else. I’ve even produced the occasional multi-panel teaching-tract myself. The method has also been frequently used to sublimely and elegantly tackle the greatest and most all-consuming preoccupation and creation of the mind of Man…

Like organised religion, the conceptual discipline dubbed Philosophy has had a tough time relating to modern folk and – just like innumerable vicars in pulpits everywhere – advocates and followers have sought fresh ways to make eternal questions and subjective verities understandable and palatable to us hoi-polloi and average simpletons.

In 2021 award-winning Dutch artist Barbara Stok (Barbaraal Tot Op Het Bot, De Omslag, Vincent) translated her interest in the discipline, history and one particular groundbreaking, revolutionary deep thinker to produce De filosoof, dehond en debruiloft and it was published by Nijgh &Van Ditmas, Amsterdam).

Born in Groningen in 1970, Stok was a journalist who studied at The Hague’s Fotoacademie School of Photography before moving into editorial cartooning and illustration in the 1990s. With Maaike Hartjes and Gerrie Hondius she pioneered a generation of female cartoonists using the art form to speak about their lives. Most of her personal work was amusingly autobiographical, working out her life’s big questions via strips. Inevitably, pondering life & death and right &wrong led her to other older investigators and after taking some formal philosophy courses – five years’ worth – she created a history of the astounding and incredibly bold and brave Hipparchia. Since 2020 Stok has taken on a regular gig: creating the strip Jan, Jans en de Kinderen for women’s weekly Libelle.

Delivered in her sublimely accessible child-like primitivist/Niavist style and preferred anecdotal episodic narrative format, The Philosopher, The Dog and the Wedding explores the life and status of women in 4th century (BCE) Greece through the thoughts and experiences of Hipparchia, daughter of a wealthy lumber-merchant in Maroneia, and long overdue to be profitably married off.

As seen in ‘eudaimonia/happiness’, she is given far too much liberty: being able to read, allowed full access to her father’s large library and indulged in her habit of eavesdropping on the philosophical debates of men. Naturally, this leads to her developing a keen mind and opinions of her own, but she can only share them with the house dogs…

After only a few embarrassments, she is bundled off to Athens where her brother Metrocles studies Philosophy with all the greatest thinkers of the Age of Alexander the Great. Wealthy silver mine owner Leandros has a son Kallios who needs a wife, and if she behaves herself and acts like a decent daughter should, she can bind the two families together…

In ‘paracharassein/deface the currency’ her education truly begins. A thrilling and revelatory mental readjustment comes from her apparent resignation to stay in her place, but only after after encountering a homeless tramp who is sublimely content and intellectually brilliant. Crates is the chief proponent of a radical offshoot of the Cynical movement: called by those who don’t mock him and rubbish his teachings as “the new Socrates”…

Distracted but still devout, Hipparchia endures: trying her best to follow family interests and convince Kallios’ family that she is worthy, but the gorgeous glittering prize – an Olympic javelin contender – doesn’t own a single book.

Always accompanied by a male slave, she goes through the traditional motions, buying clothes, learning the secrets of cosmetics and making herself as valuable as she can, but constantly encounters Crates, living his perfect life of poverty and thought. Her distraction proves advantageous, however, when Metrocles almost quits school and she begs Crates to talk him round…

The vagabond is respected by many: a student of the great Diogenes. Its why the Cynic school philosophers are called “Dogs”…

Successfully negotiating Leandros’ conditions, Hipparchia becomes the official fiancée in ‘physis/nature’ and begins learning her expected duties, but chafes at the utter lack of intellectual stimulation. When her brother buys Crates’ book of thoughts, she cannot stop herself reading it. Soon she’s listening in on the students debating in the men-only areas of the house and craving more…

Philosophers at that time could expound anywhere, and men would gather to listen, debate, contend and contribute. On her way to another fitting spree, Hipparchia joins a heated debate despite her social standing (“seen but never heard in public”) and it’s all her slave can do to extricate her from a dangerous situation. It’s worth it though, to hear Crates speak…

Frustrated and guilty as her brother bawls out the negligent slave, a crux moment occurs as she looks over Metrocles’ library and finds a scroll written by a woman. Perictione was Plato’s mother and her thoughts were clearly worth preserving…

Soon she embarks on a dangerous plan, and finds a way to join the male crowds and even openly debate with Crates…

As the marriage proceedings roll on, Hipparchia’s social sins and personal transgressions mount in ‘autarkeia/self-sufficiency’ before culminating in a ‘parrhèsia/freedom of speech’ crisis, the landmark resolution of ‘askêsis/training’ and a new beginning in ‘ataraxia/inner peace’…

This story of a powerful woman defining female empowerment and the fight for personal truth is delivered in a potent and accessible manner that beguiles fully as much as Hipparchia and Cratus’ logic and example convinced and challenged the literally patriarchal system of ancient Greece. Augmented by an impassioned ‘Afterword’ and detailed, copious and comprehensive ‘Notes’ to aid comprehension and provide context, this is a visual delight and telling hammer-blow of reasoned debate which should be compulsory reading for all.
© 2021 Barbara Stok. English translation © 2022 by Michelle Hutchison. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Marvel Adventures Avengers: Thor and Captain America


By Paul Tobin, Scott Gray, Todd DeZago, Ronan Cliquet, Ron Lim, Lou Kang & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5584-3 (Digest PB)

In 2003 the House of Ideas instituted a Marvel Age line: an imprint updating classic original tales and characters for a newer, younger readership. The enterprise was modified in 2005, with core titles reduced to Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man. The tone was very much that of the company’s burgeoning TV cartoon franchises, in delivery if not name.

Supplemental series including Super Heroes, The Avengers, Hulk and Iron Man chuntered along merrily until 2010 when they were cancelled. In their place came new volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man.

Most of the re-imagined tales were collected in gleefully inviting digest-sized compilations and digitised; this – except for a electric version – was the case with this engaging ensemble featuring fabulous  forays starring the God of Thunder or Sentinel of Liberty and their Avenging allies: a quartet of all-ages tales from the second volume of Marvel Adventures Super Heroes (#13-16, spanning June-September 2011).

The action opens with a mythological masterpiece by Paul Tobin, Ronan Cliquet & Amilton Santos wherein plucky novice hero Nova is invited by Avenging comrades Thor and Valkyrie to accompany them on an annual errand for All-Father Odin.

In the distant past when Asgardians warred with Trolls, godling messenger Glane failed in his mission and was banished to the ghastly Fields of the Fallen to pay penance by continually battling the Golden Realm’s vilest enemies. Periodically, Thor has been sent to add new tasks to the sinning failure’s heavy burden, and this year – as the Thunderer and Valkyrie ready themselves for the trip – they invite starstruck neophyte Nova along.

However, as the trio war their way through horrific monsters and overwhelming odds, Nova finds himself increasingly uncomfortable with the sentence meted out to Glane. He even begins doubting the motives of his immortal mentors. All that changes once he meets and battles beside the convicted penitent…

Originating in MASH #14, ‘Out of Time!’ is by Todd DeZago, Ron Lim & Scott Koblish (inspired by Gerry Conway & Ross Andru’s tale from the original Marvel Team-Up #7). Here, the Lord of Storm intercepts Spider-Man after the wallcrawler is blasted high into the sky whilst battling raving maniac the Looter.

That happy coincidence occurs just a bizarre force freezes time around them. When the heroes discover that only they have escaped a devastating weapon deployed by Trollish tyrant Kryllk the Conqueror to paralyze and overwhelm both Asgard and the mortal plane, they must divide their strength to simultaneously smash the conqueror in Manhattan and Asgard if they are to set time running free again…

Captain America takes the spotlight in #15 as ‘Back in Time’ (Tobin, Cliquet & Santos) finds him battling Neanderthals with ray-guns in a National Forest after tracking down rogue geneticists who have stolen a huge amount of plutonium.

A mere mile away, Peter Parker’s girlfriend Sophia Sanduval is getting back to nature and chilling with her furry, scaly and feathered friends. As Chat, the mutant teen’s power to communicate with animals makes her a crucial component of the mystery-solving Blonde Phantom Detective Agency, but even she has never seen anything like the wave of extinct creatures which appear after Cap begins battling the tooled-up cavemen.

Soon Chat has been briefed on the deadly experiments of rogue technologist Jerrick Brogg. The villain’s ambition is to build an army out of revived extinct creatures, but she and helps The Star-Spangled Avenger frustrate those save all the beasts he has re-created from short painful lives of terror and brutal exploitation, before putting the maniac away for good.

