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H.P. Lovecraft’s The Hound and Other Stories


Adapted by Gou Tanabe, translated by Zack Davisson (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-312-1 (Tankobon paperback/Digital edition)

If you’re one of those people who’s never read a manga tale, or who’s been tempted but discouraged by the terrifying number of volumes these tales can run to, here’s a delicious feast of fantasy fables complete in one book revealing all that’s best about comics from the East in one darkly digestible big gulp.

Most manga can be characterised by a fast, raucous, even occasionally choppy style and manner of delivery but this volume of emphatically eerie adaptations is atmospheric, suitably scary and marvellously moody: just as you’d hope when recreating classic tales by the undisputed master of supernatural terror…

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was frail, troubled and remarkably ill-starred. Born August 20th 1890, he was truly afflicted with a hunger to write, but only achieved any degree of success after his death in March 1937 – following a life of desperate penury – from complications of intestinal cancer. Once he was gone, his literary star ascended, with posthumous publications making him a household name who changed the face of fiction forever.

His stories have deeply affected generations all over the world. One person particularly moved is international literary specialist Gou Tanabe who has previously adapted the works of Maxim Gorky and Anton Chekov to manga form.

Perfectly capturing the relentlessly oppressive and inescapably sombre sense of approaching fatality permeating most of Lovecraft’s potent prose, ‘The Temple’ was written in 1920 and first published 5 years later in the September issue of Weird Tales. The adaptor’s mildly updated version (migrated from WWI to WWII) originated in esteemed anthology magazine COMIC BEAM in March and April 2009: detailing the depredations of U-Boat U-29 and the doomed fools who man her.

After a particularly rewarding campaign, German Navy Commander Karl Heinrich Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein and his officers are taking the night air when they notice a dead British mariner gripping the sub’s handrail. Whilst trying to unlock the mariner’s death grip and eject the corpse, one of them salvages an ancient artefact – a small carved head – and pockets it.

From that moment, their voyage is damned…

Soon, madness and mishap grip the vessel. Death decimates the crew and inexorably the survivors drift ever deeper into depths both physical and metaphorical. When only one remains, he finds the U-boat drawn to a fantastic city and magnificent temple sunken beneath the waves. It is filled with statuary like the little head in his pocket…

Just as he raises his pistol to end the horror, the shattered sole survivor sees shining lights in the sunken edifice…

Lovecraft penned ‘The Hound’ in September 1922 and Weird Tales published it in 1924. Gou Tanabe’s chilling interpretation debuted in July 2014 in the online edition of Comic Walker. The tale is grim, grisly, exquisitely decadent and supremely shocking, detailing the extravagant excess of English gentleman grave-robbers and diabolist magical parvenus St. John and our unnamed narrator.

Bored and indolent, they renew their sordid, blasphemous hobby in a Dutch boneyard, exhuming an arcane trinket from a grave sealed for half a millennium and reap a ghastly bounty after liberating a vengeful howling horror…

After its first foray into the material world, the surviving dabbler attempts every stratagem to escape or expiate the beast, and finds some things have no use for apologies or reparations…

Concluding this first (hopefully of many) Lovecraft treasure trove is another export from Comic Walker (August 2014 this time).

‘The Nameless City’ was written in January 1921 and published 10 months later in The Wolverine. Tapping into the contemporary vogue for arcane exploratory adventure as also favoured by the likes of literary horrorist brethren Seabury Quinn, Clark Ashton Smith, and latterly August Derleth and Robert E. Howard, here Lovecraft shares the story of an itinerant western wanderer (think Indiana Jones without no sense of humour or chance in Hell) who survives Arabian deserts only to stumble upon a previously unsuspected deserted conurbation suddenly exposed by the roaring eternal winds.

Genned-up on local legends, the explorer cannot resist entering the vast metropolis. However, as he plunges deeper within, he finds thousands of boxes like a legion of coffins and realises the occupants are far from human. They may not even be dead…

Enthralling, understated and astoundingly effective, these classic tales have been reverently adapted and packaged in an inexpensive, digest-sized monochrome paperback that will delight avowed aficionados and beguile terror-loving newcomers alike.

© 2014 Gou Tanabe. All rights reserved. This English-language edition © 2017 Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

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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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Chronicles of Fear – Tales of Woe


By Nathalie Tierce (Indigo Raven)
ISBN: 978-1-7341874-5-8 (PB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Cruel Truths for Crazy Days… 9/10

Allying words to pictures is an ancient, potent and – when done right – irresistibly evocative communications tool: one that can simultaneously tickle like a feather, cut like a scalpel and hit like a steam-hammer. As such, repeated visits to a particular piece of work will even generate different responses depending on the recipient’s mood. If you’re a multi-disciplined, muti-media artist like Nathalie Tierce, fresh challenges must be a hard thing to find, but rewards for successfully breaking new ground are worth the effort… and the viewer’s full attention.

Tierce is a valued and veteran creator across a spectrum of media, triumphing in film and stage production for everyone from the BBC to Disney and Tim Burton to Martin Scorsese. She has crafted music performance designs for Andrew Lloyd Webber and The Rolling Stones, all the while generating a wealth of gallery art, painted commissions and latterly, graphic narratives such as Fairy Tale Remnants and Pulling Weeds From a Cactus Garden.

Perpetually busy, she still finds time to stop and stare; thankfully, human-watching is frequently its own reward, sparking tomes like this slim, enthrallingly revelatory package forensically dissecting human nature in terms of cultural landmarks as scourged by the inescapable mountain of terrors large, small, general and intensely personal.

On show in this portable night gallery are stunning paintings in a range of media, rendered in many styles and manners whilst channelling the artist’s own fear-mongering childhood entertainer-influences. These include Edward Gorey, Maurice Sendak, Heinrich Hoffman (Der Struwwelpeter) and other dark fairy tales, as well as compellingly mature comic creators such as Aline Kominsky Crumb & R. Crumb, Will Eisner and Claire Bretecher.

The artworks explore shades of anxiety, alienation, frustration, longing, disappointment, despondency, hopelessness, instant gratification, loss of confidence, purposelessness, racism, toxic masculinity, neurosis, death and loneliness by suborning cultural touchstones like Popeye, Donald Duck and other Disney icons, mass-media mavens like Bowie and King Kong, beloved childhood toys and even modern lifestyle guru Homer Simpson.

Bracketed by revelatory insights and sharing context in Introduction and Biography, the pictorial allegories When Shock and Horror Collide, Forest Nymph, Capitolina and the Dubious Superhero, The Genie and the Swimmer, Bad Fishing Trip, Slapstick Brawl, Undateable, Crazy Rooster Man, Strange Leader, My Favorite Aliens, The Queen of Hearts Goes Shopping, Acrobat, Fear of Death, Running, What Killed the Dodo?, The Bore, 3am, Pussy Cat, Barfly, Alice in Waitingland (my absolute personal favourite!), Beginning and End, Rascal Dog, Spiraling, Lonely Soldier, Homer Gone Bad, Jittery and utterly appalling endpiece Bathtime, connecting forensic social observation with everyday paranoias we all experience. The result is a mad melange of bêtes noire and unsettled icons du jour, with each condemnatory visual judgement deftly wedded to frankly terrifying texts encapsulating contemporary crisis points, delivered as edgy epigrams and barbed odes.

Chronicles of Fear – Tales of Woe is a mordantly mature message of mirth-masked ministrations exposing the dark underbellies we’re all desperately sucking in and praying no one notices.

A perfect dalliance for thinking bipeds at the end of civilisation, aimed at victims of human nature with a sharp eye and unforgiving temperament – and surely, isn’t that all of us?
© 2023 Indigo Raven. © 2023 Nathalie Tierce. 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.

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Showcase Presents Superman Family volume 3


By Otto Binder, Robert Bernstein, Jerry Siegel, Alvin Schwartz, Bill Finger, Curt Swan, Kurt Schaffenberger, Wayne Boring, Dick Sprang, Al Plastino, Stan Kaye, Ray Burnley, John Forte, George Klein, John Giunta & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-812-6 (TPB)

When the groundbreaking Man of Steel debuted in Action Comics #1 (June 1938) he was instantly the centre of attention, but even then the need for a solid supporting cast was apparent and wisely tailored for. Glamorous daredevil girl reporter Lois Lane premiered beside Clark Kent and was a constant companion and foil from the outset.

