Month: December 2010

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Nightwings (DC Science Fiction Graphic Novel #2)


By Robert Silverberg, adapted by Cary Bates, Gene Colan & Neal McPheeters (DC Comics)
ISBN: 0-930289-06-04

During the 1980s DC, on a creative roll like many publishers large and small, attempted to free comics narrative from its previous constraints of size and format as well as content. To this end, legendary editor Julie Schwartz called upon contacts from his early days as a Literary Agent to convince major names from the prose fantasy genre to allow their early classics to be adapted into a line of Science Fiction Graphic Novels.

In the far future Earth has aged into a somnolent, semi-feudalistic place of fantastic creatures and shabby glories. An old man from the Guild of Watchers is making his way to the fabled city of Roum, accompanied by an innocent gamin and a sardonic lizard-man outcast.

Watchers scan the heavens using portable technology and inherent psychic sensitivity, seeking the earliest inklings of a predicted alien invasion: this one has wandered the entire world and used up his life doing so. Impoverished and frail he makes his way to the greatest city on Earth with the beautiful Avluela, a creature who can fly like a butterfly – but only in darkness when the fierce solar winds have subsided. The old fool loves and yearns for the alluring nymph as does Gormon, their other companion. This reptilian goliath from the shunned guild of sub-humans carries with him a dark secret…

Each has their own reasons for going to the Eternal City, but as they make their way to the palace of the Prince, greatest ruler of this diminished globe they see evidence that all glory has faded and Roum is just as corrupted, decadent and increasingly bestial as everywhere else. Denied accommodation and food even from their own Guilds, appalled by the poverty and cruelty around them, the trio find tainted shelter within the Prince’s Palace but only because the arrogant, radiant ruler desires the fragile, gossamer Avluela and what he wants, he takes…

Disillusioned and at his lowest ebb the Watcher wonders if this world might actually benefit from the invasion he has wasted his life searching for. When heartbroken and vengeful Gormon reveals his own secret the Watcher’s equipment finally sounds the alarms he has waited all his life to hear…

Silverberg’s deeply moving, Hugo Award winning story of faded glories and mistimed love was first published in Galaxy Magazine in 1968 and was followed by two sequel novellas, Perris Way and To Jorslem which were promptly edited together to form the novel Nightwings.

Adaptors Cary Bates and Gene Colan, ably assisted by lettering legend Gaspar Saldino and painter/colourist Neal McPheeters, perfectly capture the debilitating aura of inescapable, inexorable loss and dissolution, but as always, any adaptation – no matter how well executed – is absolutely no substitute for experiencing a creator’s work the way it was originally intended, so Go Read The Story too.

However, as this is a place to review graphic novels, please be assured that this is one that works excessively well; moody, portentous and beautifully realised.

This refined, stoic interpretation is welcomingly traditional in its delivery, allowing the tale to creep into your hearts and is a perfect companion to DC’s other adaptations in this series. It’s an inexpressible pity they’re all currently out of print and this is an experiment the company should seriously consider resuming. Moreover as I’ve said before: these DC Science Fiction Graphic Novels would make an irresistible “Absolute” compilation…
© 1968, 1969 Robert Siverberg. Adapted with permission of the author and Agberg Ltd. All text and illustrations © 1985 DC Comics Inc. All rights reserved.

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Cycle of the Werewolf


By Stephen King, illustrated by Berni Wrightson (Land of Enchantment/Signet/New English Library)
ISBNs deluxe hardback edition: 0-9603828, paperback 978-0-45005-878-3

Not so much a novel as a serial of connected short stories Cycle of the Werewolf is comprised of a dozen discrete episodes describing a series of brutal killings which occur in the isolated New England town of Tarker’s Mills, Maine. The clue is in the title but for the terrified inhabitants it’s some while before the penny drops and the Full Moon Murderer is correctly profiled as a supernatural hairy slavering monster and not a bunch of accidents of a malicious human madman…

Divided into twelve chapters, the blood-soaked year is lavishly illustrated by comics legend Berni Wrightson in 12 lush and gory colour paintings, 12 moody black and white pen drawings and another dozen stunning monochrome spreads to delineate the changing months. It is some of his best work ever and seems to be to mark the moment he switched from pen and ink disciple of EC horror maestro “Ghastly” Graham Ingels and became a paint and colour illustrator in his own right.

The controversial project – most King followers don’t like this tale very much – began life as a proposed horror-calendar but grew and evolved into a terrifying picture book novella, initially released as a collectors edition hardcover in 1983, with a limited signed edition also available. The story was filmed as Silver Bullet in 1985 and released in a mass-market paperback edition by Signet in the US and New English Library here.

Moreover comics fans aren’t the only continuity completists and I should mention that one of the survivor’s of King’s vampire classic Salem’s Lot meets a grisly end here as May’s victim, whilst the inclusion of peripatetic preacher Father Callahan means that technically Cycle of the Werewolf is a part of King’s Dark Tower/Wheel of Ka sequence of novels.

Whereas the oversized hardback I’m reviewing might be a little difficult to find – but not impossible – the illustrated Signet softcover edition is pretty common, and speaking as someone who’s not the biggest devotee of King’s horror writing, I can honestly say that as supernatural chillers go this story ain’t that bad, whilst the art is completely astounding.
This edition © 1983 Land of Enchantment. Text © 1983 Stephen King. Illustrations © 1983 Berni Wrightson. All rights reserved.