Wrapping up the action comes ‘Stars, Stripes and Spiders!’ by DeZago, Lou Kang & Pat Davidson (based on Len Wein & Gil Kane’s tale from Marvel Team-Up #13). When a certain wallcrawling high-school student/occasional masked hero stumbles into Captain America tackling an AIM cadre stealing super-soldier serum, the nervous lad learns a few things about the hero game from the legendary guy who wrote the book. Sadly, not making that lesson any easier is petrifying supervillain Grey Gargoyle, whose deadly touch almost ends Spidey’s homework worries – and continued existence – forever…

Fast, furious, funny and enthralling, these riotous mini-epics are extremely enjoyable yarns, although parents should note that some of the themes and certainly the level of violence might not be what everybody considers “All-Ages Super Hero Action”…
© 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted on

The Bluecoats volume 16: Sallie


By Willy Lambil & Raoul Cauvin, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook).
ISBN: 978-1-80044-089-0 (Album PB/Digital edition)

Devised by Louis “Salvé” Salvérius & Raoul Cauvin – who scripted the first 64 volumes until his retirement in 2020 – Les Tuniques Bleues (Dutch-language iteration De Blauwbloezen) debuted at the end of the 1960s: created to supplant the irreplaceable Lucky Luke when that laconic maverick defected from weekly anthology Le Journal de Spirou to rival publication Pilote.

From the start, the substitute strip was hugely popular: swiftly becoming one of the most popular bande dessinée series in Europe. It is now scribed by Jose-Luis Munuera and the BeKa writing partnership and up to 66 tomes…

Salvé was a cartoonist in the Gallic big-foot/big-nose humour manner, and after his sudden death in 1972, successor Willy “Lambil” Lambillotte gradually moved towards a more realistic – but still overtly comedic – tone and look. Lambil is Belgian, born in 1936 and, after studying Fine Art in college, joined publishing giant Dupuis in 1952 as a letterer.

Born in 1938, scripter Cauvin was also Belgian and – before entering Dupuis’ animation department in 1960 – studied Lithography. He soon discovered his true calling was comedy and began a glittering, prolific writing career at Le Journal de Spirou. In addition, he scripted dozens of long-running, award winning series including Cédric, Les Femmes en Blanc and Agent 212: totalling more than 240 separate albums. Les Tuniques Bleues alone has sold over 15 million copies… and counting.

Cauvin died on August 19th 2021, but his vast legacy of barbed laughter remains.

Here, designated The Bluecoats, our long-suffering protagonists are Sergeant Cornelius Chesterfield and Corporal Blutch: worthy, honest fools in the manner of Laurel & Hardy; hapless, ill-starred US cavalrymen defending America during the War Between the States.

The original format offered single-page gags set around an Indian-plagued Wild West fort, but from second volume Du Nord au Sud, the sad-sack soldiers were situated back East, perpetually fighting in the American Civil War.

All subsequent adventures – despite often ranging far beyond the traditional environs of the sundered USA and taking in a lot of genuine and thoroughly researched history – are set within the timeframe of the Secession conflict.

Blutch is your run-of-the-mill, whinging little-man-in-the street: work-shy, mouthy, devious and ferociously critical of the army and its inept orchestrators and commanders. Ducking, diving, deserting whenever he can, he’s you or me – except at his core he’s smart, principled and even heroic… if no easier option is available.

Chesterfield is big and burly, a professional fighting man and proud career soldier of the 22nd Cavalry who devoutly believes in patriotism and the esprit-de-corps of the Military. He’s brave, never shirking his duty and hungry to be a medal-wearing hero. He also loves his cynical little pal so naturally, they quarrel like a married couple, fight like brothers yet simply cannot agree on the point and purpose of the horrendous war they are trapped in. That situation again stretches their friendship to breaking point in this cunningly conceived instalment. Coloured by Vittorio Leonardo, Les Tuniques Bleues – Sallie was released continentally in 2018 as the 62nd book, and became Cinebook’s 16th translated Bluecoats album. It is not like the majority of these tales, which tread a fine line between comedy and righteous anger, and if you share these books with younger kids, read it first on your own. Preferably with tissues and your comfort-amplifying food or beverage of choice. Sallie is another incident based on a true story of the war, but if you can refrain from looking up Sallie Ann Jarrett until you finish, it will be to your benefit.

It begins with our protagonists again arguing about the war and their part in it. The little man is grooming his wily steed Polka, a horse so smart it has managed to survive the entire conflict and many manic cavalry charges commanded by a callous high command and led by deranged, seemingly bulletproof Captain Stark. It quickly becomes clear that Chesterfield sees the horses and mules – all animals in fact – as nothing more than equipment: expendable, disposable and replaceable…

The northerners are gearing up for another major battle and as they bicker reinforcements arrive, Pennsylvanians of the 11th Infantry Division despatched by General Ulysses Grant himself. They are battle-hardened veterans who proudly march into camp accompanied a dog. It transpires that Sallie has been with them from the start; fighting beside them on many bloody battlefields. She quickly takes a liking to Polka and, as the soldiers all swap stories around campfires, slowly the ice around Chesterfield’s heart begins to thaw…

The Brass have no time for comradeship: they are cloistered in luxury trying to divine Confederate strategy, outguess their tactics and work out exactly where the enemy is. Ultimately, baffled as always, they resort to an old tactic and order a trustworthy man to go out and capture someone from the other side…

Chesterfield heads out at dusk towards the rebel lines, unaware until far too late that his one-man suicide mission is being covertly augmented by Sallie and – far more reluctantly – by Blutch on Polka. Astoundingly, the job is a success and thanks to the intrepid mutt, they capture Southern spy and old acquaintance Cockroach. Dragged back to camp, the enemy combatant is soon made to talk…

The next day, a flurry of activity sees Union armies confidently moving on the unsuspecting opposition and into the jaws of a disinformation-fuelled trap built from their Generals’ own arrogance and inability to improvise. With no other answer than to throw more bodies into the meat grinder, the battle devolves into a massacre and not just human casualties mount…

In the end all our heroes can do is pick themselves up, honour their fallen and reaffirm what they always knew…

Packed with true but daft anecdotes – like the story of Robert E. Lee’s chicken – and pointedly seditious polemic with moving moments, Sallie shows what war truly costs, weaponizing charm and humour, making occasional moments of shocking verity doubly powerful and hard-hitting. Funny, thrilling, beautifully realised and eminently readable, Bluecoats is the best kind of war-story and Western: appealing to the best, not worst, of the human spirit. And this one is really, really sad…
© Dupuis 2018 by Lambil & Cauvin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2022 Cinebook Ltd.

Posted on

Hellraisers


By Robert Sellers & JAKe (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-906838-36-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

Here’s a quandary for you. Why are we blessed with and so obsessed by the capacity for self-destruction? Answers on a beermat to…

Robert Sellers used to be a stand-up comedian – so he has his own perspective – before settling as an author and film journalist with prose biographies including Sting, Tom Cruise, Sean Connery and the Monty Python phenomenon to his name. He’s also contributed to periodicals and magazines like The Independent, Total Film, Empire, SFX and Cinema Retro. And he’s also been seen on TV quite a bit.

In 2009 he published a magnificent history of theatrical excellence and brilliant excess in his Life and Inebriated Times of Burton, Harris, O’Toole and Reed. Two years later, he revisited and reformatted the material in collaboration with prestigious illustrator, designer and animator JAKe (How to Speak Wookiee, cartoon series Geekboy, Mighty Book of Boosh, The Prodigy’s Fat of the Land and so much more, both singly and with the studio Detonator which he co-founded). The artist keeps himself to himself and lets his superb artistry do all the talking.

Self-adapted from his prose history of the iconic barnstorming British film and theatre legends Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Oliver Reed and Peter O’Toole, Sellers transformed Hellraisers into a pictorial feast of “why did he do THAT?!” These tales of lurid limelight reveal the unique and incredible lives of a quartet of new wave, working class thespian heroes; each more famed for boozing and brawling than for acting. The result is a masterful parable and celebration of the vital, vibrant creative force of rebellion.

The histories are diligently interpreted with savage, witty style – and with a heaping helping of barely-suppressed admiration – in ferociously addictive and expressive monochrome cartoon and caricature novelettes by the enigmatic JAKe.

