Category: Science Fiction

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The Simon & Kirby Library: Horror!


By Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Mort Meskin and various (Titan Books)
ISBN13: 978-1-84856-959-1 (HB)

After too many years left languishing, there’s now a majority of magnificent Jack Kirby material available like this splendidly sumptuous Simon & Kirby Library gathering the iconic team’s groundbreaking contributions to the genre of mystery, suspense and the supernatural.

Kirby’s collaborations with fellow industry pioneer Joe Simon always produced dynamite concepts, unforgettable characters, astounding stories and huge sales no matter what genre avenues they pursued (they actually invented the Romance comic book), blazing trails for so many others to follow and always reshaping the very nature of American comics with their innovations and sheer quality.

Comic books started slowly and tenuously in 1933, until Superman’s debut unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and invented a new genre: Superheroes. Implacably vested in the Second World War, the masked mystery man swept all before him (very occasionally her or it) until the troops came home and older genres supplanted the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Although new kids kept up the buying, much of the previous generation also retained their four-colour habit but increasingly sought more mature themes in the reading matter. The war years altered the psychology of society and a more world-weary, cynical reading public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything. Their chosen forms of entertainment – film and prose as well as comics – increasingly reflected this.

Western, War and Crime comics, madcap teen comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features were immediately resurgent, the aforementioned Romance comics appeared in 1947 and pulp-style Science Fiction began to spread, but gradually another global revival of spiritualism and interest in the supernatural (possibly provoked by the monstrous losses of the recent conflict, just as had happened in the 1920s following WWI) led to a wave of increasingly impressive, evocative and even shocking horror comics.

There were grisly, gory and supernatural stars before, including a pantheon of ghosts, monsters and wizards draped in costumed hero trappings (The Spectre, Mr. Justice, The Heap, Frankenstein, Zatara, Dr. Fate and dozens of others), but these had been victims of circumstance: the Unknown as power source for super-heroics. Now focus shifted to ordinary mortals thrown into a world beyond their ken with the intention of unsettling, not vicariously empowering, the reader.

Almost every publisher jumped onto the monumentally popular juggernaut, but B & I (which became magical one-man-band Richard E. Hughes’ American Comics Group) released the first regularly published horror comic with Adventures Into the Unknown in the autumn of 1948. Technically it was pipped by Avon whose one-shot Eerie debuted and closed in January 1947. They wised up later, and launched a regular series in 1951. By this time Classics Illustrated had already long milked the literary end of the medium: adapting The Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

At this time Joe & Jack identified another “mature market” gap for the line of magazines they autonomously packaged for publishers Crestwood-Prize-Essenkay: Headline Comics, Justice Traps the Guilty, Police Trap, Young Romance and other anthologies. They too saw the sales potential for spooky material, resulting in the superb and eerily seminal Black Magic (launched with an October-November 1950 cover-date) and the boldly obscure psychological drama anthology Strange World of Your Dreams in1952.

Marvel had jumped on the bloody bandwagon early but National/DC Comics only reluctantly bowed to the inevitable, launching a comparatively straight-laced short story title that nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with the launch of The House of Mystery (December 1951/January 1952). Soon after, however, a hysterical censorship scandal led to witch-hunt Hearings (just type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April-June 1954 into your search engine at any time) which panicked most comics publishers into adopting a castrating straitjacket of self-regulatory rules…

Just like today, America back then cast about wildly looking for external contaminants rather than internal causes for a perceived shift in social attitudes and youthful rebellion, happily settling on bloodthirsty comics about crime or horror, drenched in unwholesome salacious sex, as the reason their children were talking back, acting up and staying out.

S&K didn’t do those kinds of comic books but they got tarred – and metaphorically feathered too – in the media-fuelled frenzy…

This striking full-colour hardback begins with essay ‘That Old Black Magic’ by series editor Steve Saffel, delineating the title’s history and tone of the times whilst ‘Simon and Kirby’s Little Shop of Horror’ describes the working of the small but prolific studio of rotating artists who augmented the output of the named stars: creators such as Mort Meskin, Bill Draut, Martin Stein, Ben Oda, George Roussos, Vic Donahue, Bill Walton, Jim Infantino, Bruno Premiani, John Prentice, Jerry Grandenetti and more. With a vast output across many titles, S&K simply couldn’t produce every story and many yarns here are ghosted by other hands, although each and every one does begin with a stunning Kirby splash panel.

As with all their titles, Simon & Kirby offered genre material tweaked by their own special sensibilities. Black Magic – and the Mort Meskin-inspired The Strange World of Your Dreams – eschewed cheap shocks, mindless gore and goofy pun-inspired twist-ending yarns in favour of dark, oppressive suspense soaked in psychological unease and inexplicable unease: tension over teasing…

The stories presented fantastic situations and too frequently for comfort there were no happy endings, pat cosmic justice or calming explanations: sometimes the Unknown just blew up in your face and you survived or didn’t… and never whole or unchanged.

The compendium of black cartoon cavortings commences with ‘Last Second of Life!’ (from volume 1 #1, October-November 1950) wherein a rich man obsessed over what the dying see at the final breath, but learned to regret the unsavoury lengths he went to finding out, after which ‘The Scorn of the Faceless People!’ (#2 December 1950-January 1951) relates the meaning behind a chilling nightmare. It’s not hard to believe this one must have prompted the creation of the spin-off Strange World of Your Dreams. Issue #2 also provided a chilling report on a satanic vestment dubbed ‘The Cloak!’ whilst an impossible love in the icy wastes of Canada ended with ‘A Silver Bullet for Your Heart!’ in #3 (February-March 1951).

Issue #4 provided ‘Voodoo on Tenth Avenue’ as a disgruntled wife went too far in her quest to get rid of her man, whilst in #5 ‘The World of Spirits’ recounted the uncanny predictions of Emanuel Swedenborg in a brief fact-feature before #6 described psychic connection and a ‘Union with the Dead!’ and a ravaged mariner survived meeting ‘The Thing in the Fog!’ (#7) – an encounter with the legendary Flying Dutchman…

Black Magic #8 (December 1951-January 1952) detailed the sacrifice a woman made to save her man from ‘Donovan’s Demon!’ (mostly illustrated by Bob McCarty) whilst ‘Dead Man’s Lode!’ (#10 March 1952 – the series now being monthly) related a ghostly experience in an old mine and ‘The Girl Who Walked on Water!’ in #11 showed the immense but fragile power of self-belief…

Meskin & Roussos illustrated #12’s ‘A Giant Walks the Earth!’ as a downed pilot lost his best friend to a roving colossus in India, after which the utterly chilling and unforgettable ‘Up There!’ kicks off three stories from the landmark 13th issue…

That saga of a beguiling siren of the upper stratosphere is followed by ‘A Rag – a Bone and a Hank of Hair!’ (Meskin) and a pile of trash that learned to love, whilst ‘Visions of Nostradamus!’ (by Al Eadeh) tracked and interpreted the prognosticator’s predictions.

‘The Angel of Death!’ in #15 detailed a horrific medical mystery and ‘Freak!’ (#17, possibly by Bill Draut) exposed a country doctor’s deepest shame.

Black Magic #18 (November 1952) is another multi-threat issue. ‘Nasty Little Man!’ gets my vote for scariest horror art job of all time and saw three hobos discover to their everlasting regret why you shouldn’t pick on short old men with Irish accents.

Then ‘Come Claim My Corpse’ (Martin Stein?) offers a short, sharp, shocker wherein a convict discovers too late the flaw in his infallible escape plan, before an investigator tracing truck-wreckers learns of ‘Detour Lorelei on Highway 52’ (McCarty)…

‘Sammy’s Wonderful Glass!’ in #19 (December 1952) outlined the tragic outcome of a retarded lummox whose favourite toy could expose men’s souls, after which two shorts from #20 (January 1953) follow. ‘Birth After Death’ retold the reputedly true story of how Sir Walter Scott‘s mother survived premature burial, whilst ‘Oddities in Miniature: The Strangest Stories Ever Told!’ offered half a dozen uncanny tales on one page.