Although unnamed, a plucky red-headed, be-freckled kid started working for Clark and Lois from Action Comics #6 (November 1938) onwards. His name was used in Superman #13 (November-December 1941), having already been revealed as Jimmy Olsen due to being a major player on The Adventures of Superman radio show from its debut (April 15th 1940).

As somebody the same age as the target audience for the hero to explain stuff to (all for the listeners’ benefit), he was the closest thing to a sidekick the Action Ace ever needed…

When the similarly titled television show launched in the autumn of 1952 – preceded a year earlier by landmark B-movie Superman and the Mole Men – it was another immediate sensation and National Periodicals began cautiously and judiciously expanding their revitalised franchise with new characters and titles.

During the 1950s/early 1960s, being different in America was a Very Bad Thing. Conformity was sacrosanct, even in comicbooks, and everybody and everything was meant to keep to its assigned and intended role: for the Superman family and cast, that meant a highly strictured code of conduct and parameters. Daily Planet Editor Perry White was a stern, shouty elder statesman with a heart of gold, Cub Reporter Jimmy was a brave and impulsive, unseasoned fool – with a heart of gold – with Lois brash, nosy, impetuous and unscrupulous in her obsession to marry Superman although she too was – deep down – another possessor of an Auric aorta. Moreover, although Clark was a Man in a Man’s World, his hidden alter ego meant that he must never act like one…

Yet somehow even with these mandates in place the talented writers and artists assigned to produce their wholesomely uncanny exploits managed to craft tales both beguiling and breathtakingly memorable – and usually as funny as they were exciting.

First to fill a solo title were the gloriously charming, light-hearted escapades of that rash, capable but callow photographer and “cub reporter”. Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #1 launched in 1954 with a September-October cover date, the first spin-off star of the Caped Kryptonian’s rapidly expanding multi-media entourage.

As the decade progressed the oh-so-cautious Editors tentatively extended the franchise in 1957 just as the Silver Age of Comics was getting underway, and it seemed that there might be a fresh and sustainable appetite for costumed heroes and their unique brand of spectacular shenanigans. Try-out title Showcase, which had already launched The Flash (#4) and Challengers of the Unknown (#6), followed up with a brace of issues entitled Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane in #9 and 10, before swiftly awarding the “plucky news-hen” a series of her own; in actuality her second, since for a brief while in the mid-1940s she had held a regular solo-spot in Superman.

At this time Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane was one of precious few titles with a female lead and – in the context of today – one that gives many 21st century fans a few uncontrollable qualms of conscience. Within the confines of her series the valiant and capable working woman careered crazily from man-hungry, unscrupulous schemer through ditzy simpleton to indomitable and brilliant hero – often all in the same issue – as the exigencies of entertaining children under the strictures of the Comics Code all too often played up the period’s astonishingly misogynistic attitudes.

The comic was clearly intended to appeal to the family demographic that made I Love Lucy a national phenomenon and Doris Day a ditzy latter day saint, so many stories were played for laughs in that same patriarchal, parochial manner; a “gosh, aren’t women funny?” tone that appals me today – but not as much as the fact that I still love them to bits.

It helps that they’re mostly illustrated by the wonderfully whimsical Kurt Schaffenberger.

Jimmy fared little better: a bright, brave but naive kid making his own way in the world, he was often butt of cruel jokes and impossible circumstances; undervalued and humiliatingly tasked in a variety of slapstick adventures and strange transformations.

This third cunningly conjoined chronologically complete compendium collects the affable, all-ages tales from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #35-44, March 1959-April 1960 and Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #8-16, April 1959-April 1960. It commences with the Man of Steel’s Go-To Guy in three tales drawn by the wonderful Curt Swan.

Probably fuelled by television (syndicated reruns kept the Superman family at the forefront of childish viewing habits) Jimmy’s comic was highly popular for over two decades, blending action, adventure, wacky comedy, fantasy and science fiction in the gently addictive, self-deprecating manner scripter Otto Binder had perfected in the 1940s and early 1950s at Fawcett Comics on the magnificent original Captain Marvel (you can call him Shazam!).

As the feature progressed, one of the most popular plot-themes (and most fondly remembered and referenced today by most Baby-Boomer fans) was the unlucky lad’s appalling talent for being warped, mutated and physically manipulated by fate, aliens and even his friends…

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #35 (March 1959) opened with ‘The Menace of Superman’s Fan Mail!’, by Binder & Swan, inked by Stan Kaye. Here, the cub reporter undertakes to answer the mountain of missives for the Man of Steel: inadvertently supplying a crook with an almost foolproof method of murdering the Metropolis Marvel.

The remaining tales are inked by Ray Burnley, beginning with a rather disingenuous yarn seeing the kid repeatedly causing trouble by wearing a futuristic suit of mechanised super-armour which only made him look like ‘The Robot Jimmy Olsen!’, whilst in ‘Superman’s Enemy!’ the devoted dope overnight turns into a despicable, hero-hating wretch. However, as a veritable plague of altered behaviour afflicts Clark Kent’s friends, the Action Ace soon discerns an underlying pattern…

Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #8 (April 1959) opened with Alvin Schwartz & Kurt Schaffenberger’s ‘The Superwoman of Metropolis’, heavy-handedly turning the tables on our heroine when she develops incredible abilities and took on a costumed identity, and was instantly plagued by a suspicious Clark determined to expose her secret.

‘The Ugly Superman!’ dealt with a costumed wrestler who fell for Lois, giving the Caped Kryptonian another chance for some pretty unpleasant Super-teasing. It was written by Robert Bernstein, who unlike me can use the tenor of the times as his excuse, and pleasingly ameliorated by Schaffenberger delivering another hilarious dose of OTT comedic drama illustration. Following is a far less disturbing fantasy romp: ‘Queen for a Day!’ (Bernstein, Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye) found Lois and Clark shipwrecked on an island of Amazons with the plucky lady mistaken for their long-prophesied royal saviour…

Jimmy Olsen #36 began with Binder, Swan & Burnley’s ‘Super-Senor’s Pal!’, with the boy South of the Border in the banana republic of Peccador helping a local rebel fight the dictators by masquerading as a Latino Man of Steel. Kaye inked the momentous debut of ‘Lois Lane’s Sister!’, introducing perky “air-hostess” Lucy as romantic foil and occasionally attainable inamorata for the kid, in a smart, funny tale of hapless puppy love. With Burnley inks the final tale details the cub reporter’s accidental time-trip to Krypton and ‘How Jimmy Olsen First met Superman!’

Although we all think of Siegel & Shuster’s iconic creation as the epitome of comicbook creation, the truth is that very soon after his launch Superman became a multimedia star and far more people have seen or heard the Man of Steel than have ever read him – and yes, that does include the globally syndicated newspaper strip which ran from 1939 to 1966. By the time his 20th anniversary rolled around he had been a regular on radio, starred in a series of astounding animated cartoons and two movies, and just ended his first smash live-action television serial. In his future were many more, a stage musical, a stellar movie career and almost seamless succession of TV cartoons beginning with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and continuing ever since. Even Krypto got in on the small-screen act…

Thus it’s no wonder tales from this Silver Age period should be draped in gaudily wholesome trappings of Tinseltown – even more so than most of celebrity-obsessed America. It didn’t hurt that editor Whitney Ellsworth was a part-time screenwriter, script editor and producer as well as National/DC’s Hollywood point man.

The Man of Tomorrow’s TV presence influenced much of Lois Lane #9: a celebrity-soaked issue scripted by Bernstein which began with artists Dick Sprang & John Forte detailing how performer Pat Boone (who just-coincidentally had his own licensed DC comic at that time) almost exposed Earth’s greatest secret in ‘Superman’s Mystery Song!’

The Silver Screen connection continued in the Schaffenberger-limned ‘The Most Hated Girl in Metropolis’, wherein Lois is framed for exposing that self-same super-secret as a ruse to get her to Hollywood for her own unsuspected This is Your Life special. That issue ended with a welcome return to fantasy/comedy as Schaffenberger introduces a lost valley of leftover dinosaurs and puny caveman Blog – ‘Lois Lane’s Stone-Age Suitor’…

In JO #37 Bill Finger, Swan & John Forte reveal the incredible truth about multi-powered Mysterio in the case of ‘Superman’s Super-Rival’, whilst Binder, Swan & Kaye expose the difficulties of frivolous Lucy Lane having ‘The Jimmy Olsen Signal Watch!’: a timepiece that kept the boy on a constant electronic leash…

This issue closes with a cunning caper wherein resident crackpot genius Professor Phineas Potter concocts a serum enabling Jimmy to reprise his many malleable antics and tangled troublemaking as ‘The Elastic Lad of Metropolis!’ (Binder, Swan & George Klein) – and almost exposing Superman’s secret identity into the bargain.

