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Dungeon Zenith volume 5 Fog and Tears


By Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim & Boulet, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-316-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

Somewhere way out there, is a planet called Terra Amata. On this world of rich history and diverse ways of life, there’s a castle in a fantastic land of miracles, quests and adventures. Once upon a time it was also a rather dangerous meeting place dubbed the Dungeon…

As primarily crafted by prolific artisans Joann Sfar (Les Potamoks, Professeur Bell, Les olives noires, The Rabbi’s Cat) and Lewis Trondheim (Little Nothings, Stay, Ralph Azham) in collaboration with associates of a collective of bande dessinée creators (L’Association) – the Donjon saga has generated 59 volumes since debuting in 1998. A cult hit all over the world, it began as spoof and parody of roleplaying fantasy games, but as so often with stories of innate charm and high quality, it grew beyond its intentions…

After a cruelly long hiatus, English translations recently resumed, repackaged in full-colour album-sized paperbacks, forming sub-divisions of a vast, eccentrically raucous, addictively wacky generational franchise which welds starkly adult whimsy to the weird worlds of Sword & Sorcery sagas. These omnibus tomes take a legion of horribly human anthropomorphic stars into territories even wilder than those seen in Dungeon: Early Years, Parade, Zenith and Monstres. Latterly, adjuncts such as Antipodes and Bonus joined the sprawling braided mega-saga set on an alien world very much like ours in all the ways that really matter…

Dungeon reveals Terra Armata in time-separated epochs via periodic glimpses of a fantastic edifice on an unstable world where magic is a natural resource. Anthropomorphic inhabitants of the surreal realm include every kind of talking beast and bug, as well as monsters, demons, smart-a$$es, wizards, politicians and always – in all ways – strong, stroppy women-folk, making sense and taking charge. Whenever you look there’s always something happening and it’s usually quite odd…

Nominal star throughout the eons is a duck with a magic sword enabling – and eventually compelling – him to channel and/or be possessed by deceased heroes and dead monsters. At the time of these tales – long before his ethical downfall and rise to the unassailable rank of Grand Khan of dying, burning Terra Armata – he is simply Herbert of Craftiwich: and as usual he’s in a lot of trouble…

Just so we’re all on the same page: the “Dungeon” referred to is (mostly) an eternal hostelry and meeting place for wandering heroes, villains and extras we readers see over centuries. Adventures are staged as figurative times of day. Prequel series Potron-Minet relates to the dawn of the establishment, Donjon Zénith – the focus of today’s lesson – concentrates on a glorious hey-day, whilst the decline takes up Crépuscule – the twilight years.

Joining master craftsmen Sfar & Trondheim and supplying the art is Gilles Roussel AKA “Boulet”. He was born in the Parisienne sous-préfecture (sub-prefecture) of Meaux on February 1st 1975 and studied at the Graduate School of Decorative arts in Strasbourg, before creating comics like Raghnarok in 2001. Three years later he was one of the first to publish autobiographical webcomics (“Blog BD”) and became a leading light in the burgeoning field: a doyen of Paris’ Festival des blogs BD. Amongst jobs for magazines like Psikopat and Tchô, Boulet’s milestones include La Rubrique Scientifique, science comics series Project Octopus (from 2017), and many key literary collaborations such as Erik le Viking with Terry Jones (2008) and Par bonheur, le lait with Neil Gaiman (2015). In 2006, he took over the art for Donjon Zénith from Trondheim.

As so lavishly translated by NBM, Fog & Tears shares French Donjon Zénith tomes 9 &10: Larmes et brouillard and Formule incantatoire: seeing valiant Herbert in the worst trouble of his life in the eponymous opening instalment. The Dungeon has been captured by magical villain Delacour and all attempts to recapture it have failed. Now Herbert’s allies plan to take it back…

The duck has bigger problems. The dashing lover has just had a son with his beloved: a Kochak warrior princess. Isis is adamant that the infant will undergo all the rituals of her people, and he will accompany her into a frozen hell. He’s keen to accede to her every wish but the devout steppe-dwellers are intensely stubborn and unyielding and the duck is worried about his boy’s chances. Herbert has learned the Opasnyye Rite involves throwing infants into a pit of hungry wolves and seeing what happens…

After travelling deep into the icy region and utterly failing to talk Isis out of it, Herbert steals the baby and makes a run for home with an outraged army of fanatical military marvels on his heels. With Kochak ninjas and – far worse – Isis in close pursuit, the duck rejoins his abandoned allies and smuggles the waif onto the infiltration mission to Delacour’s Dungeon. Elsewhere, Dragonista couple Marvin and Pirzween – and their own newborn – survive a visit from Isis, leaving the outraged mother doubting her faith and the infant’s chances of survival.