Issue #21 provided ‘The Feathered Serpent’ in which an American archaeologist uncovers the truth about an ancient god, #22 (March 1953) slipped into sci-fi morality play mode with the UFO yarn ‘The Monsters on the Lake!’, and ‘Those Who Are About to Die!’ from #23 sketched out the tale of a painter who could predict imminent doom…

A brace of tales from #24 – May 1953 – begin with a scholar who attempts to contact the living ‘After I’m Gone!’, complemented by the half page fact feature ‘Strange Predictions’ (Harry Lazarus) after which ‘Strange Old Bird!’ is the first of three stories from the (again bimonthly) Black Magic #25 (June-July 1953).

In this gently eerie thriller a little old lady gets the gift of life from her tatty old feathered friend, whilst ‘The Human Cork!’ precis’ the life of the literally unsinkable Angelo Faticoni , before a man without a soul escapes the morgue to become ‘A Beast in the Streets!’
There’s a similar surfeit of sinister riches from #26, beginning with ‘Fool’s Paradise!’ wherein a cheap bag-snatcher makes a deal with the devil, after which ‘The Sting of Scorpio!’ sees a rude sceptic wish she’d never taunted a fortune teller, whilst ‘The Strange Antics of the Mystic Mirror!’ terrified nurses in a major metropolitan hospital and ‘Demon Wind!’ (Kirby inked by Premiani) finds a brash Yankee learning not to mock the justice system of primitive native peoples…

‘The Cat People’ (#27) mesmerised and forever marked an unwary tourist in rural Spain, and the same issue exposed a seductive Scottish supernatural shindig hosted by ‘The Merry Ghosts of Campbell Castle’, whilst #28 saw an unwilling organ donor return to take back his property in ‘An Eye For an Eye!’ after which the same issue revealed with mordant wit how a mummy returned to make his truly beloved ‘Alive After Five Thousand Years!’…

From an issue actually cited during the anti-comic book Senate Hearings, ‘The Greatest Horror of Them All!’ (#29 March-April 1954) told a tragic tale of a freak hidden amongst freaks, before Black Magic #30 revealed the appalling secret of ‘The Head of the Family!’ (Kirby & Premiani) whilst #31 provided both alien invasion horror ‘Slaughter-House!’ and the cautionary tale of a child raised by beasts in ‘Hungry as a Wolf!’ (Ernie Schroeder).

‘Maniac!’ from #32 is another artistic tour de force and a tale much “homaged” in later years, detailing how a loving brother stops villagers taking his simple-minded sibling away, and the Black Magic section concludes with a terrifying fable of atomic radiation and mutated sea creatures in ‘Lone Shark’ from #33 November-December 1954.

With the sagacious, industry-hip, quality-conscious Simon & Kirby undoubtedly seeing the writing on the wall, their uniquely macabre title was wisely cancelled in 1954, not long before the Comics Code came into effect. A bowdlerised version was relaunched in 1957, long after they had dissolved their partnership and moved into different areas of the industry.

However the eerie treats don’t end as a short but sublime sampling from their other mystery title is appended here.

‘We Will Buy Your Dreams’ discusses features and stories from abortive and revolutionary title The Strange World of Your Dreams, inspired by studio-mate Mort Meskin’s vivid night terrors. The premise involved parapsychologist Richard Temple explaining and analysing storied nightmares and pictorially dramatizing dreams sent in by readers.

The too short comics section then begins with ‘Send Us Your Dreams’ from #1 (August 1952), a “typical” insecurity nightmare and the chilling ‘I Talked with my Dead Wife!’, whilst #2 (September-October) provided a trio of träumen tales: ‘The Girl in the Grave!’, a scary wedding scenario in ‘You Sent Us This Dream!’ and ‘Send Us Your Dreams’ in which Dr. Tempe describes the extent of self-preservation imagery…

‘The Woman in the Tower!’ came from #3 (November-December) and detailed typical symbolism whilst ‘You Sent Us this Dream’ from the same issue explains away a nightmare climb up an unending tower. Capping off everything is a spectacular Cover Gallery reprinting Black Magic #1 through #33 plus a stunning unpublished cover, performing the same service for The Strange World of Your Dreams #1-4, and including the unpublished #5 just to make our lives utterly complete.

The Simon & Kirby Library: Horror! is a gigantic compendium of classic dark delights that perfectly illustrates the depth and scope of their influence and innovation, and readily displays the sheer bombastic panache and artistic virtuosity they brought to everything they did. This tremendous hardcover is a worthy, welcome introduction to their unique comics contributions, but there’s loads left still to see so let’s have some more please…
© 2014 Joseph H. Simon and the Estate of Jack Kirby. All Rights Reserved.

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Francis & the Vegas Tramps


By Brian Kelly (Brian Kelly Army Press)
ISBN: 978-8-359819-21-3 (TPB)

Like so many others I started out in the business making minicomics, collaborating on fanzines or concocting stripzines with fellow weirdoes, outcasts and addicts. To this day, seeing the raw stuff of creativity in hand-crafted paper pamphlets or professionally printed packages which put dreamers’ money where their mouths are still gets me going in ways which endanger my tired old heart…

With that in mind here’s a superb offering from overseas and the depths of time…

It’s been a while since I’ve able to indulge my love of “small press” and self-produced comics, so here’s a look at one that pushes all the right buttons: a wry, witty, passionate yarn perfectly executed and incorporating a truckload of nostalgic credentials.

Twenty years ago tattoo artist and author (The Cut-Ups: Tattoo Flash from the Third Mind) Brian Kelly produced a comic book about a rock band. Recently, while incapacitated with Covid and binge-watching Josie and The Pussycats in Outer Space cartoons, he used mandatory isolation and enforced downtime to revisit the project. Setting a return two decades later, his Kickstarter-funded result sees long-defunct and always dysfunctional young Turk mega-band Francis & the Vegas Tramps reunite after their loathed frontman is murdered.

In a furiously dystopian future of rocketships, robots, clones and sex-droids, Elvis-worship, debauchery and disinformation, interstellar superstar and former bassist Molly Meteor, drummer Ray, and sideman Blue meet for the first time in a lifetime on planet Mempherica.

It was the place where they were Francis & the Vegas Tramps and became adored sensations, and it the world where it all ended. When they explosively split up, attention-grabbing frontman Francis Smith went solo and gradually faded into mediocrity. Offworld, Molly’s talent took her to the top but she has always been haunted by the appalling event that triggered the split and took her away from the men trusted most in her life.

Within moments of debarking and meeting an older even-sweeter Ray, she’s being questioned by cops about Francis’ extremely unpleasant life and habits and his shocking, scandalous demise…

The Space Detectives clearly have no clue but plenty of suspicions, and soon Molly is doing her own investigating, peeling back the years to uncover plenty of sordid suspects, previously-unsuspected motives and even two clearly-lying addicts claiming to be the culprits.

As Molly and Ray dig deeper, they quickly uncover a viper’s nest of crime, rogue religions, designer drugs and an enigmatic backer for Francis’ toxic mother. Things turn deadly serious when the cops abruptly find Molly’s prints at the crime scene. She’s arrested even though she was on stage on another planet at the time of the killing…

It’s clear that the time has come to kick out the jams and solve this sucker herself… if she can avoid becoming the next good-looking corpse…

A traditional sci-fi cosy murder-mystery with Rock-& Roll underpinnings that never takes itself too seriously, Francis & the Vegas Tramps is a riotous romp with echoes of early 2000AD, channelling snippets of Sin City and pastiches of musical screen gems from Rock Follies to The Rocky Horror Show and American Idiot to The Phantom of the Paradise.

If you have a suspicious mind and want a straightforward pictorial quandary to solve – one offering the promise of more to follow – crack open your search engine of choice and head for a twisty-turny tomorrow that will leave you all shook up. go on. It’s now or never…
© 2023, Brian Kelly. All rights reserved.