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Young Gods & Friends


By Barry Windsor Smith (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-491-8

In keeping with the dolorous nature of this time of year I’m concentrating on a few missed opportunities in this period between the dubious joys of Christmas and the nervous anticipation of the New Year so here’s a graphic novel that in some way didn’t live up to all it could have been not because of the material itself but because of the kind of world we live in…

Barry Windsor Smith is a consummate creator whose work has moved millions and a principled artist who has always been poorly served by the mainstream publishing houses. Whether with his co-creation of Sword-and Sorcery comics via Conan the Barbarian or his later work-for-hire material for The Thing (Marvel Fanfare #15 – utterly hilarious), Machine Man, Iron Man, X-Men, Weapon X or the tremendously fun Archer & Armstrong/Valiant Comics work with Jim Shooter, his stunning visuals always entranced but never led to anything long-lived or substantial. And always the problem seemed to be a clash of business ethics versus creative freedom…

In 1995 Dark Horse, an outfit specialising in licensed and creator-owned properties, offered him the carte-blanche chance to do it his way in his own tabloid-sized anthology Barry Windsor-Smith: Storyteller. The magazine carried three features all written and drawn by the artist; The Paradoxman, The Freebooters and Young Gods. Although the work was simply stunning it appeared independent publishers were cut from the same cloth as the mainstream…

It’s not my business to comment on that: I’ve been both freelancer and publisher so I know there are at least two sides to everything (and you can hear Mr. Windsor Smith’s in this superb collection from Fantagraphics) but the series ended acrimoniously in 1997 after nine issues and the stories remained unfinished. This tome, the first of three, collected all the published material of each strip-strand and also includes the chapters still in progress at the time of the split, some new and reformatted material and other extras that fans and lovers of whimsical fiction would be crazy to miss.

But it is still incomplete and that’s a true shame…

Created as a light-hearted and wittily arch tribute to Jack Kirby’s majestic pantheon of cosmic comic deities Young Gods and Friends nominally stars foul-mouthed earthbound goddess Adastra, getting by as a pizza-delivery chick in New York City, but slowly builds and spreads into a mythico-graphic Waiting for Godot as we trace her past, discover warring pantheons that decided arranged weddings were better than Ragnaroks and meet the bold and heroic nuptualists who would do anything to avoid the arrangement: thus becoming delightfully diverted down a dozen different paths as a picture/story oh-so-slowly builds.

As I’ve mentioned the series came to an abrupt halt with the ninth episode, but there was a tenth ready and that is here, as well as material and fragments that would have been finished out the first dozen instalments as well as deleted scenes, fragments, outtakes and reworked snippets.

On a purely artistic level this collection and extrapolation is a sheer delight; with superb art, splendid writing and all sorts of added extras, but the story-consumer in me can’t help but yearn for what might have been and how much has been lost.

Beautiful wry, witty and completely enchanting – and tragically disappointing because of that

™ & © 2003 Barry Windsor Smith. All Rights Reserved.

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Special Exits (A Graphic Memoir)


By Joyce Farmer (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-381-1

There’s no happy ending here. The heroes die. That’s the point…

Joyce Farmer has been a “name” underground cartoonist since 1975 when she and Lyn Chevely formed Nanny Goat Productions in response to the oppressive, aggressive sexism prevalent in a most Counterculture commix of the time. Among their shocking, groundbreaking and extremely influential creations were the informative 1973 graphic tract ‘Abortion Eve’ and their women-only anthology series Tits & Clits. Farmer has since appeared in Wimmen’s Comix, Zero-Zero and other alternative publications.

In this deeply moving fictionalised account, Farmer uses all her considerable skills to confront the issue of ordinary mortality on the most personal terms as she tells the tale of the four years in which she saw both her parents slowly fade away. Death is a bastardised, trivialised and melodramatically sensationalised phenomenon in comics, and how genuine lives end a touchy subject in our medically nigh-miraculous modern world, so serious, sensitive and above all sensible explorations of the inescapable situation that faces us all are pretty few and far between.

Set at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s this slowly unfolding, quiet drama follows Lars and Rachel as age and increasing infirmity eat away at their treasured independence, and tracks their growing voluntary isolation and inescapably increasing reliance on daughter Laura for the basics of life. Food, sanitation, even human company, all slip inexorably from their own control leading to loss of facility, faculties, confidence, companionship and inevitably, life itself.

That bald statement tells what happens, but the seductive power of this story is not “what” but “how” as with concise, underplayed warmth and deceptively simple line drawing Farmer makes Lars, Rachel and Laura come vibrantly alive. Rachel’s unswerving faith, once-rugged Lars’ stoic acceptance of diminishing physical and mental resources and Laura’s dogged determination to defend her parents’ wishes and dignity from a society and system that increasingly has no room for anybody who won’t go with the flow, in the face of her own imminent loss, is a master-class in grace under fire.

It’s a hard, harsh narrative trick to introduce characters just to kill them off but even with that knowledge paramount in our minds it’s impossible not to become great friends with these good people deep in the act of leaving us forever.

Written with impressive empathy and obviously heartfelt, angry frustration even years later, this memoir confronts issues that will affect every single one of us whether or not we have the guts to face it, and the light airy art and terrific supporting cast – especially Ching the cat – keeps the tone hopeful and ultimately upbeat even through the worst of all times.

This is a book you must read. Like Robert Crumb, I too found tears in my eyes at the book’s end – and so will you. There is no conclusion reached; just a resolution to move on… but the brave example of the ordinary heroes is one we should all learn from…

Unsentimental, education and inspirational Special Exits is a tale no rational mortal can afford to miss.

© 2010 Joyce Farmer. This edition © 2010 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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The Outer Space Spirit: 1952


By Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer & Wally Wood (Kitchen Sink Press)
ISBN: 0-87816-012-4

In keeping with the dolorous nature of this time of year I’m concentrating on a few missed opportunities in this period between the dubious joys of Christmas and the nervous anticipation of the New Year so here’s a graphic novel that in some ways didn’t live up to all it could have been – not necessarily because of the material itself but because of the kind of world we live in…

It is pretty much accepted today that Will Eisner was one of those pivotal creators who shaped the American comic book industry, with most of his graphic works more or less permanently in print – as they should be. However, although the story can be found as part of the recent Spirit Archive volume 24, this classy monochrome volume from much-missed independent publisher Kitchen Sink in 1983 released in both hardback and softcover, is by far a better reading experience.