In the aftermath, the duck duke and a dedicated band of necromancers slip into the keep, as do an army of outraged Kolchaks. In response, Delacour unleashes a plague of ghosts from profane coffer the Vault of Souls before fleeing. If the chest is not closed, the dead will overrun the world…

As chief necromancer Horus seeks to hold back the dead, Isis and her acolytes reclaim the baby, dragging poor misguided Herbert back north with them so he can witness the ritual that will make his son a Kolchak and the inheritor of the kingdom…

When all the tragedy ends, her father the Ataman realises that now his only chance for a true heir rests with him and recapturing the duck and his apostate daughter can wait…

In second chapter ‘Incantatory Spells’ his abandoned comrades – Marvin and Pirzween – take centre stage as Herbert’s ally Alcibiades recruits them for a convoluted conjurors’ quest to close the mystic chest still spewing ghosts into the world of the living. With only rapidly-weakening Horus holding back the host, Marvin undergoes humiliation multiple agonizing self-inflicted penances and even more humiliation as he chases down a string of components that will allow his magic wielding allies and comrades to stop the undead invasion.

It’s not the succession of weird wizards and constant stupid diversions that get to him though, it’s sneaking about in cowardly disguises – like when the mighty lizard must impersonate an elf – and Pirzween’s constant back-seat warrior-ing that ticks him off. That and her stupid girlish manner around old school flame/utterly unnecessary mystical quest-mate Blaise…

In the end though, even Herbert – and especially Blaise – have to agree that it’s Marvin’s idea and muscle that save the day and end the threat…

To be Continued…

Please be warned: these cartoon tales are a bit more sophisticated than general English or American fare. I know you’re okay with vicariously indulging in extreme and excessive depictions of violence, but if you fear your children, loved ones, livestock or servants might be adversely affected by mild swearing or nipples on birds and lizards, take whatever appropriate action you choose (which I believe is the magic phrase “it’s only a comic, dear”).

The rest of us will just carry on without you…

Surreal, earthy, brilliantly outlandish, sharply poignant, wittily hilarious and powerfully tragic, this is a subtly addictive read delivered via vibrant, wildly eccentric cartooning that is an absolute marvel of exuberant, graphic style. Despite being definitely not for younger readers, Dungeon Zenith is the kind of near-the-knuckle, illicit and smart epic older kids and adults will adore. And for the fullest comprehension – and even more insane fun – I strongly recommend acquiring all attendant incarnations too.
© Editions Delcourt 2022, 2023-2005. (Donjon Zénith tomes 9 &10 by Boulet, Joann Sfar Lewis Trondheim). © 2023 NBM for the English translation.

Dungeon: Zenith Vol. 5 – Fog & Tears will be released on October 17th 2023 and is available for pre-order now. For more information and other great reads please go to http://www.nbmpub.com/.

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Nine Lives to Live – A Classic Felix Celebration


By Otto Messmer, edited by David Gerstein (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-308-9 (HB)

It might surprise you to know, but funny kitties actually pre-date the internet. They are still big at trick or treat time though…

Unless you’re as old as me, Felix is a hilarious, antic-enjoying talking cat of incredibly ancient vintage. His origins are confused, contentious and still challenged. I’m going with…

Felix was created by Otto Messmer for Australian Pat Sullivan’s animation studio between 1915 and 1917 and was an overnight global hit. Those moving picture cartoons led to a long supplementary career as a newspaper strip, as well as a plethora of merchandisable products in many other media.

Messmer wrote and drew the Sunday newspaper strip – which first premiered in London papers – before the feature finally launched in the USA on August 19th 1923. As Messmer’s employer and boss, Sullivan re-inked those initial strips, signed them, and then took the credit for both strips and even the animated cartoons, which Messmer carried on directing until 1931.

Otto quietly toiled on, producing Sunday pages and daily strips for decades. In 1955, his assistant Joe Oriolo took over the creative duties: simultaneously starting a campaign to return the credit for Felix’s invention and exploits to the “true” originator. It wasn’t until the 1960s that shy, loyal, brilliant Otto Messmer finally admitted what most of the industry had known for years…

As the cat evolved via successive movie shorts – and eventually numerous TV appearances – an additional and ever-expanding paraphernalia of mad professors, clunky robots and the fancy feline’s fantastical Bag of Tricks gradually became icons of Felix’s magical world, but most of that is the stuff of a later time and – hopefully one day – another collected volume.

The early work collected here comes from the halcyon 1920’s and displays a profoundly different kind of whimsy. Fast-paced slapstick, fantastic invention and, yes, a few images and gags that might arch the collective metaphorical eyebrow of our more enlightened times; these are the strips that caught the world’s imagination more than a century ago.

This was a time when even the modern citizens of America and Great Britain were social primitives compared to us – or at least so I’d like to think… until I read a paper or watch the news…

The imagination and wonderment of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat and Cliff Sterrett’s Polly and her Pals – both so similar to Felix in style, tone and execution – got the same responses from their contemporary readership and with the same sole intent: make the reader laugh.