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Creepy Presents Steve Ditko


By Steve Ditko, with Archie Goodwin, Clark Dimond & Terry Bisson dddf Ben Oda, Bill Yoshida & various (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-216-9 (HB/Digital edition)

Once upon a time the short complete tale was the sole staple of the comic book profession, where the intent was to deliver as much variety and entertainment fulfilment as possible to the reader. Sadly that particular discipline is all but lost to us today…

Steve Ditko was one of our industry’s greatest talents and one of America’s least lauded. His fervent desire to just get on with his job and to tell stories the best way he can, whilst the noblest of aspirations, was always a minor consideration and stumbling block for the commercial interests which for so long monopolised comics production and which still exert an overwhelming influence upon the mainstream bulk of Funnybook output.

Before his time at Marvel, Ditko pursued perfection, creating immaculately paced, staged and rendered short stories for a variety of companies; tirelessly honing his craft with genre tales for whichever publisher would have him, free from the interference of over-intrusive editors.

Even after hitting the big time at Marvel and DC, it’s a creative arena he stayed active in, and this collection gathers some of his rarest yet most accomplished examples, produced at a time when a hidebound industry was just starting to open up to new publishers and fresh themes.

After Ditko’s legendary disagreements with Stan Lee led to his leaving Marvel – where his groundbreaking work made the reclusive genius (at least in comic book terms) a household name – he resumed a long association with Charlton Comics, but also found work at Warren Publications under whiz-kid writer/Editor Archie Goodwin.

The details are fully recounted in Mark Evanier’s biographically informative Foreword, as are hints of the artist’s later spells of creative brilliance at DC, the growing underground movement and nascent independent comics scene…

Erudite and economical, Evanier even finds room to describe and critique the differing art techniques Ditko experimented with during this brief tenure. Whilst working for Warren – between 1966 and 1967 – Ditko enjoyed great editorial freedom and cooperation. He crafted 16 moody monochrome masterpieces – most written by Goodwin – all without interference from the Comics Code Authority’s draconian and nonsensical rules. They ranged from baroque and bizarre fantasy to spooky suspense and science fiction yarns, limited only by the bounds of good taste – or at least as far as horror tales ever can be…

And whilst we’re name-checking unsung heroes, it’s only fair to reveal that all were lettered by Ben Oda or Bill Yoshida.

The uncanny yarns appeared in monochrome magazine anthologies Creepy and Eerie, affording Ditko time and room to experiment with not only a larger page, differing styles and media, but also to dabble in then-unknown comics genres. Those lost stories are gathered into a spectacular oversized (284 x 218 mm) hardback compendium – part of a series of all-star artist compilations which includes Rich Corben and Bernie Wrightson amongst others – and begins here with the short shockers from Creepy.

Culled from #9 and delivered in beguiling wash-tones, ‘The Spirit of the Thing!’ starts with shadows and screams, moves on to a dying man and reveals how teacher and student battle in a mind-bending phantasmagorical other-realm for possession of one healthy body, before #10’s ‘Collector’s Edition!’ returns to crisp line art to detail an obsessive bibliophile’s hunt for a mystic tome… and the reason he should have left well enough alone.

Gripping grey-tones reveal how a gullible prize-fighter is manipulated into becoming a bludgeoning ‘Beast Man!’, after which Creepy #12 sees a disturbed man turn to a psychoanalyst to cure his delusions in ‘Blood of the Werewolf!’ Of all the headshrinkers in all the world…

Throughout his time at Marvel – and especially on Doctor Strange – Ditko was applauded for astounding other-dimensional scenes and depictions. In ‘Second Chance!’, that facility is especially exercised when a wise guy regrets his earlier deal with the devil before ‘Where Sorcery Lives!’ pre-empts and anticipates the 1970s Sword-&-Sorcery boom (and Ditko’s own Stalker at DC) as quintessential barbarian hero Garth battles the ghastly legions of vile necromancer Salamand the Sorcerer…

Creepy #15 introduced another sword-swinging proto-Conan in ‘Thane: City of Doom!’, wherein our unwashed warrior titanically thrashes thaumic terrors but nearly succumbs to the hidden threats of a comely queen…

Goodwin didn’t script the last Creepy yarn for Ditko in #16. ‘The Sands that Change!’ was devised by Clark Dimond & Terry Bisson who produced a self-referential tale of a comics artist and his wife falling victim to macabre forces on a desert vacation. Although the story is pedestrian, Ditko’s choice of illustrative materials elevates it to one of the most memorable in his uncanny canon…

The rest of this titanic terror-tome re-presents the Ditko/Goodwin Eerie oeuvre, starting with ‘Room with a View!’ from #3. Rendered in claustrophobic line art, it details how a tired, obnoxious traveller insists on occupying a cheap suite his hotelier would do anything not to rent…

‘Shrieking Man!’ from #4 reveals how an incurable maniac is brought back from agonising insanity by a new doctor, much to the regret of the asylum chief who caused this condition, after which ‘Black Magic’ rolls back the years to mediaeval Europe and a final battle between sorcerer and apprentice…

An affluent and greedy jeweller learns to forever regret taking the ‘Deep Ruby!’ from a desperate hobo in Eerie #6, whilst an underworld plastic surgeon can’t save his latest patient from the depredations of ‘Fly!’ in issue #7. ‘Demon Sword!’ then explores the darkest recesses of psychological transformation and temptation before ‘Isle of the Beast!’ (#9) revisits the hoary Man-hunting-Men plot, but proves that you can never be too careful about who you pick as victim…

The scary sessions conclude with fantasy feast ‘Warrior of Death!’, wherein a barbarian warlord makes a deal with Death and learns that Higher Beings just cannot be trusted…

This voluminous volume has episodes which terrify, amaze, amuse and enthral: utter delights of fantasy fiction with lean, stripped down plots and a dark wit allowing art to set the tone, push the emotions and tell the tale, from a time when a story could end sadly as well as happily and only wonderment was on the agenda, hidden or otherwise.

These stories display the sharp wit and dark comedic energy which epitomised both Goodwin and Warren, channelled through Ditko’s astounding versatility and storytelling acumen: another cracking collection of his works not only superb in its own right but also a telling affirmation of the gifts of one of the art-form’s greatest stylists. This is a book serious comics fans would happily kill, die or be lost in a devil-dimension for…
Creepy, the Creepy logo and all contents © 1966, 1967, 2013 by New Comic Company. All rights reserved.

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The Hard Switch


By Owen D. Pomery (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-70-7 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Worlds Enough but Never the Time… 9/10

It’s a dog-eat-dog universe and commerce is the only weapon with real power. Everything knows that. However, in what appears to be a barely-fictionalised acknowledgment of the tone of our times, Owen D. Pomery (after wowing discriminating comics fans with books Victory Point & British Ice, or shorter pieces Between the Billboards, The Megatherium Club Vl. 1: The Great Ape) has again picked imagination as his instrument for low-key speculative pessimism and wrought one of the most sinister sagas in utterly ages.