Working on the principle that a Hellraiser is “a person who causes trouble by violent, drunken or outrageous behaviour” and cloaked in the guise of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the salutary fables open as another drunken reprobate is thrown out of another pub. It’s Christmas Eve at the Rose & Crown of Broken Dreams and Martin should be home with his wife and son.

After again disgracing himself, and still shaking with DT’s and unexpunged rage, the pathetic drunk staggers back to his loving but scared family, only to pass out. He is awoken by his hellraising father who drank and smoked himself to death seven years previously.

Told that he has one last chance to save himself, Martin is warned that he will be visited by four spirits (no, sadly not that sort) who will regale him with the stories of their lives and fates and failures and triumphs…

What follows is a beguiling journey of bitter self-discovery as Burton, Harris, Reed and O’Toole (still alive at that juncture, but part of the visitation of “spooky buggers” as it’s just a matter of time, my dear boy…) recount their own soused-and-sodden histories, experiences and considerations in an attempt to turn around the piddling lightweight. They’re certainly not that repentant, however, and even proud of the excesses and sheer exuberant manly mythology they’ve made of their lives…

Managing the masterful magic trick of perfectly capturing the sheer charismatic force and personality of these giants of their craft and willing (or helpless?) accomplices in their own downfalls, this superb saga even ends on an upbeat note. However, that’s only after cataloguing the incredible achievements, starry careers, broken relationships, impossibly impressive and frequently hilarious exploits of debauchery, intoxication and affray perpetrated singly and in unison by the departed, unquiet sozzled soul…

Jam-packed with legendary exploits and barroom legends of four astoundingly gifted men who couldn’t stop breaking rules and hearts (especially their own), and blessed/cursed with infinitely unquenchable thirsts for the hard stuff and the aforementioned appetites for self-destruction, this intoxicating, so very tasty tome venerates the myths these unforgettable icons promulgated and built around themselves, but never descends into pious recrimination or laudatory gratification.

It’s just how they were…

Sellers has the gift of forensic language, perfectly channelling the voices and idiom of each star even as JAKe perfectly blends shocking historical reportage with evocative surreal metafiction in this wonderful example of the power of sequential narrative.

Clever, witty and unmissable; isn’t it time you took a little nip to fortify yourself?
© 2010 Robert Sellers and JAKe. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Superman: Infinite City


By Mike Kennedy & Carlos Meglia (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1401200664 (DC US TPB) 978-1845760731 (Titan Books UK HB)

This original graphic novel is a lightweight but lovely piece of fluff that sees investigative reporters Mr and Mrs Kent-Lane tracking down the source of a devastating super-gun, only to be sucked into a strange time-warped dimension. There they are embroiled in a civil war between greedy, slimy, power hungry industrialist Jesden Tyme and the robotic Mayor, who turns out to be a download of the consciousness of Superman’s long dead biological father Jor-El…

Lavishly illustrated in the manner of an animated feature film, the European-flavoured stylizations of Argentinean Carlos Meglia (December 11 1957-August 15 2008: Irish Coffee, Bet Your Life, Star Wars) may not be to everyone’s taste but maybe you should just persist and be open to the new…

The plot from Mike Kennedy (Lone Wolf 2100, Star Wars: Underworld and the deeply under-appreciated Ghost/Batgirl, among others) lacks any real punch or originality of its own, relying on clichéd and oft-rehashed tropes, but there’s still bunches of wit and wonder to find over this particular rainbow. Moreover, the dialogue is sharp and effective, and some of the interplay between Lois and Clark is simply delightful. If you want a “done-in-one” delight starring comic books’ oldest power couple, this could be what you’re looking for.

There’s also a hardback British edition available should you want your reading unbending as well as pretty…
© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Mac Raboy’s Flash Gordon volume 2


By Don Moore & Mac Raboy (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-911-4 (TPB)

By almost every metric, Flash Gordon is the most influential comic strip in the world. When the hero debuted on Sunday January 7th 1934 (with the equally superb Jungle Jim running as a supplementary “topper” strip). It was a slick, sophisticated answer to Philip Nolan & Dick Calkins’ revolutionary, ideas-packed, inspirational, but quirkily clunky Buck Rogers (which had also launched on January 7th – albeit in 1929), two fresh elements were added to the wonderment: Classical Lyricism and Poetic Dynamism. The newcomer became a weekly invitation to stunningly exotic glamour and astonishing beauty.

Where Buck merged traditional adventure with groundbreaking science concepts, Flash reinterpreted fairy tales, hero epics and mythology, draping them in the spectacular trappings of contemporary futurism, with the varying “rays”, “engines” and “motors” of modern pulp sci fi substituting for trusty swords and lances. There were also plenty of those too – and exotic craft and contraptions stood in for galleons, chariots and magic carpets. The narrative trick made the far-fetched satisfactorily familiar – and it was initially continued by Mac Raboy and Don Moore in their run of Sunday strips.

Look closely, though, and you’ll see cowboys, gangsters and of course, flying saucer fetishes adding contemporary flourish to the fanciful fables in this second superb volume which is long overdue for a fresh edition.

Most important of all, the sheer artistic talent of Alex Raymond, his compositional skills, fine linework, eye for clean, concise detail and just plain genius for drawing beautiful people and things, swiftly made this the strip that all young artists swiped from. When original material comic books began a few years later, literally dozens of talented kids used Gordon as their model and ticket to future success in the field of adventure strips. Almost all the others went with Milton Caniff’s expressionist masterpiece Terry and the Pirates (and to see one of his better disciples check out Beyond Mars, limned by wonderful Lee Elias).

Flash Gordon began on present-day Earth (which was 1934, remember?) with a wandering world about to smash into our planet. As global panic ensued, polo player Flash and fellow passenger Dale Arden narrowly escaped disaster when a meteor fragment downed their airliner. They landed on the estate of tormented genius Dr. Hans Zarkov, who imprisoned them in the rocket-ship he had built. His plan? To fly the ship directly at the astral invader and deflect it from Earth by crashing into it!

Thus began a decade of sheer escapist magic in a Ruritanian Neverland: a blend of Camelot, Oz and a hundred other fantasy realms promising paradise yet concealing vipers, ogres and demons, all cloaked in a glimmering sheen of sleek scientific speculation. Worthy adversaries such as utterly evil yet magnetic Ming, emperor of the fantastic wandering planet; myriad exotic races and shattering conflicts offered a fantastic alternative to drab and dangerous reality for millions of avid readers around the world.

With Moore doing the bulk of the scripting, Alex Raymond’s ‘On the Planet Mongo’ ran every Sunday until 1944, when the artist joined the Marines. On his return, he forsook wild imaginings for sober reality: creating gentleman-detective Rip Kirby. The public’s unmissable weekly appointment with wonderment perforce continued under the artistic auspices of Austin Briggs – who had drawn the monochrome daily instalments since 1940.

In 1948, eight years after beginning his career drawing for the Harry A. Chesler production “shop” comic book artist Emmanuel “Mac” Raboy took over illustrating the Sunday page. Moore remained as scripter and began co-writing with the new artist.

Raboy’s sleek, fine-line brush style – heavily influenced by his idol Raymond – had made his work on Captain Marvel Jr., Kid Eternity and especially Green Lama a pinnacle of artistic quality in the early days of the proliferating superhero genre. His seemingly inevitable assumption of Flash Gordon’s extraordinary exploits led to a renaissance of the strip and in a rapidly evolving post-war world, it became once more a benchmark of timeless, hyper-realistic quality escapism which only Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant could match.

This second 260-page paperback volume, produced in landscape format and printed in stark black-&-white (although one or two strips appear to have been scanned from printed colour copies) covers May 17th 1953 to February 23rd 1958, and opens with a scholarly Introduction on ‘Comic Strip Godfathers’ from Bruce Jones before the previous volume’s cliffhanger is addressed…

With a new spaceship, far-flung travellers Flash, Dale and Zarkov set off for Earth but are forced to land on the Moon where a secret human base had been established. For unknown reasons Dr. Stella and her thuggish aide Marc detain and delay them, but after an increasing number of close shaves and mysterious accidents, a little digging by our heroes reveals that they are the unwitting guests of ruthless space pirates…

After expediently dealing with the planetary privateers, our heroes head for Earth, and are promptly seconded to spearhead an urgent exploratory expedition to a newly discovered satellite body. Suitably dutiful, they hurtle off into the void again…

‘(Life on) Titan’ ran from 14th June to September 20th 1953: detailing how the little world is populated by giants. However, after capturing one of the hulking inhabitants, Zarkov concludes that the truth is far stranger than the Earthmen could have imagined…

The tireless boffin then builds a single-seater spaceship and requires Flash to take a test run out to Jupiter’s moon ‘Callisto’ (27th September 1953 to 17th January 1954). A sudden illness causes a crash and Flash awakens in care of elderly hermit Phylo, who cunningly embroils the dauntless troubleshooter in his own struggle against invisible psychic dictator The Mind…

After overthrowing the hidden tyrant, the indomitable Earthman heads home and actually enjoys a little rest before an ancient mystery unfolds in ‘Flash Gordon and the Thanatos’ (17th January-2nd May).