Records from the period are sadly incomplete but Bernstein probably wrote each tale in Lois Lane #10, beginning with Schaffenberger-limned classic ‘The Cry-Baby of Metropolis’, as Lois – terrified of losing her looks – exposes herself to a youth ray and temporarily turns into a baby, much to the amusement of Superman and arch-rival Lana Lang…

Schaffenberger also illustrated ‘Lois Lane’s Romeo!’ with the constantly spurned reporter finally giving up on her extraterrestrial beau. Typically, she’s then romanced by a slick, romantic European who’s was also a conniving, crooked conman. She rebounds in top crime-busting form for ‘Lois Lane’s Super-Seance!’ (Boring & Kaye): apparently endowed with psychic sight, but actually pulling the wool over the eyes of superstitious crooks.

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #38 also tapped TV connection as the lad becomes ‘The MC of the Midnight Scare Theatre!’ (Bernstein, Swan & Forte): uncovering an incredible mystery after his hoary, hokey stage act apparently scares four viewers to death…

Although by the same creators, the broad humour of ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Wedding! to Lucy has a far less ingenious explanation, but at least ‘Olsen’s Super-Supper!’ (Bernstein, Swan & John Giunta) wraps up on a high as the impecunious kid enters an eating contest and allows shady operators to try an experimental appetite-increasing ray on him. Of course, the mad scientists have an ulterior, criminal motive…

A plane crash and head wound transform Lois into a fur-bikinied wild woman in #11 of her own magazine, but – even after being rescued by Superman – ‘The Leopard Girl of the Jungle!’ (Finger & Schaffenberger) has one last task to valiantly undertake. Anonymously authored ‘The Tricks of Lois Lane!’ finds the restored reporter up to her old tricks to expose Clark as Superman, whilst ‘Lois Lane’s Super-Perfume!’ (Bernstein) seems able to turn any man into a love-slave – until the Man of Steel exposes criminal scammers behind it…

Binder, Swan & Forte crafted all of Jimmy Olsen #39, beginning with the lad stuck on another world and quickly seen as ‘The Super-Lad of Space!’, after which, back in Metropolis, his ill-considered antics lose and win and lose him again a fortune in ‘The Million Dollar Mistakes!’ Lastly, ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Super-Signals!’ see him misplace his Superman-summoning watch and forced to spectacularly improvise every time he gets into trouble…

Bernstein wrote LL #12, beginning with two Schaffenberger specials: ‘The Mermaid of Metropolis’ in which an accident dooms Lois to life underwater beside Sea King Aquaman, until Superman cures her piscoid condition, whilst in ‘The Girl Atlas!’ Lana sneakily turns herself into a super-powerhouse to corral the Man of Steel and learns what sneaky means when Lois strikes back…

Al Plastino rendered ‘Lois Lane Loves Clark Kent!’, as the reporter, believing she has incontrovertible proof of Superman’s secret, starts a campaign to entrap her unknowing colleague in wedlock…

Swan & Forte illustrated all of JO #40, beginning with Binder’s ‘The Invisible Life of Jimmy Olsen’ as our hapless chum is enmired in all manner of mischief after a gift from his best pal unexpectedly leaves him unseen but not trouble-free. ‘Jimmy Olsen, Supergirl’s Pal!’ sees the reporter temporarily struck blind, just as a crook with a grudge tries to kill him. With Superman out of touch, the Caped Kryptonian’s secret weapon Supergirl (at this time a newly-arrived, hidden trainee no one except cousin Kal-El and Krypto know of) rushes to the rescue, only to have the feisty lad disbelieve and dispute her very existence.

Bernstein then exposes ‘Jimmy Olsen, Juvenile Delinquent!’ as he goes undercover to break up a street gang and discovers Perry White’s own son is a member…

Bernstein & Schaffenberger led in Lois’ 13th issue, hilariously ‘Introducing… Lois Lane’s Parents!’ Superman had offered her a lift home to the farm of Sam and Ella Lane for a family reunion, but thanks to a concatenation of circumstances, local gossip and super-politeness, the Man of Steel quickly finds himself peer-pressure-press-ganged into a wedding.

Fair Warning: this contains Lois’ first nude scene as a proud father gets out baby albums…

From the same creative team – and in a brilliant pastiche of My Fair Lady – ‘Alias Lois Lane!’ see the indomitable inquirer undercover as sketchy floozie Sadie Blodgett in a plan to snap candid shots of a movie star. It all goes south when “Sadie” is “hired” by crooks to impersonate Superman’s girlfriend in an assassination plot bound to fail!

Next, Finger, Boring & Kaye disclose ‘The Shocking Secret of Lois Lane!’ following a tragically implausible incident forcing the journalist to cover her disfigured head in a lead-lined steel box. Thankfully, the Action Ace is around to deduce what’s really going on…

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #41 opened with Bernstein, Swan & Forte’s ‘The Human Octopus!’, highlighting the lad’s negligent idiocy as he impetuously eats alien fruit and grows six more arms. However, the true effect of the space spud is far more devious…

Binder & Kaye joined Swan for ‘The Robot Reporter!’, with Jimmy using an automaton provided by Superman to do his job as he recuperates from a damaged ankle. Nonetheless, he manages to get into trouble from the comfort of his apartment. Thanks to stupid showing off, he’s then mistaken for a master fencer and catapulted into a Ruritanian adventure as ‘Jimmy Olsen, the Boy Swordsman!’ (Binder, Swan & Forte).

Binder & Schaffenberger opened LL #14 with ‘Three Nights in the Fortress of Solitude!’ as conniving journalist has contrived to isolate herself with Superman long enough to prove how much he needs a woman in his life, only to suffer one disaster after another…

Bernstein scripted ‘Lois Lane’s Soldier Sweetheart!’, revealing her warm and generous side as she helps a lonely GI attain his greatest desire. Jerry Siegel then returned to the character he created (and based on his own wife!) using still-secret Supergirl to catastrophically play cupid in ‘Lois Lane’s Secret Romance!’

Jimmy Olsen #42 started with uncredited story ‘The Big Superman Movie!’ (art by Swan & Forte), wherein the star-struck kid consults on a major motion picture. He would far rather have played himself, much to Lucy’s amusement, but ultimately the sharp apprentice journalist has the last word – and laugh. Bernstein was back for ‘Perry White, Cub Reporter!’ which has Editor and junior trading places, with power only apparently going straight to Olsen’s head, after which ‘Jimmy the Genie!’ sees something similar occur when boy reporter and magical sprite exchange roles in a clever thriller illustrated by Swan & Giunta.

Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #15 featured a landmark mystery in ‘The Super-Family of Steel!’ (Binder & Schaffenberger) which seemingly sees Lois attain her every dream. She and her Kryptonian Crimebuster first become ‘Super-Husband and Wife’, with ‘The Bride Gets Super-Powers’ as a consequence. They even have a brace of super-kids before the astounding ‘Secret of the Super-Family’ is revealed…

In Superman’s Pal #43 TV show 77 Sunset Strip got a name-check as ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Four Fads!’ (Swan & Kaye) finds the kid attempting to create a teen trend to impress Lucy, whilst as ‘Phantom Fingers Olsen!’ (Boring & Kaye) he infiltrates a gang of murderous thieves, before being adopted by ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Private Monster!’ (Siegel, Swan & Forte). After causing no end of embarrassment in Metropolis, the bizarre beast takes Jim to his home dimension where even greater shocks await…

The book’s final Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane is #16 (April 1960) opening with ‘Lois Lane’s Signal-Watch’ with Schaffenberger art on (possibly) a Siegel script. Here the Man of Steel learns to regret ever giving a woman who clearly has no idea what “emergency” means a device to summon him at any moment of day or night…

That slice of scurrilous 1950s propaganda is inexplicably balanced by a brilliant murder thriller displaying all Lois’ resilience and fortitude as she infiltrates and solves (Bernstein’s) ‘The Mystery of Skull Island’, before Siegel authors another cruel dark tragedy wherein Superman tries to cure Lois’ nosy impulses – by tricking his own girlfriend into believing she has a death stare in ‘The Kryptonite Girl!’ Of course, as all couples know, such power develops naturally not long after the honeymoon…

I love these stories, but sometime words just fail me.