Our modern response of casually and frequently lazily labelling as racist or sexist any such historical incidence in popular art-forms, whilst ignoring the same “sins” in High Art, is the worst kind of aesthetic bigotry, and usually prompted by opportunistic bias or dog-whistle opportunism and it really truly ticks me off.

Why not use those incensed sensibilities to confront the still-present injustices and inequalities so many people are still – and often increasingly – enduring rather than take a cheap shot at the bygone, far-less-enlightened world when most creators had no conception of the potential ramifications of their efforts?

Sorry about that, but the point remains that the history of our artform is always going to be curtailed and covert if we are not allowed the same “conditional discharge” afforded to film, ballet, opera, painting or novels. When was the last time anybody demanded that Oliver Twist was banned or shunned because of its depiction of a Jew? And if you’re going to legislate against Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire, Nuns on the Run or Twelfth Night, don’t do it unless you want bigots and cretins to vote for you.

The modern rush to brand or Other any form of existence lived after Oliver Cromwell died actually shuts down debate before anything can be achieved to fix or even address the issue…

And it’s rants like that that really scare people…

None of which alters the fact that Felix the Cat is a brilliant and vitally important comic strip by an unsung genius. The wonderful work collected here – which include hundreds of rowdily phantasmagorical Daily and Sunday strips plus a comprehensive biography, filmography and TV videography section – perfectly encapsulates the wonder, universal charm and rapid-fire, surreal gags that enchanted generations and will still delight and enthral youngsters of all ages.

It’s long past time that this cat came back…
© 1996 O.G. Publishing Corp.

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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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Solomon Kane volume 1: The Castle of the Devil


By Scott Allie, Mario Guevara, Dave Stewart & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-282-6 (TPB)

Although Marvel have resumed control of Robert E. Howard’s star turns, they haven’t yet re-issued all the prior efforts of the previous licensee yet. That’s a shame as this particular tome has Halloween written all over it. Until they do, why not scour shoppes and online sites for a copy. The exercise will probably do you good and who knows what else you might find?

Following on from their revitalisation – if not actual creation – of the comic book Sword and Sorcery genre in the early 1970s (with their magnificent adaptation of pulp superstar Conan the Barbarian), Marvel Comics quite naturally looked for more of the same. They found ample material in Robert Ervin Howard’s other warrior heroes such as King Kull, Bran Mac Morn and dour Puritan Avenger Solomon Kane.

The fantasy genre had undergone a global prose revival in the paperback marketplace since the release of soft-cover editions of Lord of the Rings (first published in 1954), and the 1960s resurgence of two-fisted action extravaganzas by such pioneer writers as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline and Fritz Lieber. This led to a generation of modern writers like Michael Moorcock and Lin Carter kick-starting their careers with contemporary interpretations of man, monster and mage. Without doubt, though, nobody did it better than the tragic Texan whose other red-handed stalwarts and tough guys such as El Borak, Steve Costigan, Dark Agnes and Red Sonya of Rogatino excelled in a host of associated genres and like milieus.

Solomon Kane debuted in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales in a gripping tale of vengeance entitled “Red Shadows”. He made seven more appearances before vanishing in 1932 as his creator concentrated on far more successful Conan. Three further tales, some epic poems and a few unfinished ideas and passages remained unpublished until 1968, when renewed interest in the author’s work prompted publishers to disinter and complete the yarns.

Apart from two noteworthy 4-colour exceptions, during the 1970s and 1980s, Marvel was content to leave Solomon Kane to monochrome adaptations of canonical Howard stories (in Dracula Lives, Savage Sword of Conan, Monsters Unleashed and other older-reader magazines), but with his transfer to the Dark Horse stable the Holy Terror flourished in broader, lavishly-hued interpretations of the unfinished snippets left when the prolific Howard took his life in 1936.

Beginning in 2008 and released as a succession of miniseries, these nearly-new adventures offer modern fans a far darker, more moody glimpse at the driven, doom-laden wanderer.

Kane is a disenfranchised English soldier of fortune in the 17th century on a self-appointed mission to roam the Earth doing God’s Work: punishing the wicked and destroying devils and monsters. With no seeming plan, the devout Puritan lets fate guide his footsteps ever towards trouble…

Expanded upon and scripted by Scott Allie from tantalisingly unfinished fragment The Castle of the Devil, this initial volume collects a 5-issue story-arc from September 2008-February 2009 and also includes a short piece which originally featured online in the digital MySpace Dark Horse Presents site in June 2008.