Sometimes the Medium is the Message, especially when the artefact is a substantially solid tome delivering magical artwork in crisp, breathtaking black and white which details – not only in the reprinted strips but also sketches, incidental artwork and author’s breakdown layouts – the last and most striking saga of one of the world’s greatest fantasy characters.

From 1936 to 1938 Eisner worked as a jobbing cartoonist in the comics production firm known as the Eisner-Eiger Shop, creating strips for both domestic US and foreign markets. Using the pen-name Willis B. Rensie he created and drew opening instalments for a huge variety of characters ranging from funny animal to historical sagas,

Westerns, Detectives, aviation action thrillers… and superheroes – lots of superheroes …

In 1940 Everett “Busy” Arnold, head honcho of the superbly impressive Quality Comics outfit, invited Eisner to take on a new challenge. The Register-Tribune newspaper syndicate wanted a 16-page weekly comicbook insert to be given away with the Sunday editions. Eisner jumped at the opportunity, creating three strips which would initially be handled by him before two of them were handed off to his talented assistants. Bob Powell inherited Mr. Mystic and distaff detective Lady Luck fell into the capable hands of Nick Cardy (then still Nicholas Viscardi) and later the inimitable Klaus Nordling.

Eisner kept the lead feature for his own playground and over the next twelve years The Spirit became the most impressive, innovative, imitated and talked-about strip in the business. However, by 1952 he had more or less abandoned it for more challenging and certainly more profitable commercial, instructional and educational strips, working extensively for the US military in manuals and magazines like P*S, the Preventative Maintenance Monthly, and generally leaving comics books behind.

For the final year or so the bulk of Spirit tales were produced by other hands with assistant Jules Feiffer handling the bulk of the scripts and diverse artists producing the art. Feiffer preferred to map out his episodes in rough pencil with word balloons and captions fully scripted: once approved by Eisner the roughs would then be interpreted by the assigned artist for the individual episodes. The long-term plan was not to cancel The Spirit but to redefine it for a new decade and expand the Eisner studio/company beyond and around it – but that’s not quite how it played out.

As seen in the scholarly introduction by Cat Yronwoode and Eisner’s own director’s commentary ‘Reminiscence’, the plans to reposition The Spirit were not welcomed by the client papers buying the strip; the creators handling the feature had different creative goals and drives and Eisner himself couldn’t quite let go of his precious baby.

Even though society and comicbooks were wildly in love with the bold new genre of space opera science fiction and Eisner had previously dabbled with the form in a few previous adventures, a large number of Spirit clients and readers did not want any “flying saucer spacey stuff” on their Sunday funnies pages. Moreover the brilliantly sardonic, existentialist and sensitively satirical Feiffer was approaching the tales in a bleak, almost nihilistic way, emphasising existentialist isolation, human frailty and the passing of an era rather than rugged he-men with hot babes in bikinis and fishbowl helmets…

After a succession of fill-in draughtsmen Wally Wood was selected as artist, a stunningly gifted imaginer who had been reaching unparalleled heights with his work for EC and other comicbook Sci Fi publishers. Wood had actually begun his professional career on the Spirit in the 1940s as a letterer and was fantastically keen on the new project, but the merciless deadlines and his overwhelming desire to surmount his own high standards soon had the saga experiencing deadline problems on top of everything else…

After the text features, the first episode ‘Outer Space’ begins, preceded as are most of the strips here by Feiffer’s meticulous and detailed script layouts. First appearing on Sunday, July 27th 1952, it saw Denny Colt, The Spirit, managing a crew of convict volunteers on an American rocketship to the moon, at the insistent request of eminent space scientist Professor Hartley Skol. However this was a new hero for an uncertain age. The tough, fun-loving, crime-fighting daredevil had become a cautious, introspective leader, feeling fully the weight of his mission and the burden of unwelcome responsibilities.

‘Mission: the Moon’ (August 3rd 1952), follows Colt, Professor Skol and the pardoned felons onto the satellite’s barren surface and recounts the Spirit’s first victory as he heads off a potential mutiny with reason, not force, whilst ‘A DP on the Moon’ reveals how closely Eisner still monitored the series.

DP’s were “Displaced Persons” a common term in the post-war world, and when the explorers find a diary in the lunar dust, it reveals that the world’s greatest dictator and his inner circle fled to the moon to escape Allied justice. Unfortunately they could not outrun their own paranoia and madness…

In the original script and finished art the diarist is Adolf Hitler, but the grim fate that befell his fellow Nazis was altered at the very last moment by Eisner, who felt the plot already old hat. Swift retouching transformed Der Fuehrer into fictitious Latin American dictator Francisco Rivera and the revised version ran on August 10th 1952. It still reads well but if you look carefully those uniforms in the background flashbacks are hauntingly familiar…

With ‘Heat on the Moon’ the deadline crunch hit, and one and a half pages of spectacular Lunar exploration by Wood abruptly segue to a “meanwhile back on Earth” scene by Eisner, featuring Chief Dolan, daughter Ellen and a criminal with a vested interest in assuring that at least one of the moon volunteers isn’t pardoned.

Following their first fatality the mission began to go swiftly awry and ‘Rescue’ (the instalments now cut to only four pages in an attempt to fight the deadline doom) saw another body-blow to the expedition. Defeated and demoralised Spirit decided to return the survivors to Earth…

‘The Last Man on the Moon’ depicted the launch from the moon as on Earth another gangster attempted to scotch the return trip. The mission, clearly cursed, suffered one more disaster as a convict sneaks away before take-off, becoming, with the September 7th episode ‘The Man in the Moon’.