After studying architecture, mastering printmaking and succeeding in commercial illustration venues as varied as Tribune, Monocle and The New Yorker, subtle visualizer Pomery turns his Ligne Claire-influenced eye (like Hergé jamming with Moebius) and seditious tendencies upon a declining tomorrow too much like the one we’re all enduring…

A glorious paean to traditional “hard sci fi”, The Hard Switch follows hard-working independent traders at the end of civilisation. Interplanetary, interstellar, and intergalactic travel/trade depend on a substance called Alcanite. The mineral facilitates all converse between worlds and it’s almost all gone. When there’s no more, the universe faces an abrupt and total reversion to complete isolation-by-distance and everyone gets stuck wherever they are when the lights go out and the other shoe drops…

In advance of imminent inescapable disaster, many seek to monopolise what resources remain, whilst others – like cargo freighter crew Ada, pilot Haika and octopoid engineer Mallic – graft even harder. They are exploring every wreck and rumour: stockpiling exotic artefacts or simple offworld nuts-&-bolts in anticipation of the worst panic buying spree in history…

On desolate desert world Dakhos, a chance encounter with other salvage-scavengers leads to a staggering theory when a truly ancient artefact hints at another method of star-travel predating – and utterly exclusive of – Alcanite. Humanoid Ada is descended from Mateaic nomads and the relic holds clues arguably confirming the legends that her kind roamed the stars before the over-exploited mineral was ever discovered…

Sadly, proving it won’t pay bills, so they continue hauling cargo while quietly looking for more data. Their search sparks clashes with organised crime, murderous “hunters”, and even people-smugglers, before their misplaced – and unaffordable – ethics lead to another mouth to feed after cargo-turned-sole-survivor Hodge joins the crew. The 12-year-old also has plenty of close calls before the crew fetch up the world of a super-rich scientist who might have the information they need to offer civilisation a second chance, if not actual salvation…

Naturally, he’s not at all what he seems, or what they need.

Tense and action-oriented, subtle and potently affable, this yarn is packed with tension and intrigue as our unlikely stars seek a whole new/old manner of interstellar transit and just staying alive for a sequel. Seductive and restrained in the Continental manner, The Hard Switch is a potent confection delivered in a beautiful, evocative and utterly compelling way no one could possibly resist. Therefore just don’t… possibly all the vacation you’ll need this year…
© Owen D. Pomery 2023.

The Hard Switch is scheduled for release on October 24th 2023 and is available for pre-order now.

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Captain Midnight Archives volume 2: Captain Midnight Saves the World


By William Woolfolk, Leonard Frank, Leonard Starr, Dan Barry & various (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-243-5 (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-62115-921-6

Created by broadcast scripters Wilfred G. Moore and Robert M. Burtt, Captain Midnight began as a star of radio serials in the days when troubleshooting All-American aviators were the acme of adventure genre heroes. The Captain Midnight Program soldiered on from 1938 to 1940 until the Wander Company acquired sponsorship rights to promote their top product: Ovaltine.

From there on, national radio syndication led to a newspaper comic strip (by Erwin L. Hess, running June 29th 1942 until the end of the decade); a movie serial (1942) and – later – two TV serials (1953 and 1954-1956) before being overdubbed, retitled and syndicated as “Jet Jackson, Flying Commando” well into the 1960s. There was a mountain of now-legendary merchandise such as the infamous Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Ring…

And there was a comic book franchise – one recently reinvigorated for 21st century audiences.

The hero’s basic origin related how after the Great War ended, pilot and inventor Captain Jim Albright returned home having earned the sobriquet “Captain Midnight” after a particularly harrowing mission that concluded successfully at the witching hour. He then formed a paramilitary “Secret Squadron” of like-minded pilots to continue making the world a better place – often at the covert behest of the President – using guts and gadgets to foil spies, catch crooks and defend the helpless.

Captain Midnight truly hit his stride after Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, becoming an early Home Front media sensation throughout the war years. However, his already fluid backstory and appearance underwent a radical makeover when he switched comic book horses in midstream.

This stunningly engaging collection gathers a slew of often gruesome science fiction-themed tales taken from the latter end of the Fawcett Comics run. Captain Midnight #48, 50, 52-56, 58, 60, 62, 64 and 66 collectively spanned February 1947- August 1948. As times and tastes changed, the venerable title folded with the next issue.

Following a fervent Introduction from Batton Lash discussing the career of the much-travelled, constantly evolving “Monarch of the Airways” and the telling differences between radio, screen and comic book iterations, the contents explosively unfold with a tragic dearth of credit and attributions. Much comic material from this era is criminally unattributed, but writers known to be active on Midnight at this juncture include Bill Woolfolk and Otto Binder, whilst artists look like the unflagging Leonard Frank and young legends-to-be Leonard Starr and Dan Barry.

From issue #48 ‘Captain Midnight Visits the Golden Asteroid’ sees Albright and his mechanic Ichabod Mudd piloting their newly invented rocket-ship to investigate a new stellar body only to find that the astronomer who discovered it has an ulterior and nefarious motive for getting to the stellar wanderer.

Illustrated by Frank from #50, ‘Captain Midnight Spikes the Sun Gun’ pits the modern Edison against devilish Dr. Pyrrho who has found a way to inflict destructive heat on the already sweltering citizens of the American Southwest, after which a return prospecting trip to our nearest neighbour uncovers ‘The Moon Creatures’ (Woolfolk) who aggressively resisted all attempts to human colonise Luna…

With the solar system now a regular destination for exploration, Albright began occasional sorties to the planets and picked up some new recurring foes. The first was a plundering barbarian from Pluto who raids Earth for its Uranium reserves in #52’s ‘Captain Midnight versus the Space Raider!’ (Binder & Frank). The resultant chase and recovery takes our hero to Mars and first contact with an unsuspected race also under threat of merciless assault by the murderous Jagga…

After driving the fiend off and recovering his ill-gotten gains, Midnight next encounters the ruthless Plutonian inflicting ‘Peril on Venus’ in #53. By sending him packing once again, the inventor consequently aids the long-lost last survivors of Atlantis in getting their failing colony onto an even keel in a world overrun by dinosaurs…

In #54, Midnight and Icky find yet another embattled civilisation – on Ceres. A literally golden kingdom is fending off Jagga’s bacterial onslaught and meteor bombardments. With the Air Aces’ assistance, the monster is finally driven off in ‘The Asteroid Battle’.

There’s a double dose of super-scientific spectacle in #55, beginning with Albright’s perhaps unwise invention of a monumental dirigible intended as ‘The Sky Airport’. When common thugs steal the mobile monolith and use it as a base for air raids on banks, the heartbroken genius is forced into desperate action to clear his conscience…

This is followed by another interplanetary incident as ‘Captain Midnight Finds the Lunar Lair’ and finally brings Jagga to justice in the form of a trial in Earth’s courts. Unequivocally guilty, the beast is sentenced to death by electrocution in #56’s ‘The Last Rites of Jagga’ (Frank art) but said execution proves to be a major mistake and Midnight is called upon to deliver the sentence in his own infallible scientific manner…

A new threat emerges in #58 ‘On the Planet of Peril’ when an unknown race reanimates Earth’s greatest villains and monsters. A month later ‘Captain Midnight Battles the Ice Age’ finds our interplanetary explorers on Neptune: changing that world’s climate to give its humanoid inhabitants a big step up the ladder to civilisation, whilst issue #60 sees the return of earthly arch-enemy Dr. Osmosis who terrifies and torments humanity with his explosive ‘Flying Saucers of Death’…

Captain Midnight #62 detailed the inventor’s efforts to save America’s ‘Farmers on the Moon’ from sabotage as Earth agricultural entrepreneur Jim Klaw sought to maintain his produce monopoly at all costs…

A new extraterrestrial enemy debuted in #64 as ‘Beyond the Sun’ (Frank) introduced shapeshifting tyrant Xog: a gaseous monster from Saturn who boarded America’s newest spaceships as step one in his plans for interplanetary domination. When Midnight thwarted the scheme and rescued hostage Terrans, the vile king swore vengeance…

It came in the final tale in this superbly retro rollercoaster of rocket-powered fun – from #66 with art by Frank – as Xog transforms the good Captain into sentient gas before invading Earth. Happily, even ‘Without a Body’, Albright is too much for the malign marauder and once more saves the day and the world…

With a stunning gallery of covers by Frank, Charles Tomsey, Dan Barry and Mac Raboy, plus cool mini-features such as ‘Captain Midnight’s Air Lingo’, ‘US Army Aviation Badge Insignia’ and ‘Famous Planes’, this fabulous feast of fearsome fantasy is guaranteed to satisfy the yearnings of every starry-eyed space cadet, whatever their age.
Captain Midnight Archives volume 2: Captain Midnight Saves the World! ® and © Dark Horse Comics 2014. All rights reserved.

