Author: NowReadThis

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Illegal


By Eoin Colfer & Andrew Donkin, illustrated by Giovanni Rigano & lettered by Chris Dickey (Hodder Children’s Books)
ISBN: 978-1-444-93400-7 (HB) 978-1-444-93169-3 (Digital edition)

Former primary school teacher Eoin Colfer is an award-winning author who written stories about everything. Most renowned for his Artemis Fowl books, he’s crafted many other novels and series, including Benny and Omar, Highfire, W.A.R.P. (Witness Anonymous Relocation Program), The Supernaturalist, Iron Man: The Gauntlet, Half Moon Mysteries and more.

Acclaimed Irish raconteur Colfer also penned the first official sequel in Douglas Adams’ Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy sequence and served from 2014-2016 as the Laureate na nÓg (Ireland’s Children’s Laureate). It’s safe to say he knows what kids like and how they think…

Almost all of his works end up as sequential narratives and his long-term partners in adapting the Fowl series into graphic novels are writer Andrew Donkin (The Terminal Man, The Valley of Adventure, My Story: Viking Blood, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Doctor Who) and Italian illustrator Giovanni Rigano (Daffodil, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Incredibles). In 2017, in the face of an escalating international crisis, they harnessed their powers for good to produce an evocative fictionalised account of the forces in play compelling migrants to risk slavery and death, to leave their own homelands in search of – if not a better life – at least one less lethal and hopeless …

Following a Dedication and poignant, pertinent quote from Noble Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel a saga simultaneously unique and shamefully ubiquitous unfolds. Across 17 chapters flipping between recent flashbacks and immediate peril, we get to know Ebo: a 12-year-old from Ghana trying to reunite with his sister…

The now is midnight in the middle of the Mediterranean. Ebo is one of 14 scared voyagers currently overloading a rubber raft built intended for 6. Hours earlier he, brother Kwame and new friend Razak were – at gunpoint – forced into the “balloon boat” by people-smugglers who had been paid and didn’t want anything else to do with their “clients”…

As they rock in the salty darkness – hopefully heading towards Italy – Ebo’s mind washes back 19 months to the village in Niger. It was just him and Kwame since their mother died and sister Sisi left for Europe where she could earn money to feed them…

One morning, Kwame also disappeared, and Ebo instantly followed, tracing well-established routes across the sands to Agadez in Niger: a city of survivors in transit. Hardworking and smart he found ways to survive, dodging human predators, before miraculously finding his brother. Together they scraped together enough cash for a desert crossing, paying the bandits who trafficked drugs, cigarettes and other contraband like the desperate…

Despite incredible odds, the brothers survived the ordeal and retrenched in Libya. Even though Tripoli sees migrants as unwelcome parasites, many work illegally in the city until they have enough money to buy passage across the waters. Overcoming appalling hardship, the brothers make new friends and are soon ready to leave…

History is intercut with the failing sea-crossing, and more details emerge as the raft founders. The travellers universally lament never learning how to swim as realisation comes that they are all about to die. Ebo recalls friendly people he met along the way and suddenly, after accepting death, the paddlers are rescued from doom. However, the respite proves to be even more awful than their near-death escape. Even this chance event will end badly for all of them…

At all stages sheer luck had been their friend, but always an awful price was exacted. That proves horrifically true again when the weary voyagers are located by the Italian navy and ghastly human error triggers a disaster…

Supplementing this agonisingly current affair is a map of  ‘Ebo’s Journey’ and a ‘Message From the Creators’ appealing for common sense, understanding and human decency in handling this ongoing global calamity. Following them is ‘Helen’s Story’: an account of one girl’s experience provided by Women for Refugee Women and adapted by Colfer, Donkin & Rigano, after which the usual ‘Acknowledgements’ and information ‘About the Creators’ accompanies a superbly enthralling glimpse at the artist’s ‘Sketchbook’.