After archaeologist Dr. Sark finds incontrovertible evidence of a prehistoric atomic blast in the Libyan desert, our ever-inquisitive action man uncovers an alien in a bottle but is too late to save Dale from being abducted by the mind-bending survivor of an antediluvian starship crash…

Dashing in pursuit as his beguiled beloved heads off-world, Flash is drawn into the parallel dimension of Cortinus where god-like beings dwell. They welcome intruders from fondly-remembered Earth, but are sadly unaware that one of the visitors carries the malevolent spirit of their outcast brother Loki. Once freed, the villain proudly boasts how he influenced and dominated many bellicose humans such as Alexander, Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan, and now intends ruling two realms for his own benefit and amusement. Sadly, nigh-omnipotent Loki vastly underestimates the ingenuity and resolve of his mortal opponents…

In a ship donated by head deity Zustra, Flash and Dale re-cross the dimensional divide, arriving in deep space to encounter a scene of horrific barbarity at an Observatory Station. When the ‘Outlaw of the Asteroids’ (9th May-25th July) took the outpost’s oxygen, the crew almost died in hibernation. After reviving the deep-frozen scientists, our adventurers set off after the ruthless bandit and discover the reason for his heinous theft was both noble and desperate. The bandit perishes for his sins, but not before leaving young space orphan Pebbles with the only humans he can trust…

By the time Flash, Dale and Pebbles reach Earth the next exploit is already well underway as a seed of ‘The Star Tree’ (1st August-17th October) survives a meteor crash in the Amazon and immediately propagates itself in fertile soil. By the time our bold wanderers accidentally land in the region, it has transformed into an arctic wilderness where a gigantic plant voraciously consumes every living thing its grasping branches can seize…

The vegetable invasion is no accident, and as Flash leads the frozen rain forest’s indigenous inhabitants in spirited resistance, cold-blooded aliens appear. They lived on Earth when it was a giant ice ball and after eons on Pluto want their original world back! They would have succeeded too, had not one of the invaders found his heart warming to the plight of the disputed world’s current tenants…

With that threat ended normality returns, but soon after packing Pebbles off to boarding school Flash, Zarkov and many other unsuspecting Earth folk are shanghaied by eerie metal globes and transported to ‘The Lonely Planet!’ (24th October 1954 to 9th January 1955)…

Here, Herculean extraterrestrial barbarians and wily midgets conspire and compete to find fresh fodder for gladiatorial contests, before, with the aid of a usurped king, Flash upsets the unlikely alliance and overthrows the twisted regime. However, just as the liberated Earthlings enter home orbit, their always-embattled birthworld is attacked by insectoid Antomni who require a fresh colony to exploit. The bug beings expect little resistance as they possess the power of Time Migration…

The invaders travel millions of years ‘Into the Past’ (16th January-27th March) to prevent the evolution of humanity but accidentally catch Flash and Zarkov in their temporal backwash, allowing our heroes to inspire a band of Nearly humans to exterminate the insectoids before returning to their proper time and place…

Restless Zarkov then organises an exploratory expedition to ‘Venus’ (3rd April -19th June) where Flash and Dale find a feudal civilisation in turmoil beneath the planet’s impenetrable cloud layers. Before long, they are assisting scientific prodigy Viko and his fellow exiled “Mistiks” in overturning oppressive, superstition-ruled authorities and introducing rational enlightenment to the Second Planet from the Sun…

Next, Africa is beset by a strange sleeping plague. Investigations reveal the source is escaped gasses from an unsuspected ‘City Within the Earth’ (26th June – 28th August). The accident causes toxic oxygen to contaminate the subterranean metropolis of Centra, and when its bravest warriors surface to investigate, a concatenation of misfortunes compel them to take Flash captive. Imprisoned and soon to become the treasured possession of flamboyant Princess Amara, Gordon is rescued by indomitable Dale who braves the depths and deadly air to save her man and seal off the underworld forever…

‘The Dark Planet’ (4th September – 6th November) has lurked undetected at the edge of the solar system for all of humanity’s history, but that occlusion ends when murderers Stragg, Rust and Tula are exiled from their advanced culture on the distant world of Ur and dumped on the frigid world. When Flash, Dale and Zarkov’s planetary mapping mission brings them to the bleak outpost, they are ambushed by the killers who then steal their ship. The aliens have never encountered human cunning though, and are soon back where they started and engaged in a lethal duel for control of the ship and their liberty…

Human trafficking underpins ‘Station Crossroads’ (13th November 1955 – 15th January 1956) as our heroes stumble upon a scheme to kidnap and sell human technicians to scientifically backward aliens. The vile human mastermind behind the plot operates out of Earth’s most popular orbital rest-stop, but before the slavers are crushed Flash discovers a close friend is deeply involved in the abductions…

When Gordon discovers a hidden base at Earth’s North Pole is being used by aquatic aliens, he is embroiled in an ‘Arctic Adventure’ (22nd January-March 25th) where unscrupulous Earthmen use the freezing waters as a cost-free fish-farm to grow giant monsters for mysterious offworlders to consume…

After a far-distant world experiences an atomic accident, the aftermath produces a voracious ‘Radioactive Man’ (1st April – 3rd June) who can only exist by absorbing deadly fallout. The authorities’ solution is to blast the mutant into the void where, after years of lonely travel, atomic exile Djonn Toth lands on planet Rota just as Flash and Dale pay a visit.

Before long the humans’ vast troubleshooting experience is employed to frustrate Toth’s efforts to enslave the population and consume all their radium.

When the fantastic wonder planet’s eccentric orbit again intersects with Earth, Flash, Dale and Zarkov ‘Return to Mongo’ (10th June 1956- 13th January 1957) after six years. However, their proposed sightseeing trip inevitably involves them in an icily arctic cold war between Wolf Men and Walrus Men, a face-off with would-be supreme tyrant Gant, and clashes with leather-winged Dactyl Men. This leads to capture by arrogant cloud dwellers of Paxora where robot duplicates intent on conquest end Mongo’s most secretive sub-culture.

Upsetting the artificial men’s plan eliminates all but one of the inimical automatons, but ‘Rok’ (13th January – 10th March) is like no android the Earthlings have ever encountered before: patronising protector and unstable enemy in one. Despite safeguarding them through Mongo’s wildest regions, the mechanoid’s ultimate aims remain unclear and his manner of demise most unexpected…

Brought to the edge of civilisation Flash, Dale and Zarkov enter a spaceship race, intent on winning a craft able to take them home to Earth, but the ‘Suicide Run’ (17th March-19th May) almost proves their undoing, as most other competitors indulge in sabotage and subterfuge of every sort to secure the glittering prize…

Eventually victorious, our heroes ‘Escape from Mongo’ only to be lured into ‘The Space Tomb’ (26th May – 14th July) of the Gatherer: a nebula-dwelling desperado who wants to imprison them beside a legion of other valiant explorers in his vast Sargasso of Space.

After outwitting the deranged collector, the humans resume their homeward flight but are again diverted, this time by ‘The Space Genie’ (21st July-1st September): a fearsome yet affable, lethally literal-minded being who brings them to planetary paradise Superba. The inhabitants are not pleased: they only just survived the Genie’s last visit and used all their ingenuity and wish-making ability to get rid of the interstellar pest…

The odyssey home is then interrupted by a string of short interconnected adventures (‘Space Voyage/Strange World/The Wheel Men’: spanning 8th September to 24th November) detailing clashes with space moths, elastic primitives and woman-stealing whirling dervishes engaged in all-out war with sky-residing Gyromen. After brokering a lasting peace between these eccentric extraterrestrials, the humans finally reach Earth in a borrowed flying saucer only to fall prey to ‘The Mystery of the Lonely Crowds!’ (1st December 1957 through January 12th 1958). A telepathic plague of depression and rapidly-spreading isolation has an otherworldly cause but is not intended to be a menace. It still culminates in tragedy, however…

This non-stop rollercoaster ride concludes with the merest start of ‘Missiles from Neptune’ (19th January 1958 to the cliffhanging last page of February 23rd) as the Tyrant of Neptune decides to impress the captive populace. This he does by testing his latest Weapons of Interplanetary Destruction against the Earth, prompting Flash to go and discourage him…

Every week that he toiled on the strip, Mac Raboy produced ever-more expansive artwork filled with distressed damsels, deadly monsters and all sorts of outrageous adventure that continued until the illustrator’s untimely death in 1967.