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Creepy Presents Alex Toth


By Alex Toth, with Archie Goodwin, Gerry Boudreau, Rich Margopoulos, Roger McKenzie, Doug Moench, Nicola Cuti, Bill DuBay, Steve Skeates,Leopoldo Durañona, Leo Summers, Romeo Tanghal, Carmine Infantino & various (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-692-1 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-63008-194-2

Once upon a time the short complete tale was the sole staple of the comic book profession, where the intent was to deliver as much variety and entertainment fulfilment as possible to the reader. Sadly, that particular discipline is all but lost to us today.

Alex Toth was a master of graphic communication who shaped two different art-forms and is largely unknown in both of them.

Born in New York in 1928, the son of Hungarian immigrants with a dynamic interest in the arts, Toth was a prodigy and, after enrolling in the High School of Industrial Arts, doggedly went about improving his skills as a cartoonist.

His earliest dreams were of a strip like Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, but his uncompromising devotion to the highest standards soon soured him on the newspaper market when he discovered how hidebound and innovation-resistant that family-values-obsessed industry had become whilst he was growing up.

At age 15, he sold his first comic book works to Heroic Comics and, after graduating in 1947, worked for All American/National Periodical Publications (who would amalgamate and evolve into DC Comics) on Dr. Mid-Nite, All Star Comics, Green Lantern, The Atom, Johnny Thunder, Sierra Smith, Johnny Peril, Danger Trail and a host of other two-fisted fighting features.

On the way he dabbled with newspaper strips (see Casey Ruggles: the Hard Times of Pancho and Pecos) and confirmed that nothing had changed…

Constantly aiming to improve, he never had time for fools or formula-hungry editors who wouldn’t take artistic risks. In 1952 Toth quit DC to work for “Thrilling” Pulps publisher Ned Pines who was retooling his prolific Better/Nedor/Pines companies (Thrilling Comics, Doc Strange, Fighting Yank, Black Terror and others) into Standard Comics: a comics house targeting older readers with sophisticated, genre-based titles.

Beside his particularly favourite inker Mike Peppe and fellow graphic artisans Nick Cardy, Mike Sekowsky, Art Saaf, John Celardo, George Tuska, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, Toth set an incredibly high bar for a new kind of story-telling. In a cavalcade of short-lived titles dedicated to War, Crime, Horror, Science Fiction and especially Romance, the material produced was wry, restrained and thoroughly mature. After Simon & Kirby invented love comics, Standard, through artists like Cardy and Toth and writers like amazing, unsung Kim Aamodt, polished and honed the genre, routinely turning out clever, witty, evocative and yet tasteful melodramas and heart-tuggers both men and women could enjoy.

Before going into the military, where he still found time to create a strip (Jon Fury for the US Army’s Tokyo Quartermaster newspaper The Depot’s Diary) ,Toth illustrated 60 glorious tales for Standard; as well as some pieces for EC and others.

On his return to a different industry – he didn’t much like – Toth split his time between Western/Dell/Gold Key (Zorro and movie/TV adaptations) and National (assorted short pieces, superhero team-ups, Hot Wheels and Eclipso): doing work he increasingly found uninspired, moribund and creatively cowardly.

Before long he moved primarily into television animation: character and locale designing for Space Ghost, Herculoids, Birdman, Shazzan!, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? And Super Friends among so many others. He returned sporadically to comics, setting the style and tone for DC’s late 1960’s horror line in House of Mystery, House of Secrets and especially The Witching Hour, whilst illustrating more adult fare in Warren’s Creepy, Eerie and The Rook.

In the 1980s he redesigned The Fox for Red Circle/Archie, produced stunning one-offs for Archie Goodwin’s Batman and war comics (whenever they offered him “a good script”) and contributed to landmark/anniversary projects like Batman: Black and White. His later, personal works included European star-feature Torpedo and magnificently audacious Bravo for Adventure!: both debuting at the publishing company owned by Jim Warren.

Alex Toth died of a heart attack at his drawing board on May 27th 2006.

The details are fully recounted in Douglas Wolk’s biographically informative Foreword, as are hints of the artist’s later spells of creative brilliance at DC, the growing underground movement and nascent independent comics scene. Whilst working for Warren (intermittently and between 1965 and 1982) Toth enjoyed a great deal of editorial freedom and cooperation. He produced 21 starkly stunning monochrome masterpieces – many self-penned or written by fellow legend Archie Goodwin – and all crafted without interference from the Comics Code Authority’s draconian and nonsensical rules.

They ranged from wonderfully baroque and bizarre fantasy to spooky suspense and science fiction yarns, limited only by the bounds of good taste… or at least as far as horror tales can be. The uncanny yarns appeared in monochrome anthologies Creepy (# 5-7, 9, 75-80, 114, 122-125, 139) and Eerie (2, 3, 64, 65 and 67), affording the master of minimalism time and room to experiment with not only a larger page, differing styles and media, but also dabble in then-unknown comics genres.

Those lost Warren stories were gathered into this spectacular oversized (284 x 218 mm) hardback compendium (and eBook): part of a series of all-star artist compilations including Corben, Wrightson, Ditko and more – hereafter an appreciative Foreword from critic and historian Douglas Wolk.

The terror treats open with the short shockers from Creepy and – moodily rendered in grey wash-tones –‘Grave Undertaking’ comes from #5 (October 1965). Scripted by Goodwin, the period piece relates the shocking comeuppance of a funeral director who branches out into providing fresh corpses for the local medical school, after which December’s #6 offers insight into ‘The Stalkers’, as a troubled soul seeks psychoanalytic help for hallucinations of aliens plaguing him…

Prophetic visions play a part in ‘Rude Awakening!’ (#7, February 1966) as a guy flees omens of being gutted by a madman, before Toth reverted to his minimalist line style for ‘Out of Time’ (#9, June). Here a murderous mugger seeks sanctuary for his latest crime and ends up making a devil’s bargain…

A long absence ended in November 1975 as Creepy #75 heralded a wealth of new stories from Toth, beginning with Gerry Boudreau’s crime-thriller ‘Phantom of Pleasure Island’ wherein a mob-owned San Diego funfair is plagued by a sinister sniper. Private Eye Hubb Chapin is on the case, but his dogged determination to find the killer opens a lot of festering sores his client should have left well alone…

Spectacularly experimental and powerfully stark, ‘Ensnared!’ (scripted by Rich Margopoulos for #76, January 1976) is another paranoiac psychodrama with science fiction underpinnings, before Toth begins writing his own stories in Creepy #77 (February). A wash-&-tone tour de force depicting the strange fate of missing air mail pilot ‘Tibor Miko’ in 1928…

March’s issue #78 continued the tonal terrors with another 1920s tale exposing the stunning secret of a celluloid icon in ‘Unreeal!’ before we storm into Indiana Jones territory with ‘Kui’ (#79, May) wherein a couple of anthropologists make the holiday find of a lifetime on a deserted tropical island.

This tranche of Toth treats ends with ‘Proof Positive’ from June’s issue #80 wherein a gang of fraudulent patent lawyers and their ruthless honeytrap pay the ultimate price for gulling the wrong inventor. When Toth returned in January 1980 his first story was another chilling collaboration with old pal Goodwin. Rendered in overpowering scratchy line and solid blacks, Creepy #114’s ‘The Reaper’ details how a virologist with six months to live decides he’s not dying alone and leaving a world of idiots behind him…

Issue #122 (October 1980) found Toth inking veteran illustrator Leo Durañona for the Roger McKenzie-scripted civil war yarn ‘The Killing!’ Here a Northern raiding party occupying a mansion endure conflicting passions of lust and vengeance before death inevitably settles all scores.