This story is constructed from many actual accounts and despite being for a general audience – particularly school-aged children – pulls no punches. This kind of targeted reportage can liberate young minds and has frequently changed the world in the past. Let’s hope that’s the case here too, and that the next generation of leaders can see their way clear to dealing with economics and political problems with warmth and understanding, and not thinly-veiled racist rhetoric, dog-whistle exceptionalism and parsimonious patriotism…

Shocking harrowing enlightening and rewarding, this is a children’s book every grown-up should read.
Text © Eoin Colfer & Andrew Donkin2017. Illustrations © Giovanni Rigano 2017. All rights reserved.

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Je Ne Sais Quoi


By Lucie Arnoux (Jonathan Cape)
ISBN: 978-1-78733-359 8 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Sweet, Smart Reminder of What We Are and Where We’re Going … 9/10

The French have a word for it…

We Brits have an hard-won and insanely-cherished Awkward Relationship with the French. On “our” side, the unending, frequently re-declared war of cultures and attitudes stems from our envy of their scenery, beautiful holiday locations, wonderful food, all those different words (like chic and elan) for style, mature and easy attitudes to sex and even the cheap booze & smokes. It’s all bundled up in a shared history of squabbling with a neighbour.

For us, it’s their arrogant smugness, never knowing when they’re wrong and/or beaten, inconceivable ability to say no to their leaders and rulers, never knowing their place and just plain not being British. Worst of all is they do it all whilst making us look stupid: “indulging” and “tolerating” our antics.

Oh, and sport too. They won’t accept our clear superiority there, either. They don’t even play cricket and have their own name for bowls…

I won’t detail their side, even though it’s probably as justified and well-reasoned. Until this book, there was never any evidence that a Gallic heart could fathom the workings of the English mind…

At least the rivalry is generally good natured these day, but can still somehow be exploited to rile up an unwholesome and frankly embarrassing audience whenever dog-whistle politics are unleashed or if newspapers need a quick boost to prop up our equally despised governments. Of course, theirs are despised at home too, but at least seem to know what they’re doing…

At heart, the entente cordiale is an ambiance we’ve carefully cultivated for more than a millennium, nurturing it like a Home Counties lawn or boutique-brewed artisanal gin, which is why it’s such a splendid moment when national disgraces like me can say “Oi! Look at this”…

The one place where the French constantly and conclusively kick our derrieres is comics. Acknowledged as an art form (officially The Ninth Art, in fact) the medium and industry is supported, understood and appreciated by all: calling forth talented individuals like the ungrateful émigré revealed in this tome: someone who inexplicably loves us here as we are and has made her home among us oiks and heathens for more than a decade now…

Lucie Arnoux is a story-maker based in London, from where she’s been embracing our peculiar uniqueness for over a decade. When not travelling the world, she gratefully returns to her English home, celebrating so many conflicting aspects of us, channelling her mania for drawing and music and art in all forms into comics, teaching, illustrating, book writing, set design, sculpture, knitting and so many more forms of sharable self-expression…

I’ve never met her, but she’s clearly as engaging and personable as she is gifted, and – in this big colourful hardback collection of strips – shares her history, thoughts, dreams and adventures with astounding frankness.

A self-confessed misfit looking to find her place, Arnoux draws beautifully in a clear, expressively welcoming – almost chatty – manner and knows how to quietly sneak up, grab your undivided attention and never let go. In a succession of seditiously disciplined 9-panel grids which act as counterpoint to the free flowing pictorial excursions, the auteur deftly steers us through her self-determined chaotic life.

It’s like a comics take on those wonderful 1990s Alan Bennett character studies Talking Heads, revealing greater truth through apparent conversation, intimate fact and candid self-assessment, except here you can actual see what does and doesn’t happen …and how…

Across these page you’ll learn how the drawing-addicted prodigy grew up in Marseilles in an unconventional family amidst unfriendly school inmates and unsettled environs. How she was a remarkable comics prodigy who began working professionally at the age 14, the same year she first visited Britain and inexplicably fell in love with the place…

Formally learning her craft under a strong editor at Studio Gottferdom, she produced a weekly autobiographical strip for legendary fantasy publication Lanfeust Magazine, studied unhappily in Paris, and eventually migrated to her happy place and spiritual home… London.