On September 14th the inevitable occurred and the feature was forced to run a modified reprint (‘The Amulet of Osiris’ from the late 1940s) before Wood resurfaced to illustrate the philosophically barbed ‘Return from the Moon’ on September 21st. As Denny Colt and the remaining lunar-nauts debate the nature of reality, Eisner stepped in with the help of Al Wenzel to produce ‘The Return’ a hasty wrap-up that still found room for a close encounter with a flying saucer.

A scheduling blip saw an alternate version of the return a week later (not included here) and the last episode ‘Denny Colt, UFO Investigator’ ran on October 5th 1952: an inconclusive new beginning illustrated by Klaus Nordling. The strip died with that episode as Eisner, increasingly occupied with military work, and bleeding client-papers, terminated the feature.

But that isn’t quite the end: this book also includes in various forms what would have been the next three chapters, discovered in Eisner’s extensive file vault in the early 1980s. First is a fully lettered Feiffer layout, followed by a sequence of lettered pages prior to the art being drawn and the first (and only) typed script from assigned new creator Nordling.

Tense, suspenseful, dark and fearsomely compelling, these are the stories that killed off the Spirit for nearly two decades, but today they stand as a mini-masterpiece of modern comics storytelling that was quite simply, too far advanced for its audience. For we survivors of Cold War, Space Race and Budget-cut scientific exploration they are a chilling and intensely prophetic examination of human nature in a Brave New World rendered with all the skill and frantic passion of some of comics’ greatest talents.

What wonders could have followed if the readers had come along with them?
© 1983 Kitchen Sink Press. © Art and stories 1983 Will Eisner. All rights reserved.

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Dynamo


By Wally Wood & various (Tower Books)
ISBN: 42-660

I’ve often harped on about the mini-revolution in the “Camp-superhero” crazed 1960s that saw four-colour comicbook classics migrate briefly from flimsy pamphlet to the stiffened covers and relative respectability of the paperback bookshelves, and the nostalgic wonderments these mostly forgotten fancies still afford (to me at least), but here’s one that I picked up years later as a marginally mature grown man.

Although the double-sized colour comicbooks T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, its spin-offs Undersea Agent, Dynamo, NoMan and the magnificent war-comic Fight the Enemy were all distributed in Britain (but not, I believe comedy title Tippy Teen) these monochrome, resized book editions, to the best of my knowledge, were not.

It doesn’t matter: to my delight, it seems that even today the format and not the glow of childhood days recalled is enough to spark that frisson of proprietary glee that apparently only comic fans (and Toy collectors) are preciously prone to.

Of course it doesn’t hurt when the material is as magnificent as this…

The history of Wally Wood’s immortal spies-in-tights masterpiece is convoluted, and once the mayfly-like lifetime of the Tower Comics line ended, not especially pretty as the material and rights bogged down in legal wrangling and petty back-biting, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that the far-too brief careers of The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves was a benchmark of quality and sheer bravura fun for fans of both the reawakening superhero genre and the 1960s spy-chic obsession. Their sheer imaginative longevity is attested to by the fact that they’re back again now, courtesy of that Costumed Cut-ups Clearing House, DC Comics…

In the early 1960s the Bond movie franchise went from strength to strength, with action and glamour utterly transforming the formerly understated espionage vehicle. The buzz was infectious: soon Men like Flint and Matt Helm were carving out their own piece of the action as television shanghaied the entire bandwagon with the irresistible Man From U.N.C.L.E. (beginning in September 1964), bringing the whole genre inescapably into living rooms across the world.

Creative maverick Wally Wood was approached by veteran MLJ/Archie Comics editor Harry Shorten to create a line of characters for a new distribution-chain funded publishing outfit – Tower Comics. He, in turn called on many of the industry’s biggest names to produce material for the broad range of genres the company envisioned: Samm Schwartz and Dan DeCarlo handled Tippy Teen – which outlasted all the others – whilst Wood, Larry Ivie, Len Brown, Bill Pearson, Steve Skeates, Dan Adkins, Russ Jones, Gil Kane and Ralph Reese all contributed to the adventure series.

With a ravenous public appetite for super-spies and costumed heroes exponentially growing the idea of blending the two concepts seems a no-brainer now, but those were far more conservative times, so when T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 appeared with no fanfare or pre-publicity on newsstands in August 1965 (with a cover off-sale date of November) thrill-hungry readers like little me were blown away. It didn’t hurt either that all Tower titles were in the beloved-but-rarely-seen 80 Page Giant format: there was a huge amount to read in every issue!

All that being said the strips would not be so revered if they hadn’t been so superbly crafted. As well as Wood, the art accompanying the compelling and generally mature stories was by some of the greatest talents in the business: Reed Crandall, Gil Kane, George Tuska, Mike Sekowsky, Dick Ayers, Joe Orlando, Frank Giacoia, John Giunta, Steve Ditko and others.

This slim, seductive digest stars the UN Agency’s Ace troubleshooter and all-round Ordinary Guy Len Brown in five staggering spy thrillers featuring a winning combination of cloak-and-dagger danger, science fiction shocks and stirring super-heroics which also includes the origins of aforementioned fellow operatives NoMan and Menthor.

It all starts with a simple fast-paced introductory tale ‘First Encounter’ by Ivie & Wood, wherein UN commandos failed to save brilliant scientist Professor Emil Jennings from the attack of the mysterious Warlord, but at least rescued some of his greatest inventions, including a belt that increases the wearer’s density until the body becomes as hard as steel, an invisibility cloak and an enigmatic brain-amplifier helmet.

For security purposes these prototype weapons were divided between several agents to create a unit of superior fighting men and counter the increasingly bold attacks of global terror threats.