Doug Moench writes, Leo Summers draws and Toth inks & tones ‘Kiss of the Plague!’ (#123, November 1980) as a welter of grisly murders slowly subtracts inhabitant of a seemingly accursed house, after which ‘Malphisto’s Illusion’ (#124, January 1981) finds Nichola Cuti, Alexis Romero (AKA Romeo Tanghal) & Toth explaining in grisly detail just how a stage magician pulls off his greatest trick. #125’s ‘Jacque Cocteau’s Circus of the Bizarre’ (McKenzie, Carmine Infantino & Toth) maintains the entertainment motif with a short shocker about a freak show like no other…

Toth’s last Creepy gig was another Goodwin collaboration. Issue #139 (July 1982) again featured the master’s moodily macabre tone painting in a grim, post-apocalyptic rumination on ‘Survival!’

Toth’s tenure on companion anthology Eerie #2 was relatively brief, beginning with the second issue (March 1966). ‘Vision of Evil’ was the first of two Goodwin tales limned in tone and bold line, revealing the fate of an overly-arrogant art collector who wouldn’t take no for an answer, whilst #3’s ‘The Monument’ (May 1966) saw an equally obnoxious architect accidentally engineer his own doom by stealing ideas from an old idol…

Eerie #64 offered intolerance, fear and sentiment in equal measure in ‘Daddy and the Pie’ (written by Bill DuBay). In Depression-era America a very alien stranger is made welcome by one hard-up family despite the barely repressed hostility of his neighbours…

A very modern monster’s exploits comprise the end of this stupendous collection as Steve Skeates pens a wry tale of serial killers and doughty detectives in old London town. ‘The Hacker is Back’ (#65 April) depicts a maniac’s return to slaughter after a decade’s hiatus and leads to an inconclusive resolution before ‘The Hacker’s Last Stand!’ (#67 August) finds forces of law and order overwhelmed by a killing spree unlike any other…

This voluminous volume has episodes which terrify, amaze, amuse and enthral: utter delights of fantasy fiction with lean, stripped-down plots and a mordant tone which lets the art set the tone, push the emotions and tell the tale, from times when a story could end sadly as well as happily and only wonderment was on the agenda, hidden or otherwise.

These stories display the sharp wit and dark comedic energy which epitomised both Goodwin and Warren, channelled through Toth’s astounding versatility and storytelling acumen: another cracking collection of his works not only superb in its own right but also a telling affirmation of the gifts of one of the art-form’s greatest stylists.

This is a book serious comics fans would happily kill, die or be lost in a devil-dimension for.
Creepy, the Creepy logo and all contents © 1965, 1966, 1975, 1976, 1980. 1981, 1982, 2015 by New Comic Company. All rights reserved.

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G.I. Zombie – A Star-Spangled War Story


By Justin Grey, Jimmy Palmiotti, Scott Hampton & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-5487-2 (TPB)

When DC rebooted their entire continuity with the New 52 in 2011, most reader and critical attention was focussed on big-name costumed stars. However, the move also allowed creators to revisit older genre titles from those eras when superheroes were not the only fruit.

A number of venerable war titles and stars were revisited and re-imagined (even iconic and presumed-sacrosanct Sgt. Rock) and many novel ideas and treatments were created – although largely ignored by the audiences they were intended to attract.

One of the most appealing, fashionably intriguing and well-realised appeared in a revitalised Star Spangled War Stories, outrageously blending the global war on terror, then-current socio-political disaffection and Earth’s ongoing fascination with the walking dead to spawn a spectacular, tongue-in-cheek blockbuster romp tailor-made for TV or movies.

Perhaps that was the point all along…

Written by Justin Grey & Jimmy Palmiotti and illustrated by Scott Hampton, the serialised saga from SSWS volume 2 #1-8 spanned cover-dates September 2014 to May 2015 and was collected into one riotous read, albeit augmented by a smart little epilogue culled from Star Spangled War Stories: Future’s End #1 (September 2014).

The premise is deliciously simple and sublimely subversive. Soldier Jared Kabe has been the Republic’s most secret weapon for decades: an unkillable agent infallibly serving the nation in secret through most of its wars and so many of its unpublicised black-ops counter-strikes against America’s implacable enemies.

And just so we’re on the same page here, he’s unkillable because he’s already dead…

When not battling on numerous officially sanctioned war fronts, this perfect operative has tackled pervasive social ills such as drug cartels and human traffickers, and it’s just this kind of simple mission which leads to an unlife-changing moment as his commanding officer/ handler Codename: Gravedigger pairs him with maverick – but still breathing – agent Carmen King.

They were only supposed to infiltrate a biker gang militia, but the case takes on a life of its own when the smelly redneck nut-jobs buy medium-range missiles and a deadly bio-agent to use on Washington DC.

After an astounding amount of cathartic bloodshed, Carmen is soon deep undercover, playing house with a slick madman running a clandestine organisation of would-be world conquerors. Jared meantime strives to prevent the strike on the government. He succeeds by bringing the missile down in unlucky Sutterville, Tennessee, only to discover to his horror that he has a personal connection to the payload and must face a horrific ‘Small Town Welcome’…

As Jared and Special Forces units struggle to contain a spreading contagion, Carmen is deep underground in a sybaritic paradise housing an enclave of wealthy fanatics in Utah. Everyone is eager to remake the world to their specifications, but even whilst playing along with the head loon, she has one eye on the citadel’s labs and armoury and the other on her ‘Exit Strategy’…

Southern crisis contained, Kabe rushes to rendezvous with King, selecting a uniquely undead methodology to enter the subterranean fortress: one offering ‘Door-to-Door Delivery’, but the head paranoid panics and chooses to abandon his base and acolytes in the ‘The Living Desert’. Taking Carmen and a few select, trusted individuals, he flees to San Francisco after first employing his private nuclear option…

‘Two the Hard Way’ sees Jared survive the detonation – and another bio-bomb outbreak – before heading for the coast where Carmen’s cover has been blown and she is attempting to blast her way out.

With the disclosure of Kabe’s past connections to the madmen-in-charge, ‘The Final Countdown’ begins with the G.I. Zombie, Carmen and a dedicated cadre of special agents invading a locked-down fortress determined to prevent the “City by the Bay” becoming another glowing toxic crater…

The main event magnificently completed, there’s a little extra treat for readers: ‘United States of the Dead’ appeared in Star Spangled War Stories: Future’s End #1, part of a company-wide publishing event set “five years from now”. It reveals how a zombie bio-agent has been used to infect Gotham City with Kabe and Co. in play to stop the rot to save the world…

With cover and variants by Dave Johnson, Howard Porter and the late, great and much-missed Darwyn Cooke, this is a fabulous high-velocity action adventure: fast paced, devastatingly action packed and simply dripping with sharply mordant black comedy moments. G.I. Zombie is the kind of graphic extravaganza you use to convert folks who hate comics. Are you ready to be turned?
© 2014, 2015 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Doctor who Graphic Novel #23: The Highgate Horror


By Mark Wright, Jonathan Morris, Steve Lyons, Roger Langridge, Jacqueline Rayner, Scott Gray, David A. Roach, Mike Collins, John Ross, Adrian Salmon, Martin Geraghty, Dave Gibbons, John Ridgway, Dan McDaid & various (Panini Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-749-3 (TPB)

Somewhere in time, it’s always that moment just before the TV got turned on and the Time Lord was born. This year is the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Here’s another Timey-Wimey treat to celebrate a unique TV and comics institution in a periodical manner …

The British love comic strips, adore “characters” and are addicted to celebrity. The history of our homegrown graphic narratives includes an astounding number of comedians, Variety stars and television actors: such disparate legends as Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Askey, Charlie Drake and so many more I’ve long forgotten and you’ve likely never heard of.

As much adored and adapted were actual shows and properties like Ace of Wands, Timeslip, Supercar, Pinky and Perky, The Clangers and countless more. If folk watched or listened, an enterprising publisher made printed spectacles of them. Hugely popular anthology comics like Radio Fun, Film Fun, TV Fun, Look-In, TV Comic, TV Tornado, and Countdown readily and regularly translated our light entertainment favourites into pictorial joy every week, and it was a pretty poor star or show that couldn’t parley the day job into a licensed strip property…

Doctor Who debuted on black-&-white televisions across Britain on November 23rd 1963 with the opening episode of ‘An Unearthly Child’. Mere months later, in 1964 a decades-long association with TV Comic began: issue #674 heralding the initial instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’ by an unknown author with the art attributed to illustrator Neville Main.