The drama opens as the surly pilgrim bloodily encounters bandits and an horrific wolf-beast in Germany’s Black Forest, losing his horse in the attack. Proceeding on foot he finds a boy hanging from a gibbet and cuts the near-dead body down. Soon after, he meets mercenary John Silent, another Englishman in search of fortune…

From his new companion, Kane learns local lord, Baron von Staler, has an evil reputation and will not be happy to have his affairs meddled with. The puritan doesn’t care: he wants harsh words with the kind of man who would execute children…

Despite genuine misgivings, the insufferably jolly Silent insists on accompanying his clearly suicidal countryman. Soon the pair are admitted to a bleak and terrifying Schloss built on the remains of an old abbey…

Von Staler is not the mad tyrant they had been warned of. The gracious, pious old warrior with devoted servants and a beautiful young Moorish wife welcomes them in, offering the hospitality of his hearth and charming them with his easy manner. The lord is appalled by the tale of the hanged boy, denying any knowledge of the atrocity and swears to bring the culprits to justice.

Over supper he and his bride Mahasti explain that their ill-repute is unjustly earned. The simple peasants have unfairly conflated him with the manse’s previous accursed inhabitants: a chapter of monks who murdered their own Prior two centuries past.

Vater Stuttman had been a holy man until he sold himself to Satan. His desperate brethren had been forced to entomb and starve him to contain his evil. With the church determinedly ignoring their plight, the chapter faded from the sight of Man and eventually Staler’s family had purchased the lands, building their ancestral seat upon the ruins.

The peasants however, still called it “the Church of the Devil”…

Gratified to find a man as devoted to God as himself, Kane relaxes for the first time in months, thankful to spend a night in a warm bed with people as devout as he. The truth begins to out at ‘The Dead of Night’ as Silent goes prowling within the castle and kills one of the Baron’s retainers, even as Kane’s rest is disturbed by shameless Mahasti offering herself to him…

Spurning her advances, the furious puritan leaves the citadel to wander the forest, and again encounters the colossal wolf thing. Back in his bed Silent, nursing a deep wound, dreams of beleaguered old monks and their apostate Prior…

In ‘Offerings’ the truth slowly begins to dawn on the melancholy wanderer after discourse with the strangely ill-tempered Silent. Something is badly amiss in the household, but when Kane and the Baron ride out that morning, all suspicions are stayed by the discovery of another gibbet and another boy. This one, however, is nothing but ragged scraps for the crows that festoon his corpse, and Kane’s rage is dwarfed by the ghastly uncomprehending shock and disbelief of the Baron…

The servants are not so flustered and something about their muted conversations with the master sits poorly with the morose Englishman. In the castle, Mahasti finds Silent a far more amenable prospect, happy to listen to the secrets she wants to share…

‘Sound Reasons and Evil Dictates’ offer more insights into the incredible truth about von Staler, as Kane takes his countryman into his full confidence before Silent and Mahasti ride out into the wild woods, meeting a ghost who reveals the terrifying truth about Vater Stuttman and the appalling thing the monks uncovered two hundred years past…

The demonic cadaver whispered unknowable secrets to one of that long-gone congregation and has continued for all the days and years since. Now the man who was Father Albrecht is ready to welcome it and its appalling kin back to full, ravening life in these benighted grounds…

Von Staler and Kane are arguing and, as accusations become blows, the secret of ‘The Wolf’ is at last revealed, even as faithful retainers capture Mahasti and Silent, leaving them on the gibbets as fodder for a quartet of horrors returning for their fleshly tribute in ‘His Angels of the Four Winds’. Savagely battling his way free of the castle, Kane is only in time to save one of the monsters’ victims, but more than ready to avenge centuries of slaughter and blasphemy in ‘The Chapel of the Devil’: grimly cleansing the tainted lands in the ‘Epilogue: Wanderers on the Face of the Earth’…

The art is beguiling, emphatically evocative with Mario Guevara’s pencils astonishingly augmented by a painted palette courtesy of colourist Dave Stewart, and the book is packed with artistic extras and behind-the-scenes bonuses. These include a gallery of covers and variants and ‘The Art of Solomon Kane’ with sketches and designs by the penciller, architectural shaper Guy Davis and illustrators John Cassaday, Stewart, Laura Martin & Joe Kubert. The tome terminates with that aforementioned digital vignette wherein Kane applies his own savage wisdom of Solomon to a troubled village of ghost-bedevilled souls in ‘The Nightcomers’…

Powerful, engaging and satisfactorily spooky, this fantasy fear-fest will delight both fans of the original canon and lovers of darkly dreaming, ghost-busting thrillers.
© 2009 Solomon Kane Inc. (SKI). Solomon Kane and all related characters, names and logos are ™ © and ® SKI.