Perhaps that was a kindness. Raboy was the last great Golden Age romanticist illustrator: his lushly lavish, freely flowing adoration of the perfect human form was beginning to stale in popular taste (the Daily feature had already switched to the solid, chunky, He-Manly burly, realism of Dan Barry and Frank Frazetta) but here at least the last outpost of ethereally beautiful heroism and pretty perils prevailed, and you can visit as easily and often as Flash and Dale popped between planets, just by tracking down this book and the ones which followed…
© 2003 King Features Syndicate Inc. ™ & © Hearst Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Daredevil Epic Collection volume 6: Watch Out For Bullseye (1974-1976)


By Steve Gerber, Tony Isabella, Marv Wolfman, Chris Claremont, Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Bob Brown, Gene Colan, Don Heck, Sal Buscema & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4867-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

Matt Murdock is a blind lawyer whose remaining senses hyper-compensate, enabling him to accomplish astonishing acrobatic feats, and making him a formidable fighter and a living lie-detector. Very much a second-string hero in his formative years, Daredevil was nonetheless a striking and popular one, due in large part to the roster of brilliant artists who had illustrated the strip. He only really came into his own, however, after artist Gene Colan signed up for the long haul…

DD battled thugs, gangsters, an eclectic mix of established and new super-villains and even the occasional monster or alien invasion. He quipped and wise-cracked his way through life and life-threatening combat, utterly unlike the grim, moody quasi-religious metaphor he became under modern authorial regimes.

In these tales from an era when relevancy, social awareness and political polarisation was shifting gradually back to science fiction and fantasy, the Man Without Fear was also growing: becoming in many ways the judicial conscience of a generation turning its back on old values…

Covering March 1974 – April 1976 this compilation chronologically curates Daredevil #108-132, plus a crossover into Marvel Two-in-One #3 wherein twin storylines converged and concluded. This tome sees cultural gadfly Steve Gerber taking the odd couple into strange territory before later scribes reset things on a more traditional Marvel trajectory…

After spending years in a disastrous on-again, off-again relationship with his secretary Karen Page, Murdock took up with former client/exotic émigré and notorious celebrity dubbed The Black Widow. Natasha Romanoff/Natalia Romanova is a Soviet-era Russian spy who came in from the cold and stuck around to become one of Marvel’s earliest and most successful female stars.

She started life as a svelte, sultry honey-trap during Marvel’s early “Commie-busting” days, targeting Iron Man in her debut exploit (Tales of Suspense #52, April 1964) before subsequently being redesigned as a torrid tights-&-tech supervillain. Eventually, she defected to the USA, falling for an assortment of Yankee superheroes before enlisting as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., freelance do-gooder and occasional Avenger.

Throughout her career she has always been considered ultra-efficient, coldly competent, deadly dangerous and yet somehow cursed to bring doom and disaster to her paramours. As her backstory evolved, it was revealed that Natasha had undergone experimental processes which enhanced her physical capabilities and lengthened her lifespan, as well as assorted psychological procedures which had messed up her mind and memories…

Following a period of cosmic intensity which saw them battling aliens and monsters in San Francisco as part of the first war against Thanos, a new direction began in #108 after DD rebukes the Widow for using increasingly excessive force on the thugs they stalked. In ‘Cry… Beetle’ (by Gerber, Bob Brown & Paul Gulacy) their heated arguments are forcibly curtailed when Matt’s oldest friend – and current New York DA Franklin “Foggy” Nelson – is shot and she refuses to rush back to the East Coast beside Murdock. If she had, the Widow might have helped against the mechanised marauder and mystery troops from a new terrorist organisation…

In #109, Matt meets Foggy’s radical student sister Candace and learns of a plot by the mysterious criminal gang Black Spectre seek to steal government printing plates but – rapidly en route to stop the raid – the Scarlet Swashbuckler is intercepted by a larcenous third party whose brutal interference allows the sinister plotters to abscond with the money-making plates. Even the cops can’t slow the bludgeoning rematch against the Beetle in ‘Dying for Dollar$!’ (Brown & Heck), but as the exo-skeletoned thugs break away in Manhattan, in San Francisco Natasha is attacked by vicious albino mutant Nekra, Priestess of Darkness, who tries to forcibly recruit her into Black Spectre.

After tracking down and defeating the Beetle, DD meets Africa-based hero Shanna the She-Devil, unaware the fiery American ex-pat is seeking bloody vengeance against the same enemies who have attacked Foggy, Natasha and the US economy…

The next chapter came in Marvel Two-in-One #3 (May 1974, by Gerber, Sal Buscema & Joe Sinnott), providing a peek ‘Inside Black Spectre!’ as destabilising attacks on prosperity and culture foment riot in the streets of the beleaguered nation. Following separate clue trails, The Thing joins the Man without Fear to invade the cabal’s aerial HQ, but are improbably overcome soon after discovering the Black Widow has defected to the rebels…

Daredevil #110 sees the return of Gene Colan – inked by Frank Chiaramonte – as the perfidious plot develops in ‘Birthright!’, revealing Black Spectre to be an exclusively female-staffed organisation, led by pheromone-emitting male mutant Mandrill. One of the first “Children of the Atom”, the ape-like creature had suffered appalling abuse and rejection until finding equally ostracised Nekra. Once they met and realised their combined power, they swore to make America pay…

Brown & Jim Mooney render ‘Sword of the Samurai!’ in #111, with DD and Shanna attacked by a formidable Japanese warrior, even as the She-Devil discloses her tragic reasons for hunting Nekra and Mandrill. When she too is taken by Black Spectre – who want to dissect her to discover how she can resist Mandrill’s influence – DD is attacked again by the outrageously powerful sword-wielding Silver Samurai…

Triumphing over impossible odds, DD infiltrates the cabal’s flying fortress in #112 to spectacularly conclude the insurrection in ‘Death of a Nation?’ (Colan & Frank Giacoia), which finds the mutant duo seemingly achieving their ultimate goal by desecrating the White House and temporarily taking (symbolic) control of America.

… But only until Shanna, freshly-liberated Natasha and the fighting mad Man Without Fear marshal their utmost resources…

Even with his epic over, Gerber kept popping away at contemporary socio-political issues, as with #113’s ‘When Strikes the Gladiator!’ (Brown & Vince Colletta), opening with the Widow calling it a day, continues with Candace arrested for treason, teases with her then being kidnapped by one of DD’s most bloodthirsty foes and climaxes with the creation of a major new villain and an attack by one of Marvel’s most controversial monster heroes…

Ted Sallis was a government scientist hired to recreate the Super-Soldier serum that created Captain America. Due to corporate interference and what we today call “mission creep”, the project metamorphosed into a fall-back plan to turn humans into beings able to thrive in the most polluted, toxic environment…

When Sallis was subsequently captured by spies and consumed his serum to stop them from stealing it, he was transformed into a horrific mindless Man-Thing and vanished into the swamps of Florida…

Idealistic journalism student Candace had uncovered illicit links between Big Business, her own university and the Military’s misuse of public funds in regard to the Sallis Project, but when she attempted to blow the whistle, the government decided to shut her up. More worryingly, sinister scientific mastermind Death-Stalker imagined far more profitable uses for a solution that made unkillable monsters…

Trailing Candy’s abductors to Citrusville, Florida, Daredevil is ambushed by Gladiator and his macabre employer, but saved after a furious fracas by the mysterious muck-monster in #114’s ironically entitled ‘A Quiet Night in the Swamp!’ (Brown & Colletta). Death-Stalker unfortunately escapes to New York, trying to kill Foggy and restart the clandestine Sallis Project. Though DD foils the maniac in #115’s ‘Death Stalks the City!’, the staggering duel ends inconclusively and the potential mass-murderer’s body cannot be found…

Colan & Colletta reunited for ‘Two Flew Over the Owl’s Nest!’ as Daredevil jets back to San Francisco to reconcile with Natasha, only to blunder into the latest criminal enterprise of one of his oldest enemies. This time however, The Owl isn’t waiting to be found, launching an all-out attack on the unsuspecting and barely reconciled heroic couple.