You’ll pry no more secrets from me: this is a hugely enjoyable treat that you deserve to experience with no preconceptions or spoilers. So go do that, then buy copies for all your friends…

Je Ne Sais Quoi is a fabulously absorbing jolly with a delightfully forthright companion. Arnoux unstintingly shares her thoughts, feeling and experiences in a manner guaranteed to win over the most jaded companion – especially as she garnishes her slivers of fresh experience with laconic but unguarded observations, glimpsed through the welcoming lens of regional foods, booze, hunts for companionship, festivals attended, artworks made, consumed and enjoyed.

Sharp, funny, disarmingly incisive, heart-warming, uncompromising and utterly beguiling, this moving memoir is a comics experience you’ll want to relive over and again.
© Lucie Arnoux 2022.

Je Ne Sais Quoi will be published on 27th October 2022 and is available for pre-order now.

If, like Lucie, you’re London-based, love to travel and party, there’s a Launch Event scheduled for that day at the wondrous and fascinating Gosh! Comics. For details see Gosh! Comics (goshlondon.com)

There could be wine, there may be cheese, there WILL be Lucie Arnoux, convivial conversation and Signed Copies.

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Run Home if You Don’t Want to Be Killed: The Detroit Uprising of 1943


By Rachel Marie-Crane Williams (The University of North Carolina Press in association with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University)
ISBN: 978-1-46966-326-5 (clothbound), 978-1-46966-327-2 (TPB), eISBN 978-1-46966-328-9

The greatest weapons in the human arsenal are lies and obfuscation. The number of shocking and unpardonable atrocities inflicted on all kinds of underclasses can never be known because those in the upper ranks of everywhere control the narrative and write the histories. In recent times, however, dedicated scholarship has increasingly reappraised what we “know” by ceaselessly challenging how we learned it.

When explored with the full power of sequential graphic journalism, lost or sabotaged stories can come to life with all the force and immediacy of the actual event and even be enhanced by late-gained context and the perspective of time passed: offering a fuller evaluation of what has actually occurred.

Here’s a powerful and unforgettable re-examination that proves it: the other version of a carefully sidelined, pragmatically sequestered moment of shameful racism from World War II. It employs all the tools and techniques of comics storytelling to shine a stark light on manipulated history that still affects American citizens struggling to come to terms with issues of colour and poverty in the modern world.

Researched and created by Rachel Marie-Crane Williams – Associate Professor of Art and Art History, and Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa – Run Home if You Don’t Want to Be Killed: The Detroit Uprising of 1943 details one of so, so many comfortably forgotten clashes between black and white, rich and poor to have been airbrushed (or is that whited out?) from our collective experience.

It is primarily an academic text delivered in pictorial form but is no less chilling and effective for that.

Rendered mostly in spiky monochrome pen & ink, combining contemporary quotes and photos, found imagery and collage, targeted typography, informative historical context, inspired documentary reportage, incisive analysis, inspired extrapolation, and candid investigation of the many personalities involved, it tells of how aspiration, deep-seated prejudice and long-cherished beliefs warred with common sense and patriotic fervour at a time when America faced foreign fascist aggression whilst its own citizens employed the foe’s principles and strategies to keep suppressed sectors of its own population…

The book opens with ‘A Note on Language’ as Professor Williams details the purpose of the project and her methodology, addressing the highly charged topic of terminology as used outside its original historical setting…

The report begins with a ‘Prologue’ establishing the situation in Detroit as America faced external aggression and internal conflict. In an era of advanced paranoia and pronounced patriotism, Jim Crow laws continued rolling back the rights of black citizens. These tensions were constant and had recently spread to include the internment of Japanese Americans: adding to a pattern of injustice that had historically constricted or excluded African slaves, Chinese immigrants and the original victims – “Native Americans”.