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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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The Wilderness Collection


By Claire Scully (Avery Hill)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-74-5- (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Know Your Place… 9/10

The most wondrous thing about comics is their sheer versality. In terms of narrative, exposition, mood-setting and information dissemination, nothing comes close, and the range of visualisations span near-abstract construction to hyper-realism. If the end-consumer is particularly receptive, the author can even dial back on narrative or plot or characterisation and let a succession of carefully-applied images make a story unique to each reader. It’s like jazz for your head and before your very eyes…

In all the most telling ways, we’re still monkeys clinging to rocks: we can’t help but respond viscerally to our environment: cowed or elated by stony heights, drawn to and pacified by pools and gardens, inexplicably moved to fear or joy by forests. It’s in our blood and bones: nobody stands on a mountaintop or looks down into the Grand Canyon and says “meh”…

Wherever we are, the landscapes in our heads still unfold before or curl back on us. We may have left the caves and trees and sunlit shores, but we now mimic those ancient sanctuary havens in our dwellings. We climb high and burrow deep and our architecture has visceral, compulsive, instinctive power over us.

Walk by a Victorian school, across a Roman viaduct or study the oppressive, aggressive triumphalism of Nazi-built buildings or battle emplacements – we’re all still part of the wild with Nature in our veins and bones. Just don’t stand too long near towering desert mile-spires or vertical palaces based on knickknacks or vegetables or sex-toys…

When someone really talented and truly invested channels such primal responses, the fires of creativity can push right into the hindbrain to our inner primitive. The Wilderness Collection does that. A timely amalgamation of three earlier rambles through realities – Internal Wilderness, Desolation Wilderness and Outer Wilderness – the sequenced images comprise a hardback handbook of purely and sublimely visual triggers: experiences enhanced by the rough tactile textures of the card they are printed on. This is the culmination of a project examining the relationship between Landscape and Memory.

The first steps come in nocturnal shades of blue as Internal Wilderness presents “a journal of a sequence of events occurring over a period of time and location in space” before the ceaseless peregrination reaches the warm reds, oranges, browns and fading greens of the Desolation Wilderness which depicts “a sequence of events occurring over a period of time in the search for a location in space”.

Careful now, you are nearing a stopping point if not an end, as Outer Wilderness explores the wildest places on the route: “a sequence of events occurring over an unimaginable period of time in the vastness of space” – melding animal, mineral and vegetable in a manner reminiscent of Basil Wolverton in his visionary, inspirational element….

Creator Claire Scully has inscribed and sequenced compelling scenes of rocks and trees and waters and skies and other things less definable, across different seasons and times of day in such a fashion that you must look and pause and ponder.

This is a graphic missile targeting recollection and imagination; one that hits with serenely devastating impact.

If you are still human or at least a primate looking for challenge, this will make you think: you won’t be able to help yourself…
© 2019 Claire Scully. All rights reserved.

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The Demon by Jack Kirby


By Jack Kirby & Mike Royer & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7718-5 (HB/Digital edition)

Jack “King” Kirby shaped the very nature of comics narrative. A compulsive storyteller, Jack was an astute, spiritual man who had lived through poverty, gangsterism, the Depression and World War II. He had seen Post-War optimism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and the birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures. He was open-minded and utterly wedded to the making of comics stories on every imaginable subject.

He began at the top of his game, galvanising the comicbook scene from its earliest days with long-term creative partner Joe Simon: creating Blue Bolt, drawing Captain Marvel and adding lustre to Timely comics with creations such as Red Raven, Hurricane, Captain America and The Young Allies.

In 1942 Simon & Kirby moved to National/DC and hit even more stellar highs with The Boy Commandos, Newsboy Legion, Manhunter and The Sandman before the call of duty saw them inducted into the American military.

On returning from World War II, they reunited and formed a creative studio working primarily for the Crestwood/Prize publishing outfit where they invented the entire genre of Romance comics. Amongst that dynamic duo’s other concoctions for Prize was a noir-ish, psychologically underpinned supernatural anthology Black Magic and its short-lived but fascinating companion title Strange World of Your Dreams.

All their titles eschewed traditional gory, heavy-handed morality plays and simplistic cautionary tales for deeper, stranger fare, and until the EC comics line hit their peak were far and away the best and most mature titles on the market.

Kirby understood the fundamentals of pleasing his audience and always strived diligently to combat the appalling state of prejudice about the comics medium – especially from industry insiders and professionals who despised the “kiddies world” they felt trapped in.

When the 1950s anti-comics comics witch hunt devastated the industry, Simon & Kirby parted ways. Jack went back to DC briefly and created newspaper strip Sky Masters of the Space Force before partnering with Stan Lee at the remains of Timely Comics to create the monolith of stars we know as Marvel.

After more than a decade there he felt increasingly stifled and side-lined and in 1970 accepted an offer of complete creative freedom at DC. The jump resulted in a root and branch redefinition of superheroes in his quartet of interlinked Fourth World series.