First chosen was affable file-clerk Len Brown who was, to everyone’s surprise, assigned the belt and the codename Dynamo in a delightfully light-hearted adventure ‘Menace of the Iron Fog’ (written by Len Brown, who had no idea illustrator/editor Wood had prankishly changed the hero’s civilian name as a last-minute gag) which gloriously depicted every kid’s dream as the not-so-smart nice guy got the irresistible power to smash stuff. This cathartic fun-fest also introduced Iron Maiden, a sultry villainess clad in figure-hugging steel who was the probable puberty trigger for an entire generation…

‘T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent NoMan Battles the Spawns of the Devil’ follows: the eerie saga of aged Dr. Anthony Dunn who chose to have his mind transferred into an android body, then equipped with the invisibility cape. The author is unknown but the incredible Reed Crandall (with supplemental Wood inks) drew this breathtaking rollercoaster adventure which also found time and space to include a captivating clash with sinister mastermind Demo and his sultry associate Satana who had unleashed a wave of bestial sub-men on a modern metropolis. NoMan had one final advantage: if his artificial body was destroyed his consciousness could transfer to another android body. As long as he had a spare ready, he could never die…

The third agent was chosen in ‘The Enemy Within’ (also with no script credit and illustrated by Gil Kane, Mike Esposito and George Tuska). However here the creators stepped well outside comic-book conventions: John Janus was the perfect UN employee – a mental and physical marvel who easily passed all the necessary tests and was selected to wear the Jennings helmet. Sadly, he was also a deep-cover mole for the Warlord, poised to betray T.H.U.N.D.E.R. at the earliest opportunity…

All plans went awry once he donned the helmet and became Menthor. The device awakened the potential of his mind, granting him telepathy, telekinesis and mid-reading powers – and also drove the capacity for evil from his mind whilst he wore it. When the warlord attacked with a small army and a giant monster, Menthor was compelled by his own costume to defeat the assault. What a dilemma for a traitor to be in…

All the tales in this diminutive paperback gem were taken from the first comicbook issue of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and although some features were left out, the spectacular old-fashioned team-up of the disparate forces of the Agency, assembled to rescue their prime agent who was ‘At the Mercy of the Iron Maiden’ (by Brown, Wood & Dan Adkins) remains, a magnificent battle blockbuster that still takes the breath away, even resized reformatted and in black and white.

To be honest the sheer artist quality of the creators is actually enhanced by removing the often hit-or-miss colour of 1960s comics, and these truly timeless tales only improve with every reading – and there’s precious few things you can say that about…
© 1965, 1966 Tower Comics, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Merry Christmas, Boys and Girls!

In keeping with my own self-created Christmas tradition here’s another selection of British Annuals that contributed to making me what I am today, selected not just for nostalgia’s sake but because they are still eminently palatable and worthy of your attention, even under here in the disconcertingly futurist 21st Century.

After decades when only American comics and nostalgia items were considered collectable, recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in home grown product. If you’re lucky enough to stumble across a vintage volume, I hope my words can convince you to acquire it. However, if I can also create a groundswell of publishers’ attention, maybe a lot of magical material out there in print limbo will resurface in affordable new collections…

Great writing and art is rotting in boxes and attics or the archives of publishing houses, when it needs to be back in the hands of readers once again. On one level the tastes of the public have never been more catholic than today and a sampling of our popular heritage will always appeal to some part of the mass consumer base. Let’s make copyright owners aware that there’s money to be made from these slices of our childhood. You start the petition… I’ll certainly sign it.

Hanna-Barbera’s The Impossibles Annual

By various (Atlas Publishing & Distributing Co.)
No ISBN

British Comics have always fed from other media and as television grew during the 1960s – especially the area of children’s shows and cartoons – those programmes increasingly became a staple source for the Seasonal Annual market. There would be a profusion of stories and strips targeting not readers but young viewers and more and more often the stars would be American not British.

Much of this stuff wouldn’t even be as popular in the USA as here, so whatever comic licenses existed usually didn’t provide enough material to fill a hardback volume ranging anywhere from 64 to 160 pages. Thus many Annuals such as Champion the Wonder Horse or Lone Ranger and a host of others would require original material or as a last resort, similarly themed or related strips. The Impossibles Annual was one of these and used both solutions…

Frankenstein, Jr. and the Impossibles debuted in America in Fall 1966, an early entry in Hanna-Barbera’s line of spoof superheroes cartoons (preceded by Atom Ant and followed by the likes of Captain Caveman and Hong Kong Phooey) and led to a string of straight adventures heroes like Birdman, Johnny Quest and the magnificent Alex Toth-designed Space Ghost.

Frankenstein Jr. was an affable giant robot built by the rather recondite Professor Conroy who went crimefighting with his builder’s spunky son Buzz, whilst The Impossibles were a trio of superheroes who travelled the world defeating evil at the behest of their mysterious handler “Big D”. Their cover was a pop group of the same name, and, since television and comics producers love to hedge their bets, Multi Man Fluid Man and Coil Man bore a more than coincidental resemblance to a certain band from Liverpool who were currently taking the world by storm…

The show ran for two seasons, but Hanna-Barbera’s comicbook connection Gold Key only ever released one issue of Frankenstein Jr. (which included an Impossibles back-up) and the contents of that are all included here, so the British publisher found themselves having to reprint other H-B adaptations as well as paying for new material – in the traditional form of text stories and features.

With typical British eccentricity the B-feature got top billing here so the titular stars don’t actually appear too often in this 64 page nostalgia goldmine, which opens with just such an illustrated prose story (sadly uncredited and anonymous). ‘The Impossibles Cure a Doctor’ is an impressively clever duel with a mad scientist, promptly followed by a Gold Key strip ‘The Impossibles vs. The Mirror-Man’ (probably drawn by unsung genius of cartoon comics Pete Alvarado – but I’m only guessing).