Chris Claremont scripted the conclusion over Gerber’s plot, with Brown & Colletta back on the art as Natasha and Shanna desperately hunt for the missing Man without Fear, before the avian arch-criminal can add him to a pile of purloined personalities trapped in his diabolical computerised ‘Mind Tap!’…

With Gerber moving on to other projects, a little messy creative shuffling results in #118’s ‘Circus Spelled Sideways is Death!’ (Gerry Conway, Don Heck & Colletta). Here Daredevil leaves Natasha, resettles in New York and promptly battles the infamous but always-inept Circus of Crime and their latest star turn – bat-controlling masked nut Blackwing, after which Tony Isabella takes the authorial reins with a clever piece of sentimental back-writing. Rendered by Brown & Heck, ‘They’re Tearing Down Fogwell’s Gym!’ sees Murdock negotiating a plea deal for Candace, whilst the man who trained his boxer father Battling Jack Murdock comes by with a little problem. It seems a crazy crooked doctor is offering impossible muscle and density boosting treatments that turns bantamweight pugilists into unstoppable rock-hard heavyweight brutes…

Crafted by Isabella, Brown & Colletta, Daredevil #120 began an extended saga focussing on the re-emergence of the world’s most powerful secret society. ‘… And a Hydra New Year!’ sees Black Widow hit New York for one last attempt to make the rocky relationship work, only to find herself – with Matt and Foggy – knee-deep in Hydra troops at a Christmas party.

The resurgent terrorist tribe has learned America’s greatest security agency needs to recruit a legal expert as one of their Board of Directors and – determined to prevent the accession of ‘Foggy Nelson, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D’ at all costs – have dispatched the formidable wild man El Jaguar and an army of masked thugs to stop him before he can start. Thankfully, Nick Fury and his crack commandos arrive in time to drive off the attackers but the rumour is true and Foggy is now a marked man…

The revived organisation has scoured the ranks of the criminal classes (and Marvel’s back catalogue) for its return and B-Listers like Dreadnought, Commander Kraken, Man-Killer, Mentallo, The Fixer, Blackwing and many other not-so golden oldies who happily toil for the enigmatic new Supreme Hydra as he strives to take out increasingly harried Foggy. Eventually, they succeed in capturing the portly District Attorney and the Widow goes off the deep end in #122’s ‘Hydra-and-Seek’, turning New York into a war-zone as she hunts for clues, culminating in a brutal showdown and ‘Holocaust in the Halls of Hydra!’

The times, mood and scripter were changing however, and the next two issues turn to darker, more gothic dramas, beginning with #124 and the advent of a vigilante killer patterned on an old pulp fiction hero.

Written by Len Wein & Marv Wolfman and illustrated by Colan (with Klaus Janson inking) ‘In the Coils of the Copperhead!’ courts controversial gritty realism then remaking Batman over at DC Comics as the Widow finally really and truly walks, leaving the frustrated hero to bury himself in the mystery of a murdering madman savagely overreacting to petty crime and leaving a trail of bodies behind him…

Foggy meanwhile is up for re-election and losing on all counts to too-good-to-be true Blake Tower. Sadly, Matt can’t offer any help or support as he seeks the secret of the vigilante. The resultant clash doesn’t go the Scarlet Swashbuckler’s way either, and he starts #125 with the terrifying realisation that ‘Vengeance is the Copperhead!’ (by Wolfman, Brown & Janson) before achieving a last-minute, skin-of-the-teeth hollow victory…

As writer and editor, Wolfman began a long-term revision as ‘Flight of the Torpedo’ (Brown & Janson) introduces insurance agent/gone-to-seed football hero Brock Jones who – in classic Hitchcockian manner – stumbles into a plot to control the world and inherits a rocket-powered super-suit coveted by enemy agents. Unfortunately, DD has just been almost killed by the rocket suit’s previous owner and, blithely unaware, seeks to renew the brutal grudge fight…

The battle escalates in #127 as ‘You Killed That Man Torpedo… and Now You’re Going to Pay!’ sees inevitable misunderstanding escalate with both weary warriors losing all perspective. Only when they almost kill a family of innocent bystanders are they shamed into a ceasefire…

Guilt-ridden and remorseful, Murdock swears off swashbuckling in #128, until uncanny events dictate and demand the return of the Man Without Fear. ‘Death Stalks the Stairway to the Stars!’ introduces a mysterious figure literally walking into intergalactic space and features the return of teleporting psychopath Death-Stalker in pursuit of ancient objects of power. However, the real inducements to intrigue are Matt’s pushy, flighty girlfriend Heather Glenn and the increasing efficacy of attack ads targeting Foggy. Not only do they slanderously belittle the incumbent DA, but – 40 years before our own problems with “Fake News” – increasingly challenge consensus reality with absurd and scurrilous statements about all authority figures…

The media maelstrom intensifies even as Murdock scours the city for his latest client in ‘Man-Bull in a China Town!’ with “leaked” films “proving” both John F. and Robert Kennedy are still alive. Rampaging monster Man-Bull escapes court during his lawyer’s summing up and stalks the city, aided and abetted by one of DD’s oldest enemies, but ultimately cannot escape a dreadful fate…

Urban voodoo and a slickly murderous conman infest #130 as ‘Look Out, DD… Here Comes the Death-Man!’ finds the prestigious blind lawyer opening a storefront legal services operation for the disadvantaged, even as the misinformation campaign peaks. Meanwhile, brutal Brother Zed demands a human sacrifice and a terrified mother finds her only hope is a human devil in red…

Closing this spectacular compilation is the 2-part debut of a villain who would become one of the most popular psycho-killers in the business. ‘Watch Out for Bullseye… He Never Misses!’ sees wealthy men very publicly targeted for extortion by a mystery murderer who can turn any object – from paper plane to garbage can – into a deadly weapon. Hunted by the Man Without Fear, the lethal loon turns the table on DD in ‘Bullseye Rules Supreme!’, until a final fateful battle settles the case and begins a lifelong obsession for both men…

Supplementing the furious fun are contemporaneous features from Marvel’s F.O.O.M. magazine #13 (March 1976) spotlighting the Scarlet Swashbuckler. Following a stunning cover by Colan, numerous articles explore the character – such as ‘(but first a word from our sponsors’, ‘Through the eyes of a Beholder’ (by Naomi Basner & Chris Claremont, featuring Colan pencil art and gorgeous model sheets crafted by Wally Wood when he took over the strip) and Basner’s ‘The Women in Daredevil’s Life’.

‘Buscema’s Bullpen’ offers art from the illustrator’s then students – and yes, some of them went on to far greater things! – after which Claremont interviews Stan Lee & Wolfman in ‘A Talk with the Men Behind the Man Without Fear’. A Daredevil Checklist segues into Gil Kane’s cover sketch for Giant-Size Daredevil #1; a repro of the published image and images from the 1975 Mighty Marvel Calendar.

Both issues #120 and 121 were supplemented by text pages outlining the convoluted history of Hydra and they’re reprinted here too to keep us all in the arcane espionage loop, before a selection of original art pages by Brown and Janson and house ads remind just how good this hero can look…

As the social upheaval of the 1970s receded, these fabulous fantasy tales strongly indicated the true potential of Daredevil was in reach. Their narrative energy and exuberant excitement are dashing delights no action fan will care to miss. These beautifully illustrated yarns may still occasionally jar with their earnest stridency and dated attitudes, but the narrative energy and sheer exuberance of such classic adventures are graphic joys no action fan will care to miss. And the next volume heads even further into uncharted territory…
© 2023 MARVEL.

Posted on

Marvel Platinum: The Definitive Iron Man Reloaded


By Stan Lee, Archie Goodwin, Mike Friedrich, Tony Isabella, Len Kaminski, Matt Fraction, Don Heck, George Tuska, Greg LaRocque, Kev Hopgood, Salvador Larroca, Carmine di Giandomenico, Nathan Fox, Haim Kano & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-529-1 (TPB)

It’s hard to encapsulate six decades of excellence but as the Golden Avenger celebrates his anniversary, here’s a rare old gem from ten years gone, still readily available, that has a pretty good go at just that…

Produced under the always intriguing Marvel Platinum/Definitive Editions umbrella, this treasury of tales gathers a some of the more impressive but happily less obvious landmarks from the Steel Sentinel’s extensive canon; this time cannily focusing on sinister mastermind, ultimate arch-enemy The Mandarin.