After those controversial, grandiose groundbreaking titles were cancelled Kirby looked for other concepts to stimulate his vast creativity and still appeal to an increasingly fickle market. General interest in the Supernatural was rising, with books and movies exploring the unknown in gripping and stylish new ways, and the Comics Code Authority had already released its censorious choke-hold on mystery and horror titles, thereby saving the entire industry from implosion when the superhero boom of the 1960s fizzled away.

At DC’s suggestion, Kirby had already briefly returned to his supernatural experimentation in a superb but poorly received and largely undistributed monochrome magazine. Spirit World launched in the summer of 1971, but as before, editorial cowardice and back-sliding scuppered the project before it could get going. You can see what might have been in a collected edition re-presenting the sole published issue and material from a second, unreleased sequel in Jack Kirby’s Spirit World…

With most of his ideas misunderstood, ignored or side-lined by the company Kirby opted for more traditional fare. Never truly defeated though, he cannily blended his belief in the marketability of the mystic unknown with flamboyant super-heroics to create another unique and lasting mainstay for the DC universe: one that lesser talents would make a pivotal figure of the company’s continuity.

This compilation gathers the entire eerie 16-issue run from August/September 1972 through January 1974 and opens with a fulsome Introduction detailing how The Demon came to be from Kirby’s then-assistant Mark Evanier before the astounding adventures begin…

Inked by Mike Royer, The Demon #1 introduces a howling, leaping monstrosity (famously modelled after a 1939 sequence from Hal Foster’s Arthurian epic Prince Valiant) battling beside its master Merlin as Camelot dies in flames: a cataclysmic casualty of the rapacious greed of sorceress Morgaine Le Fey.

Out of that apocalyptic destruction, a man arises and wanders off into the mists of history…

In our contemporary world (or at least the last quarter of the 20th century) demonologist and paranormal investigator Jason Blood has a near-death experience with an aged collector of illicit arcana. This culminates in a hideous nightmare about a demonic being and the last stand of Camelot. He has no idea that Le Fey is still alive and has sinister plans for him…

And in distant Moldavia, strange things are stirring in crumbling Castle Branek, wherein lies hidden the lost Tomb of Merlin…

Blood is wealthy, reclusive and partially amnesiac, but one night he agrees to host a small dinner party, entertaining acquaintances Harry Mathews, psychic UN diplomat Randu Singh, his wife Gomali and their flighty young friend Glenda Mark. The soiree does not go well.

Firstly, there is the painful small talk, and the sorcerous surveillance of Le Fey, but the real problems start when an animated stone giant arrives to “invite” Blood to visit Castle Branek. This shattering voyage leads to Merlin’s last resting place but just as Blood thinks he may find some answers to his enigmatic past, Le Fey pounces. Suddenly he starts to change, transforming into the horrific beast of his dreams…

Issue #2 – ‘My Tomb in Castle Branek!’ – opens with wary villagers observing a terrific battle between a yellow monster and Le Fey’s forces, but when the Demon is defeated and Blood arrested, only the telepathic influence of Randu in America can help him. Le Fey is old, dying, and needs Merlin’s grimoire, the Eternity Book, to extend her life.

Thus, she manipulates Blood – who has existed for centuries unaware that Merlin’s hellish Attack Dog the Demon Etrigan is chained inside him – to regain his memories and awaken the slumbering master mage. It looks like the last mistake she will ever make…

Kirby’s tried and trusted approach was always to pepper high concepts throughout blazing, breakneck action, and #3 was one the most imaginative yet. ‘The Reincarnators’ finds Blood back in the USA, aware at last of his tormented history, and with a small but devoted circle of friends. Adapting to a less lonely life, he soon encounters a cult able to physically regress people to a prior life – and use those time-lost beings to commit murder…

The Demon #4-5 comprise one single exploit, wherein a simple witch and her macabre patron capture the reawakened, semi-divine Merlin. ‘The Creature from Beyond’ and ‘Merlin’s Word’s … Demon’s Wrath!’ introduced cute little monkey Kamara the Fear-Monster (later used with devastating effect by Alan Moore in Saga of the Swamp Thing #26-27) and features another startling “Kirby-Kritter” – Somnambula, the Dream-Beast…

It seems odd in these blasé modern times but The Demon was a controversial book in its day – cited as providing the first post-Comics Code depiction of Hell and one where problems were regularly solved with sudden, extreme violence.

‘The Howler!’ in issue #6 is a truly spooky yarn with Blood hunting a primal entity of rage and brutal terror that transforms its victims into murderous lycanthropic killers, whilst #7 debuts a spiteful, malevolent young fugitive from a mystical otherplace.