Next up is the first associative fill-in; one of two rewritten strips featuring future family The Jetsons. ‘Auto-Pappy’ (and the subsequent ‘How to Mine a Moon!’ might actually be The Rogue Robot and The Wild Moon Chase from #22 of their own Gold Key comic series, but again I’m positing not positive), after which Big Franky and little Buzz tackled ‘The Image Invasion’.

Next up is a stunning show-stealer from artist Dan Spiegle whose Space Ghost thriller ‘Zorak’s Revenge’ blew my mind over forty years ago and still does the business now. It originally appeared in a one-shot from Christmas of 1966 (cover-dated March 1967, because that’s the way the Americans did things). The all-out action against aliens and monsters is followed by another comedy romp when ‘Frankenstein Jr. Meets the Flea Man’ and that aforementioned Jetsons retread, after which a crossword featuring those fabulous future folks gives us all pause for thought.

The Impossibles Annual ends as it began with another prose piece, but one starring Franky and the boy Buzz as they faced ‘A Spook in his Wheel.’

A lost bauble probably only recalled by increasingly doddery dotards, this book is packed with solid family entertainment from simpler times – and possibly created for simpler kids – but I’d love to be proved wrong..

All other material ™ and © 1968 Hanna Barbera Productions Inc. The Jetsons ™ 1968 Screen Gems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Marvel Comic Annual 1969

By various (World Distributors, Ltd.)
No ISBN

When Stan Lee rejuvenated the American comic-book industry in the early 1960s, his biggest advantage wasn’t the small but superb talent pool available, but rather a canny sense of marketing and promotion. DC, Dell/Gold Key and Charlton all had limited overseas licenses (usually in dedicated black-and-white anthologies liked the much beloved Alan Class Comics such as Suspense) but Lee – or his business managers – went further, sanctioning Marvel’s revolutionary early efforts in regular British weeklies like Pow!, Wham!, Smash! and even the venerable Eagle.

There were two wholly Marvel-ised papers, Fantastic! and Terrific! which ran from 1967 to 1968. These slick format comics featured a number of key Marvel properties, and, appearing every seven days, soon exhausted the back catalogue of the company.

After years of being a guest in other publications Marvel finally secured their own UK Annuals through the publishing arm of World Distributors and this sparkling collection is one of the very best. Completely gone are the text pieces, quizzes and game pages that filled out British Christmas books, replaced with cover-to-cover superhero action produced by the emergent House of Ideas at the very peak of their creative powers and even includes a few almost Golden Age classics. Moreover it’s in full colour throughout – almost unheard of at the time.

A closer look by Marvel scholars would ascertain that all of the strips published here were actually taken from the wonderful 25¢ giants (Marvel Tales, Marvel Collectors Item Classics and Marvel Superheroes) released during the previous year, perfectly portioned out to fit into a book intended for a primarily new and young audience.

Behind the delightful painted cover the enchantment commences with a John Romita drawn Captain America tale from 1954, as the Sentinel of Liberty and Bucky lay waste to a scurvy gang of Red Chinese dope smugglers in ‘Cargo of Death’, promptly followed by a spectacular Thor saga from Lee, Jack Kirby & Chic Stone as the Thunder God tackled ‘The Cobra and Mr. Hyde’ complete with cameo from the mighty Avengers.

The first of two Hulk shorts comes next, another commie-busting classic with science fiction overtones Lee, Kirby & Dick Ayers’s ‘The Gladiator from Outer Space’ is a terrific all-action mini-blockbuster, perfectly complimented by the superbly Lee & Steve Ditko sinister crime Shocker wherein Spider-Man finds himself trapped between ‘The Goblin and the Gangsters!’

Unsung genius Bill Everett provided two superb Sub-Mariner tales, both from the fabulous 1950s, and the secret origin saga ‘Wings on his Feet’ is the first and undeniable best of these, his magical line-work wonderfully enhanced by the bold colour palette and crisp heavy white paper of this comfortingly sturdy tome.

He is followed by a masterful clash of titans as ‘Iron Man Faces Hawkeye the Marksman’ by Lee & Don Heck, before ‘The Hulk Triumphant’ (concluding chapter of the very first appearance wherein the Green Goliath ended the menace of Soviet mutation The Gargoyle) and this Annual ends with an enthralling Everett Sub-Mariner epic as the Prince of Atlantis defeated mad scientists and monsters ‘On a Mission of Vengeance!’

These oft-reprinted tales have never looked better than on the 96 reassuringly solid pages here: bold heroes and dastardly villains running riot and forever changing the sensibilities of a staid nation’s unsuspecting children. Magic, utterly Marvellous Magic!
© 1969 Perfect Film & Chemical Corporation, Marvel Comics Group. All rights reserved.

The Dandy Book 1968

By various (D.C. Thomson & Co.)
No ISBN

For many British fans Christmas means The Beano Book (although Scots worldwide have a pretty fair claim that the season belongs to them with collections of The Broons and Oor Wullie making every December 25th magical) but I’ve done one of those so this year I’m concentrating on a another Thomson cracker that made me the man wot I am. As usual my knowledge of the creators involved is woefully inadequate but I’m going to hazard a few guesses in the hope that someone with better knowledge will correct me when I err.

The Dandy comic actually predated the Beano by eight months, completely revolutionising the way children’s publications looked and most importantly how they were read. Over the decades it too produced a bevy of household names that delighted generations and the end of year celebrations were bumper bonanzas of the comic’s weekly stars in brief and extended stories.