On 11th October 1979, Marvel’s UK subsidiary launched Doctor Who Weekly. Turning monthly magazine in September 1980 (#44) it’s been with us – via various iterations – ever since. All proving the Time Lord is a comic star of impressive pedigree, not to be trifled with.

Panini’s UK division ensured the immortality of the comics feature by collecting all strips of every Time Lord Regeneration in a uniform series of over-sized graphic albums – although we’re still waiting for digital versions. Each time tome focused on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer, with this one gathering stories originally published in Doctor Who Magazine #484 and #489-500. Spanning March 2015 to July 2016; they star Peter Capaldi’s irascible old chrononaut the Twelfth Doctor and saucy sidekick/Impossible Girl Clara Oswald in action across the universe and every Elsewhen imaginable.

The adventures of the Grumpy Gallifreyan are – as always – described and delineated by a rapidly rotating roster of British creators who also provide a treasure-trove of background information in the Commentary section at the back. These comprise story-by-story history, background and insights from authors and illustrators, supplemented by scads of sketches, roughs, designs, production art and photos.

None of which is relevant if all you want is a darn good read. Thankfully, all imagineers involved have completed the ultimate task of any artisan – to produce engaging, thrilling, fun work which can be enjoyed equally by the callowest of neophytes and most slavishly dedicated and opinionated fans imaginable.

That feast of fun – coloured throughout by James Offredi and lettered by multi-talented Roger Langridge – opens with Mark Wright, Mike Collins & David A. Roach’s ‘Space Invaders!’ as The Doctor and Clara fetch up at an orbiting storage facility just as the owners start their latest sell-off of unclaimed items. Typically, the time-travellers are not quite quick enough to stop avid bargain-hunters opening a container of just hatched planet-eating monster eggs…

Following smart social satire is a multi-part action romp. ‘Spirits of the Jungle’ – by Jonathan Morris & John Ross – finds our stars joining an extraction mission to recover lethal intelligent weapons-tech before apparently walking into trap on a planet where the forests have their own definition of World Wide Web…

Gothic horror and vintage thrills permeate Wright, Roach & Collins’ superb chiller ‘The Highgate Horror’ wherein Clara, her immortal straight man and neophyte Companion Jess Collins experience the 1970s London cemetery by hunting vampires and satanic covens and encounter a race of ancient predators who want far worse than mere blood…

As conceived and realised by Steve Lyons & Adrian Salmon, ‘The Dragon Lord’ was a radical activist attempting to save magnificent saurians from human fun-seekers killing them for sport on a medieval-themed fantasy resort world. However, by the time our turbulent troubleshooters turn up, things have turned decidedly lethal and it looks like nobody is getting out alive…

Roger Langridge then offers an all-him treat as Harry Houdini sends out a distress call and his old chum The Doctor dutifully answers. Sometimes even fakers and charlatans have power and really resent being de-bunked by upstart human escapologists playing in the ‘Theatre of the Mind’…

A new time-bending miscreant debuts in Jacqueline Rayner, Martin Geraghty & Roach’s epic tale of persecution and justice when temporal prankster Miss Chief infiltrates Clara’s workspace. After causing havoc at Coal Hill School, said trickster drops Miss Oswald in the vicious clutches of Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, leaving The Doctor to either participate in a time duel or somehow search the whole 17th century for his missing school ma’am in a ‘Witch Hunt’ with potentially fatal and final consequences…

Our temporal tintinnabulations conclude with a splendidly appropriate anniversary party get-together of old friends – and foes – that will delight lifelong devotees without bewildering or baffling newbies or casual readers.

Written by editor Scott Gray, ‘The Stockbridge Showdown’ returns the Time Lord to the alien-beleaguered British village just as cosmic corporate conqueror Josiah W. Dogbolter thinks he’s finally leveraged the keys to time itself.

As the universe nears a shocking “Going Out of Business” sale, the wily Gallifreyan and many allies from the past 500 issues unite to teach the richest man in creation the paucity of his resources and the lesson of his life in a tale crafted by artists past and current, including Dave Gibbons, Langridge, Salmon, Dan McDaid, Ross, Collins, John Ridgway, Geraghty and Roach.

Another marvellous chronicle for casual comics readers, this is also an unmissable shelf-addition for dedicated fans of the show and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our art-form to anyone minded to give comics a proper go.
All Doctor Who material © BBCtv. Doctor Who, the Tardis and all logos are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and used under licence. Licensed by BBC Worldwide. Tardis image © BBC 1963. Daleks © Terry Nation. All commentaries © 2016 their respective authors. Published 2013 by Panini UK Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Curses – A collection of short comics


By George Wylesol (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-75-2 (TPB)

Baltimore-based George Wylesol (Internet Crusader, 2120) is a cartoonist with lots to say and extraordinarily intriguing ways of doing so. His oeuvre channels avowed fascinations – old computer kit and livery; anxiety; a culture of graphic inundation, pervasive iconography; the nostalgic power of commercial branding and signage plus a general interest in plebian Days Gone By. Drawings of these he melds into chilling affirmations of his faith in the narrative power of milieu and environment as opposed to characters. He’s also pretty big on scaring the pants off folk…

That is especially the case in this latest tome: a retro-modernist glimpse over the shoulder at past shorter tales. This vibrant volume gathers novella Ghosts from 2017 and a section of short comics created between 2015 and 2021 uniformly exploiting his garishly macabre peccadilloes, opening with a devil’s dozen depicted as the ‘Comprehensive List of Curses’: part of a sporadic sequence of stand-alone (or are they?) images peppered throughout the pages.

Breakthrough tale ‘Ghosts’ details a worker sharing experiences wandering in a complex of tunnels under a hospital, after which 2015’s ‘The Rabbit’ macabrely plucks heartstrings (you can see them if you look) in a tale of odd relationships…

Computer game inspired ‘Castle Maker’ seductively and inevitably leads to a powerful exploration of ‘Porn’ that is nothing like you could possibly expect.

Talking heads spouting ‘Cheese’ and worse bring us a ‘List of Cursed Entities’ before ‘Worthless’ pushes the limits of visual reportage and conceptual condemnation. More far-from-random images offer a reset button as prelude to a visit to realtor purgatory via the ‘Open House’ after which ‘The Loser’ displays another way to fail yet win…

Bombarded by fresh pictorial asides, we pause to consider the void in ‘Untitled’ before a sequence of entwined episodes commences, tracing the saga of ‘The Cursed Lover’.

Set in the ghastly, internal-organ-obsessed municipality of Zujojhidi – as governed by drab routine and television prophets – Ghoul is struggling with school and his job at the meat factory. Everything changes once a stranger shows him a spirit hidden under his cloak. From that moment, Ghoul’s existence changes forever and for the worst…

Can the interest of young Mercey – whose attentions he is blithely oblivious to – divert the doomed kid from the inexorable path to apocalypse and oblivion?

Deftly manipulating realities and landscaping the liminal spaces at the boundaries of peripheral vision, Wylesol reshapes forms and formula to carve out chilling, potent suspense sagas unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Genuinely disturbing in the manner of the best psychological dramas, with plenty of scary moments and distressingly eerie characters, the coldly diagrammatical illustration and workplace-bright colour palette adds immensely to the overall aura of unease.

Compelling and compulsive, these eerie evocations are aimed right at you. Whether you duck, dodge or dive in says all you need to know of yourself and proves nothing is what it seems. This is a wild ride not to be missed.
© George Wylesol 2023. All rights reserved.