‘Witchboy’ Klarion and his cat-familiar Teekl were utterly evil little sociopaths in a time where all comicbook politicians were honest, cops only shot to wound and “bad” kids were only misunderstood: another Kirby first…

An extended epic, ‘Phantom of the Sewers’ skilfully combines movie and late-night TV horror motifs in the dark and tragic tale of actor Farley Fairfax, cursed by the witch he once spurned. Unfortunately, Glenda Mark is the spitting image of the departed Galatea, and when, decades later, the demented thespian kidnaps her (in ‘Whatever Happened to Farley Fairfax?!!’) to raise the curse, it could only end in a flurry of destruction, death, consumed souls and ‘The Thing That Screams’…

This 3-part thriller is followed by another multi-part masterpiece (The Demon #11-13). ‘Baron von Evilstein’ is a powerful parable about worth and appearance featuring the ultimate mad scientist and the tragic, misunderstood monster he so casually builds. It’s a truth that bears repeating: ugly doesn’t equal bad…

Despite all Kirby’s best efforts The Demon was not a monster hit – unlike his science-fiction disaster drama Kamandi – and by #14 it’s clear that the book was in its last days. Not because the sheer pace of imagination, excitement and passion diminished – far from it – but because the well-considered, mood-drenched stories were suddenly replaced by rocket-fast eldritch romps populated with returning villains.

First back was Klarion the Witchboy who creates a ‘Deadly Doppelganger’ to replace Jason Blood and kill his friends in #14-15, before the series – and this wonderful treasury of wicked delights – ended in a climactic showdown with the ‘Immortal Enemy’ Morgaine Le Fey…

Kirby carried on with Kamandi, returned to The Sandman, explored WWII in The Losers and created the magnificent Omac: One Man Army Corps, but still could not achieve the all-important sales the company demanded. Eventually he returned to Marvel and new challenges such as Black Panther, Captain America, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Devil Dinosaur, Machine Man and especially The Eternals.

As always in these wondrously economical collections it should be noted that the book comes stuffed with un-inked pencilled pages and roughs in bonus feature ‘The Art of Jack Kirby’, and Evanier’s fascinating, informative Introduction is, as ever, a fact-fan’s delight.

Jack Kirby was and is unique and uncompromising: his words and pictures are an unparalleled, hearts-and-minds grabbing delight no comics lover could resist. If you’re not a fan or simply not prepared to see for yourself what all the fuss has been about then no words of mine will change your mind.

That doesn’t alter the fact that Kirby’s work from 1937 to his death in 1994 shaped the entire American comics scene and indeed the entire comics planet – affecting the lives of billions of readers and thousands of creators in all areas of artistic endeavour for generations and still winning new fans and apostles every day, from the young and naive to the most cerebral of intellectuals. His work is instantly accessible, irresistibly visceral, deceptively deep and simultaneously mythic and human.

He is the King and time has shown that the star of this book is one of his most potent legacies.
© 1972, 1973, 1974, 2017 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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Scared to Death volumes 1 & 2: The Vampire From the Marshes & Malevolence and Mandrake


By Mauricet & Vanholme, with Lee Oaks: colours by Laurent Carpentier and translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978- 1-905460-47-2 (Album PB Vampire) 978- 1-905460-77-9 (Album PB Mandrake)

There’s a grand old tradition of scaring, empowering and entertaining kids through carefully crafted horror stories with junior protagonists, and this occasional series is one of the better modern examples.

Conceived and executed by Belgian journalist Virgine Vanholme and youthful-yet-seasoned illustrator Alain Mauricet, the Mort de Trouille series of graphic albums was launched by Casterman in 2000 resulting in five further sinister sorties until everything paused in 2004.

Whilst I’ve not been able to find out much about the author, the artist is well travelled, having worked for CrossGen, Image and DC as well as on a wide variety of features in Europe. He’s also been in David Lloyd’s magnificently wonderful digital delight Aces Weekly.

Born in 1967, Mauricet inherited the comic bug from his parents and, after studying at the Academy of Fine Arts under legendary creator Eddy Paape, began his own career aged 20: another recruit for major magazine Le Journal de Spirou. From spot cartoons he graduated to strips, creating superhero parody Cosmic Patrouille with Jean-Louis Janssens and Les Rastafioles with Sergio Salma. Following the aforementioned stateside sojourn he resumed his Franco-Belgian efforts with the strip under review here, as well as basketball comedy Basket Dunk (with Christophe Cazanove) and Boulard (with Erroc) and others.

A resident of Brussels, he also designs for computer games whilst working on a more personal graphic enterprise entitled Une Bien Belle Nuance de Rouge and in latter days worked for DC on Superman and Batman. In 2021 he released Porchery – On n’attrape pas les cochons avec des saucisses.