The action here begins on the inside front cover as seminal star Korky the Cat (by Charles Grigg?) got the ball rolling – wrapped up the show at the end – before unique cowboy superman Desperate Dan suffers a prank from his equally rambunctious nephew and niece which literally brings the house down and hard-pressed squaddie Corporal Clott (by Dennis the Menace originator Davy Law or possibly his successor David Sutherland) finds guard duty in the snow a little chilly, taking ludicrous steps to warm up. He was equally ill-considered in his other two appearances this year…

D.C. Thomson were extremely adept at combining anarchic, clownish comedy with solid fantasy adventure tales such as ‘The Island of Monsters’ (illustrated by Paddy Brennan or perhaps Ron Smith) a thrilling castaway yarn as two boys find themselves marooned on a tropical paradise where all the animals suddenly grow to incredible size. He/they might also be the artist on the other science fiction thriller in this volume. ‘Captain Whoosh’ was a jet-pack wearing thief constantly foiled by plucky paperboy Terry Ball who here foils the rocket rogue’s attempts to plunder Moortown’s extremely well-stocked Art Gallery and museum. These picture thrillers usually came in the old-fashioned captioned format, with blocks of typeset text rather than lettered word balloons.

These annuals were traditionally produced in the wonderful “half-colour” that many British publishers used to keep costs down whilst bringing a little spark into our drab and gloomy young lives. This was done by printing sections of the books with two plates, such as blue/Cyan and red/Magenta: The versatility and palette range this provided was astounding. Even now this technique screams “Holidays” to me and my contemporaries, and this volume uses the technique to stunning effect.

The Smasher was a lad from the same mould as Dennis the Menace and in the four episodes here (by Hugh Morren) he carves a characteristic swathe of anarchic destruction, whilst a great deal of material was based on school as seen by both teachers and pupils. ‘Greedy Pigg’ (by George Martin), featured a voracious teacher always attempting to confiscate and scoff his pupils snacks. He fails miserably three times in this book… After a giant rebus crossword quiz by Eric Roberts (or perhaps Tom Williams), Dan returns only to fall foul of tomato growers, whilst Korky accidentally talks himself into a duel and ends up soundly thrashed. The immortal cat fares far better in his spats with be-kilted Highland strongmen, a beach inspector and in an angling competition but comes painfully second to boxing organisers when he tries to view without paying…

There’s one more extra-long Desperate Dan tale (wherein he paints the town red, but not in a good or gentle way) at the end of the book, but before then the magnificent Eric Roberts does double-duty this year with five strips starring perennial bath-dodger Dirty Dick and an extended seasonal saga of Boarding School bright-spark Winker Watson, and still found time and energy to illustrate five giant puzzle-spreads, whilst the inevitable outcomes of the four clashes between Bully Beef and Chips (drawn by Jimmy Hughes) invariably found the underdog’s brain always trumps brutal brawn.

This book is not short on drama or comedy adventure either. ‘Spunky and his Spider’ is the delightful rustic tale of an affable, truanting kid and his devoted, amiable apple-loving, giant antediluvian arachnid by the fabulous Bill Holroyd, who also crafted a hilarious school Christmas party romp starring schoolboy Charley Brand and his robotic pal ‘Brassneck’ and a cheeky sci fi giggle-fest starring alien visitor ‘Super Sam’ and his humongous minder Big Boris on a fact-finding mission to a town near you… As with the thrillers these yarns also came typeset, allowing more of the fabulous artwork to shine through.

‘Randall’s Vandals’, by an artist I don’t recognise, is the story of a canny gamekeeper’s son seeing off a bunch of rowdy big city poachers and everybody’s favourite sheepdog Black Bob tugs at the heartstrings in the book’s only prose story as a wilful lad playing with fireworks renders the legendary Border Collie a (temporarily) ‘Blind Bob!‘ The beautiful illustrations are, as ever, by the great Jack Prout.

Stuffed with activity and gag-pages, and bursting with classic kid’s comedy and adventure this is a tremendously fun book, and even in the absence of the legendary creators such as Dudley Watkins, Leo Baxendale and Ken Reid, there’s still so much merriment on offer I can’t believe this book is over four decades old. If ever anything needed to be issued as commemorative collections it’s such D.C. Thomson annuals as this…

© 1968 D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Dungeon: Monstres volume 3: Heartbreaker


By Joann Sfar & Lewis Trondheim, Carlos Nine & Patrice Killoffer, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-591-7

This slim tome is yet another instalment in the ongoing, eccentric, raucous and addictively wacky franchise that is the best thing to have happened to fantasy storytelling in decades. The Dungeon saga is subdivided into Early Years, Zenith, and Twilight as well as Dungeons Parade and the Monstres of this particular review.

The inhabitants of this weirdly surreal universe include every kind of anthropomorphic beast and bug as well as monsters, demons, smart-alecs and stroppy women-folk. There’s always something happening and it’s usually quite strange…

The nominal star is a duck with a magic sword which forces him to channel dead heroes and monsters, but at the time of the first story Herbert of Craftiwich is yet to become Grand Khan and supreme overlord of a dying, burning world. For increased clarity a quick glance at Dungeon – the Early Years (Volume 2: Innocence Lost to be specific) would be beneficial.

In ‘Heartbreaker’, the lead story in this beautifully exotic compilation, the setting is the debauched, bureaucratised and grimly frenetic urban hellhole of Antipolis wherein serpentine lady-assassin Alexandra reveals her cynically jaded, tragically baroque past in a bizarrely beautiful account of the inescapable corruption at the heart of the city and its Guilds.

Without warning the tale shifts to her betrayal, incarceration and escape from horrendous suffering and her response to a world that could make her the creature she irrevocably is…

Evocatively illustrated by guest artist Carlos Nine the darkly disturbing odyssey is followed by a flamboyantly bright and deceptively garish self-contained undersea saga ‘The Depths’ which looks like the most pleasing kids fantasy ever…

But it most certainly isn’t.