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #44 completes this third monochrome monolith, starting with Halloween-styled tale ‘The Wolf-Man of Metropolis!’ (Binder, Swan & Kaye) by blending horror, mystery and heart-warming charm in a mini-classic which sees the boy cursed to hairy moon madness. Desperate for surcease his only hope is a willing maiden to cure him with a kiss. That’s followed by Siegel, Swan & Forte’s ‘Jimmy’s Leprechaun Pal!’, a magical imp who made life hell for the cub until human ingenuity outwitted magical pranksterism, after which Bernstein, Swan & Kaye crafted possibly the strangest and most disturbing yarn in this compilation as the boy went undercover as a sexy showgirl to get close to gangster Big Monte in ‘Miss Jimmy Olsen!’

As well as containing some of the most delightful episodes of the pre angst-drenched, cosmically catastrophic DC, these fun, thrilling, deeply peculiar and yes, often potentially offensive stories also perfectly capture the changing tone and tastes which reshaped comics from the safe 1950s to the seditious, rebellious 1970s, all the while keeping to the prime directive of the industry – “keep them entertained and keep them wanting more”.

Despite my good-natured cavils from my high horse here in the 21st century (or “the End of Days” as they’re more commonly known), I think these stories have a huge amount to offer funnybook fun-seekers. I strongly urge you to check them out.
© 1959, 1960, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Mandrake the Magician®: The Complete King Years volume 2


By Fred Fredericks, Gary Poole, Ray Bailey, Giovanni Fiorentini, Salvatore Stizza, Domenico Mirabella, Paul S. Newman & Stan Campbell & various (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1613451021 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Magical unrealism at its Finest… 9/10

Regarded by many as comics’ first superhero, Mandrake the Magician debuted as a daily newspaper strip on 11th June 1934 – although creator Lee Falk had first tried to sell the strip a decade previously. Initially drawing it too, Falk rapidly replaced himself, allowing the early wonderment to materialise through the effective understatement of sublime draughtsman Phil Davis. An instant hit, it was soon supplemented by a full-colour Sunday companion page from February 3rd 1935.

Falk – as a 19-year old college student – had sold Mandrake to King Features Syndicate years earlier, but asked the monolithic company to let him finish his studies before dedicating himself to it full time. Schooling done, the 23-year-old master raconteur settled into his life’s work: entertaining millions with astounding tales.

Falk – who also created the first costumed superhero in moodily magnificent generational manhunter The Phantom – spawned an entire comic book subgenre with his first creation. Most Golden Age publishers boasted at least one (but usually many) nattily attired wizards in their gaudily-garbed pantheons: all roaming the world(s) making miracles and crushing injustice with varying degrees of stage legerdemain or actual sorcery.

Characters such as Mr. Mystic, Ibis the Invincible, Sargon the Sorcerer, and an assortment of “…the Magician” ’s like Zatara, Zanzibar, Kardak ad infinitum all borrowed heavily and shamelessly from the uncanny exploits of the elegant, enigmatic man of mystery gracing the world’s newspapers and magazines.

In the Antipodes, Mandrake was a suave stalwart regular of Australian Women’s Weekly and became a cherished icon of adventure in the UK, Australia, Italy, Brazil, Germany, Spain, France, Turkey and across Scandinavia: a major star of page and screen, pervading every aspect of global consciousness.

As seen and described in Tim Lasiuta’s epically informative biographical and treat-packed ‘Introduction: Mandrake – a Magician for the Ages’, over the decades he’s manifested for radio, movies, chapter-serials, a theatrical play, television animation (as part of the cartoon series Defenders of the Earth) and so much more. With all that came a merchandising bonanza of games, toys (including magic trick kits), books, comics and the rest, much of it tantalizingly pictured here in posters, candid photos, book and comics covers plus a wealth of original art…

Falk worked on Mandrake and “The Ghost who Walks” until his death in 1999 (on his deathbed he was laying out one last story), but also found a few quiet moments to become a renowned playwright, theatre producer and impresario, as well as an inveterate world-traveller. However, he couldn’t keep up with the burgeoning demand, and depended a great deal on his later collaborator Fred Fredericks, who became an increasingly vital component of the process and ultimately Falk’s successor… which is where this collection comes in…

Between 1966 and 1967, King Features Syndicate dabbled with a comic book line of their biggest stars – Popeye, Flash Gordon, The Phantom and Mandrake – developed after the characters had enjoyed newsstand stardom under the broad and effective aegis of veteran licensed properties publisher Gold Key Comics. No stranger to funnybooks, Mandrake was featured in the David McKay Company’s Magic Comics (1939 to 1949 as reformatted strip reprints) and in new material in November 1956 he starred in Dell’s Four Color #752 and was also a major player for child-friendly Big Little Books.

This concluding full-colour archival volume gathers the pertinent parts of Mandrake the Magician #6-10, spanning September 1966 to May 1967, and includes in its entirety that historical bonus from FC #752 (November 1956). The wonder and mystery resume with a two-chapter saga from #6, cover-dated July 1967.

Scripted by Gary Poole and illustrated by Ray Bailey (the American one who worked on The Gumps, Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon, Turok, Son of Stone, Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent and more: not the British doyen of children’s comics who limned such juvenile delights as Milly and Billy and Kitty Hawke), ‘The Incredible Space Menace’ sees the master of mesmerism targeted by ousted and exiled alien tyrants who ride flying saucers hidden inside hurricanes.

One has been Mandrake’s close friend for 15 years, learning to counter his magic and turn it against the hero as a prelude to world conquest. Luckily, the mage has lifelong companion Lothar and beloved Princess Narda to save him before he can save humanity itself…

Those in the know are well aware that Mandrake was educated at the fabled College of Magic in Tibet, thereafter becoming a famous, globetrotting troubleshooter: always accompanied by his mighty African partner and loving companion (eventually – in 1997 – wife) Narda of Cockaigne. Together forever, they faced the uncanny, solved crimes and crushed evil.

His African associate took centre stage in #7 as ‘Jungle Drums’ provided the herculean warrior prince with a backstory and renewed purpose. In Mandrake’s American home Xanadu, Lothar is plagued by eerie, ethereal tom-tom beats calling him back to the “Dark Continent”. The episode gives Mandrake opportunity to explain that his friend is King of the Wambesi in voluntary exile, and how the magician had helped him expose the witchdoctor who poisoned the previous monarch to seize the throne. The case ended with Lothar choosing comradely adventure over luxury and comfort. Now a new menace threatens his people and demands ‘The Return of King Lothar’…

Both interlinked tales were by Poole & Bailey and conclude with the heroes back in Africa where the people have utterly forgotten their liege lord. After numerous lethally close shaves the culprits are exposed as western “doctors” whose inoculation program is designed to make the entire nation docile and compliant while the whites plunder the nation wholesale. Cue a little Mandrake magic and monarchical muscle…

Leaving another regent in charge, Lothar rejoins his world-travelling friend just in time to enjoy a little crime action that exploited some global franchising successes. In the 1960s and 1970s, Italian publisher Fratelli Spada produced their own original stories to augment the Falk material and King’s US Mandrake the Magician #8 (September 1967) was a translated version of ‘The Telltale Doll’, scripted by Giovanni Fiorentini and drawn by Salvatore Stizza. Here, the trio visit Mexico and become embroiled in a callous smuggling operation using children and their drug-stuffed toys as unsuspected, inadvertent couriers…

A month later another Italian tale by Fiorentini – illustrated by Domenico Mirabella and modified by script-doctor Poole – delivers cosmic horror as a body-possessing alien mutant runs amok on Earth. ‘The Terror From Outer Space’ is ruthlessly hunting a super-mineral able to eradicate the world and which is currently considered by ever-inquisitive Mandrake as a simple curio. He has no conception of the peril to him and the planet…

Poole & Bailey reunited for the final issue as #10 (November 1967) foreshadowed the coming horror story revival with a serious ghost story in ‘The Haunting of Hawk Inn’ as Narda takes a hard-earned vacation from action. Sadly, the rustic coastal hideaway she’s chosen comes with an arcane history and it’s not long before she’s begging Mandrake and Lothar to investigate a spectral raptor with a grudge and no mercy…

Behind an evocatively beautiful, sadly anonymous painted cover, the comics contents of November 1956’s Four Color #752 as published by Dell Comics add lasting lustre to this archive. The frontispiece ‘Mandrake’s Magic’ – explaining how his powers work – is part of the Introduction already described, so here are two full-colour complete exploits plotted by Falk and scripted by Paul S. Newman (The Lone Ranger, Turok, Dr. Solar, Man of the Atom) and Marshall McClintock, with art from veteran storyteller Stan Campbell (Lash LaRue, Tex Ritter, King of the Royal Mounted).