Back in early 2000, though, he was detailing the first of a sequence of spooky yarns starring studious Robin Lavigne and boisterous, overly-imaginative Max Mornet: a couple of lads with an infallible instinct for ferreting out the weird and uncanny. Cinebook translated Mort de Trouille: Le vampire des Marais in 2008: inviting British, Antipodean and American kids to solve the mystery of The Vampire from the Marshes, which began when the boys first snuck a peek at forensic scientist Dr. Lavigne‘s locked files…

The well-travelled medic has been called in to examine a body found in rural Deadwater Swamp: a corpse stinking of booze, drained of blood and completely covered in hundreds of tiny triangular bite marks. His son Robin and especially horror-story obsessed Max are fascinated by the case. The latter envisions all manner of ghastly and vivid vampiric scenarios, despite his more prosaic pal’s protestations. All too soon the lads are invading the (still “potential”) crime scene, recording their own findings and suppositions. They are pretty freaked out when they find a strangely slaughtered bird and completely terrified when they disturb a poacher who chases them away with murderous curses. Unbeknownst to all involved, their prying has also alerted and disturbed a clan of far more dangerous and unnatural creatures…

Soon the boys are being shadowed by an uncanny, cloaked figure. He/she/it even breaks into the Lavigne home: striving to preserve anonymity and ancient secrets from the eyes of prying, violent mankind. However, when it is noisily disturbed as it closes in on the boys, they can only thank their lucky stars that the household cat is such a noisy and vicious beast when stepped upon…

Events peak to a cursed crescendo next day after Max falls into his own hastily dug vampire trap and is taken by the noisome Nosferatu. Whilst Robin anxiously and urgently searches for his missing friend, Max is learning the tragic secret history of the bloodsuckers.

His oddly ambivalent abductor is Janus who seems rather reluctant to bleed him as a proper vampire should. The creature has, however, no problem leaving him – and freshly captured Robin when he stumbles upon them – to drown in a deep well…

Next morning, Dr. Lavigne and the cops are frantically but methodically searching the swamp for the missing boys, but only find them thanks to some unknown person leaving Max’s camera on the rim of a well…

As the frightened lads are pulled to safety, Robin’s dad questions them and goes ballistic on learning they’ve been looking through his confidential files. He also utterly trashes their ridiculous theory of vampire killers, patiently explaining the true and rational – if exceedingly grim and grisly – cause of death of the drunk in the swamp.

Chastened but undaunted and sharing an incredible secret no adults will ever believe, the boys are taken home whilst deep in the wooded mire an ancient family of incredible beings pulls up stakes and moves restlessly on to who knows where…

 

With additional art assistance from Lee Oaks, the schoolboy spook-chasers resurfaced in Scared to Death volume 2: Malevolence and Mandrake. Scholarly Robin and rowdy, horror-fan Max are still chasing every implausible rumour and probing unknowns but becoming increasing dependent – though they’d never admit it – on the wit and bravery of Robin’s brilliant little sister Sophie Lavigne…

Cinebook’s second translated selection was actually the third Franco-Belgian chiller chronicle Mort de Trouille: Maléfice et mandragora: suitably set around All Hallows Eve and posing uniquely terrifying problems for the young trouble-magnets…

It begins a little before the much-anticipated night, with Elizabeth Simon Secondary School abuzz with worries over missing student Thomas and the seemingly simultaneous arrival of oddly-attractive, exotic transfer student Emma Corpescu. She comes from Romania and Max is strangely antipathic to her at first. That soon changes, though…

Robin also feels a bit off as the newcomer blatantly insinuates herself into their lives, paying particular attention to Max. Soon, so-savvy Sophie is paying closer attention. Far more so than the idiot boys do…

She’s wise to do so: Emma is soon revealed as an ancient shapeshifting sorceress named Malevolence, who steals the youth of boys to restore her own life force… and to – one day – resurrect her properly dead sister Mandrake…

After doing desperate research online, Sophie arms herself with anti-witch tricks and gadgets and – after discovering the incredible fate of Thomas – eventually convinces her incredulous brother to stalk the wicked enchanter to her lair in Deadwater Swamp and rescue the now officially-missing Max. The poor oaf has fully succumbed to Emma’s wiles and now resides in her lair, transformed into the same uncanny form as Thomas was…

Arriving just in time, the rescuers are set for an incredible clash of wills and powers – especially Sophie, who’s borrowed a few supernatural forces for the ordeal…

Of course, good triumphs in the end, but can such seductive evil truly die?

Deliciously delivered in the manner of Goosebumps and Scooby-Doo – if not Stranger Things – these superb slices of spooky fun work classic kids’ horror tropes and style to enthral and enchant everyone who has suffered from “father knows best” syndrome and loves tall tales with devilish twists. Seamlessly mixing fear with hilarity to enthral and enchant all generations equally, these tales should be resuurected and completed for all of us in need of scary relaxation.
Original edition © Casterman, 2000 and 2003 by Mauricet & Vanholme. English translation © 2008 by Cinebook Ltd.