Contained herein are high-tech hi-jinks from Tales of Suspense #50, Iron Man volume 1, #21-22, 68-71, 291 & 500, Marvel Team-Up #146 and Iron Man volume 5 #19, (listed on Marvel’s Database as Invincible Iron Man volume 1 #19), cumulatively spanning 1964 to 2011, and offering a fair representation of what is quite frankly an over-abundance of riches to pick from…

Arch-technocrat and supreme survivor Tony Stark has changed his profile many times since debuting in Tales of Suspense #39 (cover-dated March 1963) when, as a VIP visitor in Vietnam observing the efficacy of the munitions he had designed, he was critically wounded and captured by sinister, cruel Communists.

Put to work building weapons with the dubious promise of medical assistance on completion, Stark instead created the first Iron Man suit to keep himself alive and deliver him from his oppressors. From there it was a simple jump to full time superheroics as a modern Knight in Shining Armour…

Since then the inventor/armaments manufacturer has been a liberal capitalist, eco-warrior, space pioneer, Federal politician, affirmed Futurist, Statesman and even Director of the world’s most scientifically advanced spy agency, the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate, and, of course, one of Earth’s most prominent superheroes with The Mighty Avengers…

For a popular character/concept lumbered with a decades-long pedigree, radical reboots were and are a painful but vital periodic necessity. To keep contemporary, Stark’s origin and Iron Man’s continuity have been drastically revised every so often with the crucible trigger event perpetually leapfrogging to America’s most recent conflicts. As always, change is everything but, remember, these aren’t just alterations, these are upgrades…

After a mandatory introduction from co-originator Stan Lee, the star-studded action begins with ‘The Hands of the Mandarin!’ from Tales of Suspense #50 wherein the wonderful Don Heck returned as regular penciller and occasional inker after a brief absence, and Lee introduced The Golden Avenger’s first major menace. This was a contemporary Fu Manchu who terrified the Red Chinese so much they manoeuvred him into attacking America in the hope that one threat would destroy the other. Please, if you can, remember that these were simpler, less evolved and far more casually racist times than today…

In response, the Golden Avenger invades the mastermind’s Chinese citadel where, after a ferocious but futilely inconclusive fight, he simply goes back home to the Land of the Free. The furious Mandarin holds a grudge, however, and would make himself arguably Iron Man’s greatest foe.

Of course, whilst Stark was the acceptable face of 1960s Capitalism – a glamorous millionaire industrialist, scientist and a benevolent all-conquering hero when clad in the super-scientific armour of his alter-ego – the turbulent tone of the 1970s soon relegated his suave, “can-do” image to the dustbin of history. With ecological disaster and social catastrophe from the myriad abuses of big business manifestly the new zeitgeists of the young (and how right they were!), the Metal Marvel and Stark International were soon confronting tricky questions from their increasingly politically savvy readership. With glamour, money and fancy gadgetry not quite so cool anymore, the questing voices of a new generation of writers began posing uncomfortable questions in the pages of a series that was once the bastion of militarised America…

Iron Man #21-22 (January & February 1970, by Archie Goodwin, George Tuska & Mike Esposito-as-Joe Gaudioso) found the multi-zillionaire trying to get out of the arms business and – following a heart transplant – looking to retire from the superhero biz. African-American boxer Eddie March became ‘The Replacement!’ as Stark, free from the heart-stimulating chest-plate which had preserved him for years, was briefly tempted by a life without strife. Unknown to all, Eddie had a major health problem of his own…

As Stark pursued a romantic future with business rival Janice Cord, her chief researcher and would-be lover Alex Niven was revealed as a Russian fugitive using her resources to rebuild the deadly armour of the Crimson Dynamo. Niven easily overcame the ailing substitute Avenger and, when Soviet heavy metal super-enforcer Titanium Man resurfaced with orders to arrest the defector, a 3-way clash ensued. Stark was forced to take up his metal burden again – but not before Eddie was grievously injured and Janice killed in #22’s classic tragedy ‘From this Conflict… Death!’

Stark’s romantic liaisons always ended badly. Four years later he was ardently pursuing Roxie Gilbert, a radical pacifist and sister of his old enemy Firebrand. She, of course, had no time for a man with so much blood on his hands…

Iron Man #68-71 (June to November 1974) was the opening sortie in a multi-part epic which saw mystic menace The Black Lama foment a war amongst the World’s greatest villains with ultimate power and inner peace as the promised prize. Crafted by Mike Friedrich, Tuska & Esposito, it began in Vietnam on the ‘Night of the Rising Sun!’ as the Mandarin struggled to free his mind (at that time trapped in the dying body of Russian villain the Unicorn).

Roxie had dragged Stark to the recently “liberated” People’s Republic in search of Eddie March’s lost brother: a POW missing since the last days of the war. The Americans were soon separated when Japanese ultra-nationalist, ambulatory atomic inferno and sometime X-Man Sunfire was tricked into attacking the Yankee Imperialists. The attack abruptly ended when Mandarin shanghaied the Solar Samurai and used his mutant energies to power a mind-transfer back into his own body.

Reborn in his original form, the deranged dictator began his campaign in earnest, eager to regain his castle from rival “oriental overlord” Yellow Claw. First, though, he had to crush Iron Man who – in ‘Confrontation!’ – had tracked him down and freed Sunfire A bombastic battle ended when the Golden Avenger was rendered unconscious and thrown into space…

‘Who Shall Stop… Ultimo?’ found the reactivated giant robot-monster attacking Mandarin’s castle even as the tyrant duelled the Claw to the death, with Iron Man and Sunfire arriving too late and left to mop up the contest’s survivor in ‘Battle: Tooth and Yellow Claw!’…

‘Hometown Boy’ (September 1984, by Tony Isabella, Greg LaRocque & Esposito) comes from the period when Stark again succumbed to alcoholism and lost everything, whilst friend and bodyguard Jim Rhodes took over the role of Golden Avenger. As Stark tried to make good with a new start-up company, this engaging yarn from Marvel Team-Up #146 sees the substitute hero still finding his ferrous feet whilst battling oft-failed assassin Blacklash at a trade fair in Cleveland, as much hindered as helped by visiting hero Spider-Man…

Despite successfully rebuilding his company, Stark’s woes actually increased. Iron Man #291 (April 1993) found the turbulent technocrat trapped in total body paralysis: using a neural interface to pilot the armour like a telemetric telepresence drone. He had also utterly alienated Rhodes who had been acting as his proxy in a tailored battle suit dubbed War Machine…

Concluding an extended epic saga, ‘Judgment Day’ by Len Kaminski & Kev Hopgood explosively revealed how the feuding friends achieved a tentative rapprochement whilst battling a legion of killer robots and death dealing devices programmed to hunt down Rhodes at all costs…

From December 2009 comes Invincible Iron Man #19, courtesy of Matt Fraction & Salvador Larroca. At this time, Federal initiative the Superhuman Registration Act led to Civil War between costumed heroes and Stark was appointed the American government’s Security Czar: “top cop” in sole charge of a beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom. As Director of high-tech enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D., he was also the last word in all matters involving metahumans and the USA’s vast costumed community…

However, his heavy-handed mismanagement of various crises led to the arrest and the assassination of Captain America and an unimaginable escalation of global tension and destruction, culminating in an almost-successful Secret Invasion by shape-shifting alien Skrulls.

Discredited and ostracised, Stark was replaced by rehabilitated villain and recovering split-personality Norman Osborn (the original Green Goblin), who assumed full control of the USA’s covert agencies and military resources. He disbanded S.H.I.E.L.D. and placed the nation under the aegis of his new umbrella organisation H.A.M.M.E.R.

Osborn was still a monster at heart, however, and wanted total power. Intending to appropriate all Stark’s technological assets, the “reformed” villain began hunting the fugitive former Avenger. Terrified that not only his weaponry but also the secret identities of most of Earth’s heroes would fall into a ruthless maniac’s hands, Stark began to systematically erase all his memories, effectively lobotomising himself to save everything…

‘Into the White (Einstein on the Beach)’ delivers the conclusion of that quest as Stark, little more than an animated vegetable wearing his very first suit of armour, faced his merciless adversary in pointless futile battle, whilst in America faithful aide Pepper Potts, The Black Widow and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s last deputy director Maria Hill raided Osborn’s base to retrieve a disc with Tony’s last hope on it and simultaneously engineer the maniac’s ultimate defeat…

The comics portion of this winning compilation concludes with the lead tale from Iron Man #500 (March 2011) wherein a mostly recovered Stark is plagued by gaps in his mostly restored memory.