In ‘The Magic Maker’, our urbane Prince of Prestidigitation meets a gifted “player on the other side” as stage hypnotist Dr. Phantasmo is hired by a crooked candidate to wreck a crusading Mayor’s re-election campaign. With the troubleshooting trio strenuously objecting, the plot is bizarre and spectacular, but doomed to failure…

Then ‘Tide of Treachery’ sees a boating holiday in Canada draw the heroes into a dastardly scheme to sabotage and evict an entire fishing village. With murder and more in play, detective work reveals the truth about bucolic Bundy Bay and why property speculators Shain and Carven wants it so badly, but it’s Mandrake magic that settles the issue…

Ending the show is a fascinating look at the strip and comic book career of an artistic legend as Spike Barkin conducts a copiously illustrated and informative ‘Focus: Interview with Fred Fredericks’: exploring his incredible career, paying particular attention to the role of Lothar and how the Civil Rights movement of this period affected the look and actions of one of the most long-lived black characters in comics…

This thrilling tome offers exotic locales, thrilling action, spooky chills and pure fun in equal measure. The stories have lost none of their impact and only need you reading them. This a delicious, nostalgia-drenched triumph perfect for the Halloween season: straightforward, captivating action-adventure that has always been the staple of comics fiction. If that sounds like a good time to you, that’s Magic!
Mandrake the Magician® © 1956, 1966-1967 and 2016 King Features Syndicate, Inc.; Hearst Holdings, Inc. Reprinted with Permission. All rights reserved.

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Challengers of the Unknown by Jack Kirby


By Jack Kirby, France “Ed” Herron, Dave Wood, Roz Kirby, George Klein, Bruno Premiani, Marvin Stein, Wally Wood & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7719-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

The Challengers of the Unknown were a bridging concept between the fashionably All-American, verifiably human trouble-shooters who monopolised comic books for the majority of the 1950s and the reimagined costumed mystery men who would soon return to take over the industry.

As superheroes began popping up mid-decade, in 1956 came a super-team – the first of the Silver Age – with no powers, the most basic and utilitarian of uniforms and the most dubious of motives… Suicide by Mystery. Nevertheless their launch was arguably the second most important event of the Silver Age

Crucially, they were a huge hit from the get-go, striking a chord that lasted for over a decade before they finally died… only to rise again and yet again. The very idea of them was stirring enough, but their initial execution made their success inevitable.

Jack Kirby was – and remains – the most important single influence in the history of American comics. There are quite rightly millions of words written about what the man has done and meant (such as Paul Kupperberg’s enthusiastic Introduction and John Morrow’s pithy Afterword in this superb compilation), and you should read those if you are at all interested in our medium.

I’m still going to add a few words to that superabundance here: one of his best and most influential projects which, like so many others, he perfectly constructed before moving on, leaving highly competent but never quite as inspired talents to build upon.

When the comics industry suffered a paranoia-induced, witch-hunt-caused collapse in the mid-50’s, Kirby returned briefly to DC Comics to produce tales of suspense and science fiction for the company’s line of mystery anthologies. In a few episodes, he also revitalised Green Arrow (then simply a back-up strip in Adventure Comics) whilst creating the newspaper strip Sky Masters of the Space Force.

At the same time he also re-packaged for Showcase (the try-out title that launched many Silver Age DC mainstays) an off-kilter team concept that had been kicking around in his head since he and long-time collaborator Joe Simon had closed their innovative but ill-timed Prize/Essankay/Mainline Comics ventures.

After years of working for others, Simon & Kirby finally established their own publishing company: producing comics with a much more sophisticated audience in mind. That happened mere months before an industry-wide sales downturn amidst a changing society awash with public hysteria generated by the anti-comic book pogrom spearheaded by US Senator Estes Kefauver and pop psychologist Dr. Frederic Wertham.

Simon quit the business for advertising, but Kirby soldiered on, taking his skills and ideas to a number of safer, more conservative and less experimental companies.

The Challengers were four ordinary mortals; explorers and adventurers who walked away unscathed from a terrible plane crash. Already obviously what we’d now call “adrenaline junkies”, pilot Ace Morgan, diver Prof Haley, acrobat and mountaineer Red Ryan and wrestler Rocky Davis summarily decided that since they were all living on borrowed time anyway, they would dedicate what remained of their lives to testing themselves and fate. They would risk their lives for Knowledge and, naturally, Justice.

The series launched with ‘The Secrets of the Sorcerer’s Box!’ in Showcase #6 (cover-dated January/February 1957 – so it was on spinner-racks and news-stands in time for Christmas 1956). Kirby and scripter Dave Wood, plus inkers Marvin Stein and Jack’s wife Roz, crafted a spectacularly creepy epic wherein the freshly introduced doom-chasers were commissioned by duplicitous magician Morelian to open an ancient container holding otherworldly secrets and powers.

The story roars along with all the tension and wonder of the B-movie thrillers it emulates and Jack’s awesome drawing resonates with power and dynamism, which grew even greater for the sequel: a science fiction drama instigated after an alliance of leftover Nazi technologists and contemporary American criminals unleashes a terrible robotic threat. ‘Ultivac is Loose!’ (Showcase #7, March/April 1957) introduced a necessary standard appendage of the times and the B-movie genre in the form of brave, capable, brilliant and beautiful-when-she-took-her-labcoat-off boffin Dr. June Robbins, who became the no-nonsense, ultra-capable (if unofficial) fifth Challenger at a time when most funnybook females had returned to a subsidiary status in that so-conventional, repressive era.

The uncanny exploits paused for a sales audit and the team didn’t reappear until Showcase #11 (November/December 1957) allowing The Flash and Lois Lane their respective second shots at the big time. When the Challengers returned, it was in alien invasion epic ‘The Day the Earth Blew Up’.

Uniquely engaging comics realist Bruno Premiani (a former associate and employee from Kirby’s Prize Comics days) came aboard to ink a taut doomsday chiller keeping readers on the edge of their seats even today, and in their final Showcase outing (#12, January/February 1958) the Questing Quartet were preparing a move into their own title.

‘The Menace of the Ancient Vials’ was defused by the usual blend of daredevil heroics and inspired ingenuity. The wonderful inking of George Klein adding subtle clarity to a tale of an international criminal who steals ancient weapons that threaten the entire world if misused), but the biggest buzz would come two months later with the first issue of their own magazine.

Written and drawn by Kirby with Stein on inks, Challengers of the Unknown #1 (May 1958) presented two complete stories plus an iconic introductory page that would become almost a signature logo for the team.

‘The Man Who Tampered with Infinity’ pits the heroes against a renegade scientist whose cavalier dabbling unleashes dreadful monsters from the beyond onto our defenceless planet, before the team are actually abducted by aliens in ‘The Human Pets’: forced to win their freedom and a rapid rocket-ship (sphere actually) ride home…

The same team were responsible for both tales in issue #2. ‘The Traitorous Challenger’ is a disturbing monster mystery, with June returning to sabotage a mission in the Australian Outback for the very best of reasons. Then, ‘The Monster Maker’ finds the team seemingly helpless against super-criminal Roc who can conjure and animate solid objects out of his thoughts.

Issue #3 features ‘Secret of the Sorcerer’s Mirror’ with Roz Kirby & Marvin Stein again inking The King’s mesmerising pencils as the fantastic foursome pursue a band of criminals whose magic looking-glass can locate deadly ancient weapons. Undoubtedly, though, the most intriguing tale for fans and historians of the medium is ‘The Menace of the Invincible Challenger’, wherein team strongman Rocky is rocketed into space, only to crash back to Earth with strange, uncanny powers.

For years the obvious similarities of this group – especially this yarn – to the origin of Marvel’s Fantastic Four (#1 cover-dated November 1961) have fuelled fan speculation. In all honesty I simply don’t care. They’re similar but different enough, and equally enjoyable so read both. In fact, read them all.