Set decades later when Herbert is the Khan, it focuses on aquatic princess Drowny (who looks like a wide-eyed purple tadpole) as she narrowly escapes death when a gang of assassins mistake her family’s home for their intended target. With her loved ones murdered Drowny hides in plain sight, disguising herself as one of the intruders. Enduring heartbreak and degradation she accidentally rises to a position of power and influence in the invading army which has struck a foul deal with the Khan’s son to conquer the planet and divide the world above and below between them.

Always looking for a way to return to her own people, when her chance comes, Drowny is faced with a crushing revelation…

Superbly realised – the creators have really thought about how characters would act and interact underwater – the lush colour and incredibly imaginative creature designs of Patrice Killoffer add a cartoon fantasy sheen to the proceedings which utterly belies the stark, horrific tale of the depths a decent person will sink to for revenge…

Comprising two translated French albums ‘Creve-Coeur’ and ‘Les Profondeurs’ this is another strikingly surreal, earthy, sharp, mordant, poignant and brilliantly outlandish tome that’s a joy to read with vibrant, wildly eccentric art moody as Sin City and jolly as Rupert Bear.

Definitely for broad-minded grown-ups with young hearts, Dungeon is a near-the-knuckle, over-the-top, illicit experience which addicts at first sight, but for a fuller comprehension – and added enjoyment – I’d advise buying all the various incarnations.
© 2004 Trondheim-Sfar-Nine-Killoffer-Guy Delcourt Productions. English translation © 2010 NBM. All rights reserved.

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Ultimate Spider-Man book 2: Chameleons


By Brian Michael Bendis, Takeshi Miyazawa & Davis LaFuente (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-466-9

The Marvel Ultimates project began in 2000 with a drastically modernizing refit of key characters and concepts to bring them into line with contemporary consumers – perceived to be a separate market to the baby-boomers and their declining descendents who seemed content with the assorted efforts which sprang from the hearts and minds of Kirby, Ditko and Lee.

Eventually the stripped-down new universe became as overcrowded and continuity-constricted as the original, leading to the 2008 “Ultimatum” publishing event which thinned the new herd – and millions of ordinary mortals into the bargain.

Although a commercial success the epic was largely slated by the fans who had bought it, and the ongoing “Ultimatum Comics” quietly soldiered on without “mentioning the War…”

The key and era-ending event was actually a colossal tsunami that drowned the superhero-heavy island of Manhattan and this second post-tidal wave collection (assembling issues #7-14 of the relaunched Ultimate Comics Spider-Man) picks up the story of young Peter Parker and his unique house-guests all slowly readjusting to their altered state.

Parker is sixteen (but looks 12), the perennial hard-luck loser kid: a brilliant geek just trying to get by in a world where daily education is infinitely more scary than monsters and villains. Between High School and slinging fast food (Burger Frog is his only source of income since the Daily Bugle drowned) he still finds time to fight crime although his very public heroics during the crisis have made him a beloved hero of police and citizenry alike – which is the creepiest thing he has ever endured.

He lives in a big house with his Aunt May, and despite his low self-image has stellar hottie Gwen Stacy for a devoted girlfriend, but perpetually endures the teen-angsty situation of equally stellar hottie Mary Jane Watson (his ex-squeeze) hanging around and acting all grown-up about it. He briefly dated mutant babe Kitty Pride: remember when not having any girlfriend was the textbook definition of “loser”?

Many kids are homeless after the deluge, with schools and accommodation stretched to breaking point, so feisty May Parker has opened her doors to a select band of orphaned super-teens like the Human Torch and Iceman, as well as Gwen. Peter’s secret identity was constantly threatened before; how can he possibly conceal his adventurous life when two such famous characters are suddenly sharing the bathroom and his exploits…?

This second delightful collection opens with a new presence in the Ultimate Universe as near-neighbour Rick Jones is possessed by an ancient intergalactic presence. Cool Youngbloods Spidey, Torch and Iceman befriend the bewildered lad and are dragged along on a tumultuous fact-finding mission to secret base Project Pegasus just in time to clash with the sexy sirens of the all-girl Serpent Squad and discover that poor Rick – now calling himself “Nova” – is a cosmic “Chosen One” destined to save the World…

That two-part, laugh-packed thriller leads into decidedly darker territory in #9 as shallow jerk Johnny Storm finds the girl of his dreams in a new mysterious Spider-Girl whilst anti-mutant feeling grows and Kitty Pryde is almost snatched from school by brutally heavy-handed government agents.

On the run, Kitty goes dangerously rogue whilst her friends attempt to go public with the Authorities’ quasi-legal black-bag operation, enlisting the Fourth Estate in the form of the newly-restored Daily Bugle…

Unfortunately whilst trying to break the story of the Government’s anti-mutant agenda Peter Parker is abducted by an enigmatic shapechanger who borrows his form, his powers and his life. Issues #11-14 detail the Chameleon’s vindictive campaign to trash Spidey’s private life whilst using his stolen powers to go on a highly profitable, very public crime spree.

Meanwhile the real Peter is the prisoner of a second psychotic shapeshifter, who also has J. Jonah Jameson under wraps. In close proximity with Pete for days, the wily veteran newsman has deduced the boy’s greatest secret… The climax is breathtaking and portentous. Although temporarily safe, Parker’s life is about to go very badly wrong…

Combining smart dialogue and teen soap opera dynamics with spectacular action – beautifully rendered by artists Takeshi Miyazawa, David Lafuente and colourist Justin Ponsor – Brian Michael Bendis blends hilarious hi-jinks with staggering tension and shocking plot-twists to produce one of the most enjoyable takes on the wall-crawler in decades.

This series goes from strength to strength: a marvellously compelling and enjoyable costumed drama that easily overcomes its troubled origins. Absolutely worth any jaded superhero fan’s time and money Ultimate Spider-Man is well on the way to becoming an unmissable hit…
™ and © 2010 Marvel Entertainment LCC and its subsidiaries. All rights reserved. A British edition released by Panini UK Ltd.