‘The New Iron Age’ by Matt Fraction, Carmine di Giandomenico, Nathan Fox, Haim Kano & Salvador Larroca, is a clever, twice-told tale beginning when Stark approaches sometime ally and employee Peter Parker in an effort to regain more of his lost past. Stark is plagued by dreams of a super-weapon he may or may not have designed, and together they track down the stolen plans for the ultimate Stark-tech atrocity which has fallen into the hands of murderous anti-progress fanatics resulting in a spectacular showdown of men versus machines…

Contiguously and interlaced throughout the tale are dark scenes of the near future where the Mandarin has conquered the world, enslaved Tony Stark and his son Howard and, with the ruthless deployment of Iron Man troopers and that long-ago-designed super weapon, all but eradicated humanity.

With Earth dying, rebel leader Ginny Stark leads the suicidal Black Widows armed with primitive weapons in one last charge against the dictator, aided by two traitors within the Mandarin’s household and guided by a message and mantra from the far forgotten past…

The book concludes with covers from Jack Kirby, Tuska, Esposito, Jim Starlin, Dave Cockrum, Ron Wilson, John Romita Sr., LaRoque, Bob Layton, Hopgood & Larroca, plus a dense and hefty 21 pages of text features, including ‘The Origin of the Mandarin’ by Mike Conroy and history, background and technical secrets of Crimson Dynamo, Justin Hammer, Happy Hogan, Mandarin, Pepper Potts, Stark Industries, Titanium Man and War Machine.

A thoroughly entertaining accompaniment tailored to the cinematic Marvel Fan, this is also a splendid device to make curious movie-goers converts to the comic incarnation: another solid sampling to entice the newcomers and charm the veteran Ferro-phile.
© 2013 Marvel. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

Posted on

Middle Distance – A Graphic Memoir


By Mylo Choy (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-15-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

There are many ways to find yourself. Too often the main roadblock is other people… or maybe a lack of a pathfinder.

In Middle Distance, mixed race, non-binary Mylo Choy shares their road to understanding one’s self via curated extracts of a life filled with coping mechanisms such as running, drawing, reading or sharing stories: all solid sound ways of trying to address that feeling of not being who you might be or where you should be.

No overblown drama to titillate here, just a rational seeker recalling obstacles faced and hurdles cleared in a marathon push towards acceptance of a pragmatic middle way. It begins with growing up in Wisconsin, as ‘The Race’ sees the 6th grader run a first revelatory race and discover a feeling and undertaking to totally consume them and view a world of total isolation and security: the mile run…

Soon running daily with Dad before again graduating or reduced to a single person passion – to the point of slowing down and pretending to stroll if someone sees you – always the goal is no specified goal. Well, maybe making those who matter say the accomplishment is more than just “pretty good”…

‘Speedwork’ finds solo traveller joining the track team in sophomore year, learning from more experienced friends and uncaringly accepting a coach’s assessment to be a middle distance runner, yet feeling only glee and pride inside on being told 800 metres is the most painful distance to go…

Gaining technique but never losing the primal exuberance of putting one foot in front of another – and how that influences other passions like drawing – growth continues. Does the placebo puzzle of confidence, concentration and meditation contribute to landing impostor-like on the 4 x 800 relay team beside incomparable admirable Maggie?

Why read so many stories about “tomboys”? And why can’t an iron will hold back puberty?

Years pass and the now adult outsider works with kids in Brooklyn and upstate New York as an outdoor educator. Life catches up and starts inflicting years of mystery aches and severe pains, so running buddy Jeff suggests the only answer is the New York Marathon…

By re-examining Buddhist family roots ‘Rest’ traces years of sporadic and often-interrupted progress towards that great dream, before a series of small intense inner revelations point to ‘The Long Run’ and what comes next…

Subtly, almost accidentally allegorical, this testament to understanding through internal addiction and evolution by determination is beguiling, enticing and strangely cleansing: a welcome step into unknown territory for most of us and a journey well worth taking..

It’s a little bit strange to write about running which mostly consists of clearing the mind and just going. That’s especially true of this pretty and memorable book. You should just do it…

© 2023 Mylo Choy. Written and drawn by Mylo Choy. All rights reserved.
Middle Distance will be published in the UK on 14th September 2023. An American edition will be released 31st October 2023.

Posted on

Flood! – A Novel in Pictures


By Eric Drooker (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-729-4 (HB) 978-1-59307-676-4(PB)

Far too infrequently in comics (and everywhere else) something truly different, graphically outstanding and able to subvert or redirect our medium’s established forms comes along. Generally, when it does, we usually ignore it whilst whining that there’s nothing fresh or new in view.

Happily that’s not what happened with Eric Drooker’s Flood! – A Novel in Pictures when it was first released in 1992. A New York City native, he’s a profound and legendary left-leaning activist, thinker and creator of street art who attended Downtown Community School in the East Village and studied sculpture at Cooper Union before becoming a designer and illustrator.

His covers for The New Yorker are unforgettable, as are his ferociously expressive, eye-catching pieces in The Wall Street Journal, Heavy Metal and World War 3 Illustrated. His drawings and paintings – especially from his far too few graphic novels – were used in videos for Faith No More and Rage Against the Machine. His animated film Howl was the culmination of extensive collaboration with poet Allen Ginsberg (Illuminated Poems, Howl: a Graphic Novel).

Drooker’s political stance and creative influences make his pictorial narratives (like Blood Song: a Silent Ballad) both contentious and greatly favoured by a readership ranging far beyond the usually cloistered and comfortable confines of the traditional comics community.

He won an American Book Award, Inkpot and Firecracker Award, and the artwork for Flood! has been inducted into the Prints & Photographs Division of the American Library of Congress.

Drawing on his earliest influences and following the Depression Era-traditions of artists and printmakers such as Frans Masreel, Lynd Ward, Otto Nuckel and Giacomo Patri, Drooker’s first graphic novel was produced in linocuts and spot-colour: three discrete section chapters created between 1986 and 1992. You only need to look at the news to see that the subject matter has never been more immediate or telling…

These symbolic, spine-tingling observations and tumultuous progressions are generally dispensed without words as lone protagonists – or perhaps alienated, excluded victims – struggle to survive and find meaning in a world that just don’t care. The Man in View restlessly moves past centres of employment that shut down when you’re not looking, trudging cold, mean, directionless streets and alleys at the bottom of canyon-like skyscrapers or riding bleak subways while the pitiless skies look down and just keep spitting more and more rain…

Following a damning indictment of the modern world and warning of the social apocalypse to come from Luc Sante in his trenchant Introduction, the journey into oblivion begins with ‘Home’ as a simple worker discovers he’s no longer wanted. Slowly making his way back to the little he still possesses, he witnesses the city and his life in a new way…

That peregrination takes him below the city in ‘L’: into the tunnels trains share with lost, abandoned and forgotten people who have been reduced to their most primal elements…

‘Flood’ then brings us to a lonely garret where an artist and his cat toil to finish a treasured prospective masterpiece while the waters rise all around them. The deluge is here and everything’s about to change forever…

It’s time for one final excursion out into the submerging city…

This is a disturbing parable of immense depth and potency; made all the more effective by Drooker’s intense visualisations. We all know the consummate power of images over words, but they also impart greater liberty as the reader’s mind is free to attribute as much meaning to the narrative as their own experiences will allow. The result is sheer poetry – and what’s increasingly looking like prophecy…

Flood! – A Novel in Pictures is in its fourth edition now; the latest from Dark Horse being a deluxe (167 x 235 mm) hardback in black-&-blue-&-white which includes a revelatory conversation with the artist as first seen in Comics Journal as a much longer ‘Interview with Eric Drooker’.

Conducted by Chris Lanier and supplemented with a superabundant wealth of sketches, full pages, roughs and illustrations it adds great insight to what has gone before and sets us up nicely for Drooker’s even more impressive follow-up second work – Blood Song: a Silent Ballad. At the moment neither is available in digital editions but hope, like great art and timeless stories, springs eternal…

Terrifying, lovely and irresistibly evocative, this is a nightmare vision you must see and will always remember.
Text and illustrations of Flood! – A Novel in Pictures © 1992, 2002, 2007, 2015 Eric Drooker. All rights reserved. Introduction © 2001 Luc Sante. Comics Journal interview used with permission.