With #4, the series became visually immaculate as the sheer brilliance of Wally Wood’s inking elevated illustration to unparalleled heights. The scintillant sheen and limpid depth of Woody’s brushwork fostered an abiding authenticity in even the most outrageous of Kirby’s designs and the result is – even now – simply breathtaking.

‘The Wizard of Time’ is a full-length masterpiece that opens with a series of bizarre robberies leading the team to a scientist with a time-machine. By visiting historical oracles, rogue researcher Darius Tiko has divined a path to the far future. When he gets there, he intends to rob it blind, but the Challengers find a way to follow and foil him…

‘The Riddle of the Star-Stone’ (#5) is a full-length contemporary thriller, wherein an archaeologist’s assistant uncovers an alien tablet bestowing various super-powers when different gems are inserted into it. The exotic locales and non-stop action are intoxicating, but Kirby’s solid characterisation and ingenious writing are what make this such a compelling read.

Scripter Dave Wood returned for #6’s first story. ‘Captives of the Space Circus’ sees the team shanghaied from Earth to perform in an interplanetary travelling carnival, before the evil ringmaster is promptly outfoxed and they return for France “Ed” Herron’s mystic saga ‘The Sorceress of Forbidden Valley’. Here, June becomes an amnesiac puppet in a power struggle between a fugitive gangster and a ruthless feudal potentate.

Issue #7 offers another daring double-feature: both scripted by Herron. First comes relatively straightforward alien-safari saga ‘The Beasts from Planet 9’, but it’s followed by a much more intriguing yarn. On the ‘Isle of No Return’, the “Challs” face a super-scientific bandit whose shrinking ray leaves them all mouse-sized….

Concluding Kirby-crafted issue #8 (July 1959) delivers a magnificent finale to a superb run as The King & Wally Wood go out in stunning style with a brace of gripping thrillers – both of which introduce menaces who would return to bedevil the team in future exploits.

Dave Wood, Kirby and the unrelated Wally Wood reveal ‘The Man Who Stole the Future’: introducing evil mastermind Drabny who steals mystic artefacts and conquers a small nation before the team dethrone him. However, although this is a tale of spectacular battles and uncharacteristic, if welcome, comedy, the real gem here is space opera tour-de-force ‘Prisoners of the Robot Planet!’ Written by Kirby (probably with Herron), it sees the human troubleshooters petitioned by a desperate alien, travelling to his distant world to liberate the organic population from bondage to their own robotic servants These have risen in revolt under the command of the fearsome autonomous automaton, Kra in a clear example of fiction foreshadowing fact. Do you know what your AIs do while you’re reading old comics…?

These are classic adventures, told in a classical manner. Kirby developed a brilliantly feasible concept with which to work and heroically archetypical characters. He then tapped into an astounding blend of genres to display their talents and courage in unforgettable exploits that informed and affected every team comic that followed – and absolutely informed his successive landmarks with Stan Lee.

But then Jack was gone…

The Challengers followed the Kirby model until cancellation in 1970, but due to a dispute with Editor Jack Schiff the writer/artist resigned at the height of his powers. The Kirby magic was impossible to match, but as with all The King’s creations, every element was in place for the successors to run with. Challengers of the Unknown #9 (September 1959) saw an increase in those fantasy elements favoured by Schiff, and perhaps an easing of the interpersonal tensions that marked previous issues (Comics Historians take another note: the Challs were bitching, bickering and barking at each other years before Marvel’s Cosmic Quartet ever boarded their fateful rocket-ship).

But that’s meat for another book and review…

Challengers of the Unknown is groundbreaking, wonderful and utterly timeless: sheer escapist thrills no fan of the medium should miss and perfect adventurers in the ideal setting of not-so-long-ago in a simpler, better galaxy than ours.
© 1957, 1958, 1959, 2003, 2017 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved

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Suburban Nightmares: The Science Experiment


By Larry Hancock, Michael Cherkas, John Van Bruggen & various (NBM)
ISBN: 978-0-91834-880-7 (Album PB)

Anticipating the imminent release – and upcoming review of Michael Cherkas’ Red Harvest – I thought I’d put in a plug/request for another of the stunningly different comics he and his creative partners pioneered in the antediluvian 80s and neurotically self-absorbed 90s. Here you go…

During the vast expansion of opportunity and outpouring of innovation that graced comics during the 1980s, much of the “brain-rotting trash” or “silly kid’s stuff” stigma that had plagued the medium was finally dispelled. America started catching up to the rest of the world: acknowledging sequential narrative as an actual Capital “A” Art Form, and their doors opened wide open for foreigners to make a few waves too…

One of the era’s most critically acclaimed and inescapably intoxicating features sprang from semi-Canadian Renegade Press which set up shop in the USA at the start of the black & white comics bubble in 1984. They quickly established a reputation for excellence, offering a strong line of creator-based properties including some genuinely remarkable series such as Ms. Tree, Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire, Flaming Carrot, Normalman, and a compulsively backwards-looking Cold War/UFO/paranoia-driven delight: The Silent Invasion.

That last was a stunningly stylish conspiracy saga, bolting 1950s domestic terrors (invasion by Reds; invasion by aliens; invasion by new ideas…) onto Film Noir chic: and employing 20-20 hindsight to produce phenomenally fresh, enticing delights for the so-similar Reagan era. From here and now, it’s never seemed more distressingly likely that politics, if not all history, is cursed to repeat certain cycles and strategies…

The series was collected in four monochrome tomes, re-presenting the lead story wherein inspired co-creators Michael Cherkas & Larry Hancock concocted a cunning confection combining all the coolest genre elements of classic cult sci-fi, horror, spy, conspiracy theory, crime, romance and even situation comedies…

Of equal if not greater interest (to me at least) were the ancillary back-up tales utilising the same milieu and themes. These proved popular enough to springboard into their own short-lived title and ultimately two collections of their own…

Recently, just as the world teetered even further and faster on the edge of a multiple-choice test of imminent dooms – and with America once more enduring internecine struggle amongst the citizenry, corruption, cover-ups at every level of government and the press under attack from the people and traditions it seeks to inform and safeguard – The Silent Invasion was remastered, revised, re-released and continued in a quartet of so-collectible tomes…

1950s America was a hugely iconic and paradoxical time. Incomparable scientific and cultural advancements, great wealth and desperate, intoxicating optimism inexplicably arose amidst an atmosphere of immense social, cultural, racial, sexual and political repression with an increasingly paranoid populace seeing conspiracy and subversive attacks in every shadow and corner of the rest of the world.

Such an insular melting pot couldn’t help but be fertile soil for imaginative outsiders to craft incisive, evocative tales dripping with convoluted mystery and taut tension, especially when wedded to the nation’s fantastic – and ongoing – obsessions with rogue science, flying saucers, gangsterism and conspiracies…

They were also ridiculously obsessed with hot babes and bust sizes, but that’s not really a mystery, is it?

In 1983 the temptation for a little mischief was clearly too much for the USA’s less panicky northern neighbours, and Larry Hancock, Michael Cherkas & John Van Bruggen brilliantly mined the era for these stunning, stylish and clever yarns, subsequently pulling off the impossible trick of re-capturing a fleeting zeitgeist…

This first superbly oversized and inexplicably out-of-print monochrome tome (a whopping 280 x 205mm) gathers that stand-alone support material from The Silent Invasion and Suburban Nightmares comic books. Hancock, Cherkas & Van Bruggen playfully swap jobs and – with a few invited guests – pilfer and homage other stylisations and forms to produce a wicked wealth of twisted tales and shocking stories that will, even now, astound fans of classic genres cited above…

The macabre, mirth, mood and menace commences with eponymous 4-part thriller ‘The Science Experiment’ (script by Hancock, pencils Van Bruggen, inks & letters from Cherkas) set in the early 1950s boom years, wherein an idyllic new town built on the edge of an operational government atomic bomb testing site slowly reveals its terrible secret…

In ‘Welcome to Green Valley’, the latest ultra-modern planned community in Nevada accepts new school science teacher Sam Donaldson and his wife Ruth with open arms. They’re the perfect nuclear family, with son Rusty already making friends at Hoover High and another baby on the way. Soon, they’re all getting on famously with everybody – or at least the adults are…

However, soon after flirtatious neighbour Theresa Morrow confides to Ruth that she’s also expecting, the poor thing has a minor fall. When the concerned Donaldsons warn the doctor, they receive the tragic but impossible news that Theresa has inexplicably died… and was “never pregnant”…