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A Spirou and Fantasio Adventure volume 20: The Dark Side of the Z


By Fabien Vehlmann & Yoann, designed by Fred Blanchard, colored by Hubert & translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-103-3 (Album PB/Digital edition)

Boyish hero Spirou (which translates as both “squirrel” and “mischievous” in the Walloon language) was created by French cartoonist Françoise Robert Velter AKA Rob-Vel. This was before the Second World War for Belgian publisher Éditions Dupuis in response to the phenomenal success of Hergé’s Tintin at rival outfit Casterman.

Soon-to-be legendary weekly comic Le Journal de Spirou launched on April 21st 1938 with a rival red-headed lad as lead feature in an anthology which bears his name to this day. The eponymous hero was a plucky bellboy/lift operator employed in the Moustique Hotel – a sly reference to the publisher’s premier periodical Le Moustique. His improbable adventures with pet squirrel Spip gradually evolved into far-reaching, surreal comedy dramas.

Spirou and his chums have helmed the magazine for most of its life, with a cohort of truly impressive creators carrying on Velter’s work, beginning with his wife Blanche “Davine” Dumoulin who took over the strip when her husband enlisted in 1939. She was assisted by Belgian artist Luc Lafnet until 1943, when Dupuis purchased all rights to the property, after which comic-strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (Jijé) took the helm. In 1946, his assistant André Franquin assumed the creative reins: gradually ditching the well-seasoned short gag vignettes format in favour of epic adventure serials. He also expanded the cast, introducing a broad band of engaging regulars and eventually creating phenomenally popular magic animal Marsupilami.

Franquin was followed by Jean-Claude Fournier who updated the feature over nine stirring adventures tapping into the rebellious, relevant zeitgeist of the times: offering tales of environmental concern, nuclear energy, drug cartels and repressive regimes.

By the 1980s, however, the series seemed outdated and lacking direction, so three separate creative teams alternated on it. Eventually overhauled and revitalised by Philippe Vandevelde (writing as Tome) and artist Jean-Richard Geurts – AKA Janry – adapting, referencing and in many ways returned to the beloved Franquin era, the strip found its second wind.

Their sterling efforts revived the floundering feature’s fortunes, generating 14 wonderful albums between 1984 and 1998. As the strip diversified into parallel strands (Spirou’s Childhood/Little Spirou and Guest-Creator Specials A Spirou Story By…), the team on the core feature were succeeded by Jean-David Morvan & José-Luis Munuera. Then Yoann & Vehlmann took over the never-ending procession of amazing adventures…

Multi-award-winning French comics author Fabien Vehlman was born in 1972, began his comics career in 1996 and has been favourably likened to René Goscinny. He’s probably still best known for Green Manor (illustrated by Denis Bodart), Seven Psychopaths with Sean Phillips, Seuls (drawn by Bruno Gazzotti and available in English as Alone), Wondertown with Benoit Feroumont and Isle of 1000,000 Graves with Jason.

Yoann Chivard was born in October 1971 and was drawing non-stop by age five. With qualifications in Plastic Arts and a degree in Communication from the Academy of Fine Arts in Angers, he became a poster advertising artist whilst just dabbling in comics. His creations include Phil Kaos and Dark Boris for British Indie publications Deadline and Inkling, Toto l’Ornithorynque, Nini Rezergoude, La Voleuse de Pere-Fauteuil, Ether Glister and Bob Marone and he has contributed to Trondheim & Sfar’s Donjon.

In 2006, Yoann was the first artist to produce a Spirou et Fantasio one shot Special. It was scripted by Vehlmann…

Cinebook have been publishing Spirou & Fantasio’s exploits since 2009, alternating between the various superb reinterpretations of Franquin and earlier efforts from the great man himself.

When Jijé handed Franquin the strip part-way through Spirou et la maison préfabriqué (LJdS #427, June 20th 1946), the new guy ran with it. Over two decades he enlarged the scope and horizons until it became purely his own. Almost every week fans would meet startling new characters like loyal comrade and rival Fantasio or crackpot inventor and Merlin of mushroom mechanics Pacôme Hégésippe Adélard Ladislas de Champignac – The Count of Champignac…

Spirou and Fantasio became globe-trotting journalists, travelling to dangerously exotic places, uncovering crimes, exploring the fantastic and clashing with a coterie of exotic arch-enemies such as Fantasio’s deranged and wicked cousin Zantafio and that maddest of scientists, Zorglub.

This old school chum and implacable rival of Champignac is an outrageous Bond-movie-tinged villain constantly targeting the Count. A brilliant engineer, his incredible machines are far less dangerous than his mind-controlling “Zorglwave” and his apparently unshakable hunger to conquer Earth and dominate the solar system from a base on the Moon…

This tale – originally in 2011 La face cachée du Z – opens with our happily argumentative chums repairing the collaterally damaged Champignac chateau yet again. Exhausted, they go to indoors to sleep… and wake up in a horrific and tawdry casino resort. Compounding the shocks are weird, painfully unpredictable tricks of gravity, as it’s apparently built only for the super-rich and on the moon!

Worst of all, explaining the transition is smugly sanctimonious old enemy Zorglub…

Still agonisingly hungry for his rival’s approval, the evil genius blathers on about his triumphs and his Great Masterwork since last seen (in volume 18’s Attack of the Zordolts): escaping from dirty, dying Earth to the stars with hot Swedish science students Astrid and Lena. Now they’ve gone off together, leaving the science troll to carve out his interplanetary empire alone.

At least, he would be, if certain funding shortfalls hadn’t forced him into bed with One-percenters who think his citadel could be the most exclusive resort off Earth…

Zorglub still needs to be the virtuous Architect of Humanity’s Future, but the people he has are nothing like the ones he wants: bold Fantasio, ingenious Spirou and brilliant ethically pristine Pacôme de Champignac…

That’s why – for the most logical and moral reasons – he drugged and abducted them…

Without question, the lunar outpost is a technological wonder, with advances and advantages even the kidnapped admire, but the beloved holy Science is being increasingly sidelined, for bigger and better gambling rooms, ski slopes, surfing beaches, sports complexes, nature sideshows and glitzy restaurants.

It does not go down well when Spirou points out that Zorglub could have cleaned up and saved Earth for less money and effort…

Further debate is forestalled when a solar flare is announced and Spirou refuses to join everyone else in radiation-shielded shelters until he recovers his wandering wild pal Spip. Locked out, our hero spectacularly finds a way to survive the cosmic storm, but it’s not for a while that we realise it’s come at a severe mutagenic cost…

The pauper lad’s suicide run across the resort’s attractions was televised and has made him a minor celebrity amongst the movie stars like Blythe Prejlowieky (who soon seduces the kid for her own shocking purposes!), overly-competitive sporting gods like Mike Adibox, faceless money-moguls and flagrantly ostentatious oligarchs such as Igor. Not so much impressed as cautious is the investors’ appointed fixer and ultimate mercenary Poppy Bronco. He’s recognized something in the survivor that bodes badly for all…

The sun starts setting on the project after Champignac chides Zorglub for the worthlessness of his achievements and surrendering of his principled dreams. It coincides with a series of potentially lethal sabotage attempts and – defined by true devotion to their precious skins – the one-percenters commandeer the transport back to Earth, with only few such as Blyth and Igor choosing to stay behind with the peons and paid staff…

Finally rid of his annoying paymasters, Zorglub then executes his long-term plans but is completely unprepared for what happens to Spirou when the lunar night begins. Bronco isn’t though and organises a monster-hunt through the abandoned resort and across the moon…

The outcome is tense, gripping unexpected and so very To Be Continued.

Rocket-paced, action-packed, compellingly convoluted and with just the right blend of perfectly blending helter-skelter excitement and sheer daftness, The Dark Side of the Z is a terrific witty romp to delight devotees of easy-going adventure, drawn with beguiling style and seductive energy. This is pure cartoon gold, truly deserving of reaching the widest audience possible.
Original edition © Dupuis, 2011 by Vehlmann & Yoann. All rights reserved. English translation 2023 © Cinebook Ltd.