In the shadow of a fresh mushroom cloud, ‘An Ill Wind blows in Green Valley’ finds bereft Barry Morrow turning to drink whilst Sam meets Hospital Administrator Dr. Stewart Carver: a keen fan and follower of the regular nuclear spectacle occurring 50 miles beyond his office window…

Still unsettled, Sam heads for the local library and checks out some books about radiation, unaware that by doing so he’s made it onto a very special secret list…

His concern increases after inadvertently learning his predecessor at Hoover High consulted the same tomes before mysteriously quitting and disappearing, but it’s Principal Daniels who panics when Donaldson finds that some of old Charlie Simmer’s notes and journals are languishing at school secretary Madge’s house…

Too busy and wrapped up to help Rusty with his science project, Sam goes to Madge’s house only to find she’s been burgled. Although the place has been ransacked, all that’s missing are Simmer’s journals, but before he can process it all, Barry attacks him, accusing Donaldson of having an affair with Theresa…

‘Dark Secrets of Green Valley’ sees Sam barracked by Principal Daniels, another atomic apologist who can’t contemplate any thought that radioactive fallout might be harmful. As Ruth has an ante-natal check-up, Carver confronts Sam, accusing him of scaremongering, and confides that the hospital has been running a government-sponsored survey into radiation. For years.

And has decreed atomic tests as categorically harmless…

Sam is unconvinced, especially as he has noticed how few young kids live in the bustling town. Obsessing over the fact that the Hospital’s huge maternity unit has only one baby in it, he leaves with Ruth, but all such thoughts are driven from him when Barry tries to run them down in the parking lot…

Horrific answers come in the shocking conclusion when now rational and repentant Barry meets Sam: explaining his own part in a shocking conspiracy to cover up what radiation does to foetuses and the outrageous, draconian steps taken by a panicking government desperate not to lose face… especially after spending so much building their City of Tomorrow…

The mysteriously low conception rate is explained at last, but when Sam points out how Barry is still deluding himself and underestimating the lengths Carver has gone to, ‘The Fate of Green Valley’ inevitably culminates in a welter of blood and death…

After the compelling tension and trauma of the title tale, ‘Be Home Before it gets Dark!’ (scripted by Hancock and printed from Van Bruggen’s unlinked pencils) switches tone if not time-period. Here a little lad desperate to prove his bravery stays out late with the big kids and learns that sometimes there really are monsters in the night…

‘Buster Takes a Nap’ describes problems occurring when a provident, prudent and friendly family promise too many friends and neighbours a place in their brand-new bomb shelter. Of course, they’ll never really have to honour those pledges, will they?

With Cherkas tackling all the art chores, ‘The Inheritance’ recounts a little lad’s tale of the scary man next door. We all know about those grouches: shouting, cursing, destroying kid’s toys and digging the gardens in the middle of the night, but this one is REALLY mean. Perhaps that’s why so many kids run away from home and are never seen again?

Stanley Morrison was ‘Just another Joe’ (script by Hancock, pencils Van Bruggen, inks Cherkas): a decent, loyal American in suburban Apple Hill who sold insurance and spent his spare time denouncing colleagues and neighbours to the FBI for un-American activities. Surely it’s just coincidence that they all happen to be more successful or popular than him? Of course, a guy like that is really hard to live with, but his abused, long-suffering wife is a decent, loyal American too…

Veteran inker Bob Smith joined Van Bruggen & Hancock for the paranoid tribute to the earth-shattering advent of Rock ‘n’ Roll as Mrs. Ellen Nelson ruminates on why her son is acting so weird. What makes him hide in his room for hours at a time? Might it be Martian abduction, atomic mutation, government meddling, commie mind-manipulation or something even worse ‘For all we Know’?

Bob Nevin always took the 7:13 train to his job in the city but his tidy, happy life began to instantly and inexplicably unravel the day he caught ‘The Seven-Thirty-Three’ – a surreal and chilling homage to The Twilight Zone, pencilled by Cherkas & inked by Van Bruggen, whilst edgily sardonic ‘Suburban Blight’ sees the illustrators trading places to recount all-out war between a man and the dandelions that desecrate his otherwise perfect lawn…

This superbly incisive and trenchant initial collection concludes with Hancock & Cherkas’ fantasy ‘June 1953’, wherein diligent, hard-working Larry Hillman doesn’t come home one night. When he turns up a day later, Larry is a changed man. Inexplicably happy, calm and friendly, he quits his job, ignores all responsibilities and begs his family to come with him when the aliens who abducted him return in a month to take them all to the perfect world of Alpha Centauri…

Crafted in a boldly adventurous range of visual styles and long overdue for revival, these beguiling and enthralling Suburban Nightmares (and the follow-up from 1996) comprise a sublimely witty gateway to an eerily familiar yet comfortably exotic era: one no fan of thriller fiction can afford to ignore.
Suburban Nightmares: The Science Experiment © 1990 Michael Cherkas, Larry Hancock and John van Bruggen. Other stories © 1986, 1987, 1988 Michael Cherkas, Larry Hancock and John van Bruggen. All rights reserved. NBM Publishing.

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Marvel Adventures Spider-Man: Peter Parker vs The X-Men


By Paul Tobin, Matteo Lolli, Ben Dewey, Christian Nauck, Terry Pallot & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4116-7 (Digest PB/Digital edition)

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

Supplemental series including Super Heroes, The Avengers, Hulk and Iron Man chuntered along merrily until 2010 when they were cancelled. In their place came new volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man. Most of the re-imagined tales were collected in gleefully inviting digest-sized compilations and digitised like this torrid tome. It re-presents #58-61 – the final four stories – from February to May 2010, and all scripted throughout by Paul (No Romance in Hell, Plants vs Zombies) Tobin.

What You Need to Know: 16-year-old Peter Parker has been the mysterious Spider-Man for little more than six months. In that time, he has constantly prowled the streets and skyscrapers of New York, driven to fight injustice. However, as a kid just learning the ropes, he’s pretty much in over his head all the time.

The most persistent major hassle is the all-pervasive Torino crime-family, whose goombahs and street-thugs perpetually attack the wallcrawler on sight, spurred on by a $500,000 bounty on the kid’s web-covered head…

Peter’s civilian life is pretty complicated too, but of great help and constant comfort is High School classmate Sophia Sanduval – the extremely talented Chat – who can communicate with animals and knows Peter’s secret…

Following a handy introductory recap page, we open with him ‘Wanted’ (illustrated by Matteo Lolli & Terry Pallot) when the protracted vendetta against the Torinos is suddenly punctuated by wanted posters for the webslinger on every tree, fence and lamppost. During another brutal but pointless clash with the mobsters, the harassed hero is aided by a very capable masked woman in a red dress who introduces herself as the Blonde Phantom. She’s behind the find-Spidey posters but only because she wants to offer him a job with her Blonde Phantom Detective Agency…

Cautiously hearing her out, Spidey shares his strange and complex personal life with the sultry sleuth, telling her about Chat and how Gwen Watson claims to be going out on dates with his alter ego, something Peter adamantly denies. He doesn’t even have time for the girlfriend he’s got…

Gwen’s dad is Police Captain George Stacy – who also knows the boy’s secret and allows him to continue his vigilante antics. The senior cop acts as a mentor and sounding board, but has some very hard words concerning anyone taking money for doing good deeds. Peter kind-of agrees with him, but Aunt May is in desperate need of cash to repair the foundations of her house…

Conflicted Peter still hasn’t decided to meet up with Blonde Phantom, but as another band of Torinos jump them, the resulting battle reminds him that the last time he took money for being Spider-Man, Uncle Ben died…

The guilt-ridden kid sadly declines the glamorous gumshoe’s offer but is later astounded when Captain Stacy provides a welcome – and acceptably legitimate – financial solution to May’s money woes.

Blonde Phantom isn’t too disappointed either: she got Chat’s contact details out of Peter before they parted…

Pencilled by Ben Dewey, eponymous epic ‘Peter Parker vs. the X-Men’ finds the wallcrawler and Chat having an earnest heart-to-heart about their relationship – and Gwen’s persistent and insistent claims to still be going out on dates with Peter – when alarmed squirrels warn them that they are being spied on by a stranger with “three big fingers”. A rapid and thorough investigation results in nothing but a strange whiff of sulphur…

After they go their separate ways, the hero is again ambushed by Torinos, but one of them – later revealed as the grandson of The Family’s Big Boss Berto – helps him escape. George Stacy later warns him the increasingly impatient mobsters have finally hired some specialist help: engaging the services of super-assassin Bullseye – the Man who Never Misses…

Bewildered and extremely nervous our hero heads home only to find Wolverine spying on him. When the Arachnid attacks the clawed mutant he is assaulted by a whole squad of X-Men, and only after a frantic fray discovers they’ve come to offer help to a fellow mutant…

When he finally convinces them that he isn’t a Homo Superior kid, the embarrassed outsider heroes realise that mutant detector Cerebro must have been registering the girl he was with… the one who talks to pigeons and squirrels…

With pencils by Christian Nauck, ‘I’ve Got a Badge!’ focuses on the return of teenaged thief/mutant mindbender Silencer as Chat – now in training with the Blonde Phantom Detective Agency – explains to a baffled Peter that she can’t remember being his girlfriend, even though all her animal associates assure her it’s totally true.

Mysteries begin to unravel after Captain Stacy offers Spider-Man a Consultant position with the NYPD, asking him to help apprehend Silencer… who has been robbing the city blind.

Whilst searching for her and dreaming of a life where cops aren’t always after him, young Torino kid Carter takes an opportunity during one more gang hit to warn the wallcrawler Bullseye is after him…

Heading for Chat’s place, Peter finds Silencer in residence and calls in the cops, only to discover the bandit is actually his girlfriend’s BFF Emma Frost…

Choosing to help Emma escape, Peter sacrifices his chance for an easier life, and discovers to his dismay in the concluding chapter Emma is also behind all his romantic woes, meddling with both Gwen and Chat’s minds because she wants the webslinger for herself. Of course, the animals know what’s going on and when they tell Chat the fur – and webbing – flies…

Never the success the company hoped, Marvel Adventures was superseded in 2012 by specific comics tied to Disney XD television shows designated as “Marvel Universe cartoons”, but these collected stories remain an intriguing, amazingly entertaining and more accessible means of introducing the character and concepts to kids born two generations or more away from the originating events.

Fast-paced, enthralling and impressive, these Spidey super stories are intensely enjoyable yarns, although parents should note that some of the themes and certainly the violence might not be what everybody considers “All-Ages Super Hero Action” and might perhaps better suit older youngsters…
© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Rugger Boys volumes 1 & 2: Why Are We Here Again? & A Spoonful of Style and a Tonne of Class


By Béka & Poupard: coloured by Sylvain Frecon, Murielle Rousseau & Magali Poli-Rivière & translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-33-5 (Album PB/Digital edition v1) 978-1-905460-44-1 (Album PB/Digital 2)

Time to cash in on a global sporting event again. We must do a cricket, ping pong or skateboarding feature one day…

Human beings and – according to the internet – a huge variety of our pets and animal housemates seem obsessed with and revel in chasing balls about. So much so that we/they even apply a range of complex rules to the sheer exhilaration of the process, just to make things more difficult and artificially extend proceedings.

We call it sport and when it’s not hugely thrilling and deadly serious it can be hilariously funny…

Comics over many decades and throughout the world have often mined our obsession with assorted games for secondary entertainment value and these Cinebook tomes detail in dramatically humorous manner stunning strips starring a dedicated amateur team of French gladiators, all painfully enamoured of the manly (and womanly and British-originated, let’s not forget) oddball pastime dubbed Rugby.

Les Rugbymen was created in 2005 by writing partnership Bertrand Escaich & Caroline Roque under their collaborative nom de plume Béka (Studio Danse, Les Fonctionnaires) in conjunction with self-taught illustrator Alexandre Mermin, who generally labours under the pseudonym Poupard (Chez Gaspard, Les Brumes du Miroboland). The resulting flurry of short sharp gags and extra-time yarns have filled 20 albums thus far with another due any day now, and there’s even a junior league spin-off which began in 2010 entitled Les Petits Rugbymen…

On n’est pas venus pour être là! was the third Euro-volume but as Why Are We Here Again? was the first to be translated by Cinebook… probably because it features a brief sporting tour of England. Pithy, gritty and very funny, it perfectly encapsulates the passion, toil and sheer testosterone-fuelled idiocy which can warp normally rational folk.

Our stars are a few dedicated souls faithfully enjoying the trials and welcome tribulations of club rugby (and that’s Rugby Union, right?) as played by the stalwarts of fictional south-western French town side Paillar Athletic Club, affectionately known to their frankly obsessive fans as The PAC…

As seen on the introductory page, the usual suspects generally manifest as intellectually compromised “Hooker” Lightbulb, Herculean “Prop” Fatneck, 2nd Row star The Anaesthetist, dashing sex-crazed Back Romeo and Scrumhalf/Captain The Grumpster, all regularly adored and vilified by The Coach who never lets his speech defect get in the way of a good insult to the dozy slackerrrs…

All you need to know is that these guys are bold, sturdy and love food and drink as much as they do smashing each other into the mud…

Their exploits are generally delivered as single page sequences, lavishly, lovingly and outrageously illustrated and jam-packed with snippets of off-kilter slapstick to supplement the main gag and the dramatic material. Content is almost everything you’d expect from such a fixture: big beefy blokes in very small towels, lots of booze-fuelled gaffes, bizarre eating eccentricities, what we Brits refer to as “knob-jokes” and mutual sportsmanlike skulduggery of the sort that has permeated all games Real Men compete in…

However, also on display are a profusion of smartly-planned running gags and truly effective comedic gems such as the well-meaning meatheads’ ongoing efforts to help Lightbulb find “love”, Romeo’s constant comeuppances from husbands, boyfriends and employers unhappy with his off-pitch assignations and The Coach’s eternal battle to whip his doughty but dopey band of idiots into a team he can be proud of…

As previously mentioned, this collection also contains a wry, preconception/prejudice-confirming international excursion when The PAC accept an offer to play a friendly match against British college side Camford. As well as a chance to pummel the despised English, there’s the promise of seeing a Six Nations match to offset the unbearable pain of living on the foreigners’ appalling food and pathetic beer…

 

The Rugger Boys volume 2: A Spoonful of Style and a Tonne of Class

Continentally the fifth outing, On va gagner avec le lard et la manière was the second (and, thus far, last) translated Cinebook tome – once again probably because it features brief sporting excursions to lesser English (sort-of) speaking nations Scotland and New Zealand.

As such it perfectly recapitulates the passion, toil and sheer testosterone-fuelled idiocy which can warp normally rational folk.

The titular Union Rules stars Romeo and The Grumpster are joined by character-expanded players like precocious Centre Hugo – The Engineer – Cap, and 2nd Row veteran Freddy – The Anaesthetist – Bones whilst The Coach now has a name to be cursed by – Bernard Farmer. He still never lets his barrrrbarous accent get in the way of a good insult or pithy instruction to the dozy slackerrrs…

These guys are bolder, funnier and sturdier – because they still love to eat and drink as much as they do spending every weekend in sanctioned unarmed combat. This time however equality reigns and there’s a succinct glimpse of the Paillar Athletic Ladies Team too, and you can share the lads’ first turbulent TV appearance too…

Mostly, however, on display is a profusion of smartly-planned running gags and compact comedy gems like the well-meaning meatheads’ further efforts to help Lightbulb find love, more of Romeo’s confrontations with other people’s significant others, and employers unhappy with his off-pitch Tries, plus the woebegone touchline medic’s miserable life and Coach’s eternal battle to make sporting gold from part-time dross…

This time kick off leads to an extended origin story revealing how the playful imps they once were turned a boring school lesson into a life-changing indoor match: thereby forming sporting bonds that last a lifetime…

As promised, this fixture includes a brief tour of Scotland, offering a broad belt of new experiences from braw brews to fine-foods-&-bonnie lassies, to life-changing injuries, before concluding with a bombastic whistle-stop tour of the Antipodes when The Pac are generously invited to visit the mighty New Zealand All-Blacks at home, after the Rugby World Cup concludes…

Mostly though it’s always about mud, mauling, getting stuffed and getting smashed – in every sense of the term…

Fast, furiously funny and splendidly boisterous, these cartoon antics might even inspire dedicated couch-potatoes to get out of the house… unless they order books and dinner online…
© BAMBOO EDITION, 2006, 2007 by Béka & Poupard. All rights reserved. English translation © 2007 Cinebook Ltd.