The situation was exacerbated by government demands that the war effort be “integrated”: all American’s working together for Democracy’s survival. However, as ‘No Forgotten Men. No Forgotten Races’ reveals, long-held antipathies of powerful men on all sides and in every camp prevented progress. At that time, war industries were desperate for workers in their factories, whilst unemployment and artificially-low wages for blacks was at an all-time high…

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s response is seen in ‘The Four Freedoms – Executive Order 8802’ with America’s most privileged still wilfully excluding black workers from employment, and sparking a proposed Negro March (for jobs) on Washington. The Commander-in-Chief’s landmark response was  an Executive Order prohibiting racial and ethnic discrimination in defence industries. Tragically. even he couldn’t desegregate the military: that was only accomplished in 1948 by his successor…

‘Meanwhile, Back in Detroit’ shows how ineffective passing laws is in changing minds. When black workers rushed out of the South and towards promised jobs, tensions escalated as they competed with impoverished whites for not just work and wages but also housing, transportation and recreational spaces. The industry-heavy city became a powder keg of pent-up intolerance and animosity. One proposed quick fix was a Washington-directed project to build homes for black families, but its completion led to white protesters seeking to prevent the occupants moving in.

‘The Sojourner Truth Housing Conflict’ ostensibly resulted from the white middle class residents of Conant Gardens reacting to the project being arbitrarily situated opposite their own dream homes…

As always, tensions were fuelled and stoked by lies and warnings of robbery, rape, fighting, miscegenation, property value reduction and social collapse: all useful racist slanders which never failed to enflame tensions on all sides. Most importantly, it was true that many leaders of all parties concerned found ways to personally profit from the chaos: businessmen, clerics, agitators, politicians and pundits used the situation to further their own causes…

As civic decision-makers dithered, older solutions also resurfaced and wooden crosses started burning in Detroit as they had in the South for decades. When the first families tried to move into their homes on February 28th 1942 an inevitable riot started, and black people were singled out by police, who used extreme violence and even mounted horseback charges to quell the chaos. In the end 220 people were arrested: 3 were white and never convicted of any crime…

Hostile white crowds picketed the Project until March 10th, when police finally dispersed the organised resisters, and black families began moving in with a minimum of conflict on April 15th. For the rest of the month, 24 companies of State Troopers, 1,400 City Police and 1,720 members of the Michigan Home Guard patrolled the area to keep the peace…

An overview of ‘Labor, Race, War’ details an ongoing undeclared war as federal government struggled against regional intolerance and intransigence to shift America’s working practices. The motivated, mobile black labour force was well-accustomed to lower wages and organised resistance from both rival workers and employers – as demonstrated here with a brief history of white supremacist Henry Ford’s record in the automotive industry, his brutal riot squads and many attempts to stop black workers and women joining the unions he so despised and feared.

A rundown of negro work opportunities from the end of WWI also covers Ford’s part in 1937’s Battle of the Overpass at River Rouge where his enforcers assaulted and terrorised women and workers leafletting the public in hopes of building support for higher wages…

Between ‘1941-1943’ the many organisations that formed to counter the bias against ethnic and female workers finally began to make headway, but constant clashes between white and black populations of Detroit in the wake of numerous new “Fair Employment” measures only intensified. Mass demonstrations eventually forced Ford to hire four black women at the River Rouge plant, but even this minor triumph came at an unanticipated cost…

Further protests and interventions by the NAACP – and other burgeoning pro-rights groups – were countered by white supremacists, adding to the mounting tension and ensuring that – in June 1943 – the pot boiled over…

‘Íle aux Conchons, Hog Island, Belle Isle’ reveals how leisure not toil was the final spark. The Belle Isle Bridge (renamed MacArthur Bridge) connected urban industrial Detroit with an island that was the conurbation’s largest park. On Sunday 23rd over 100,000 working people of all denominations sought to escape punishingly high temperatures, via a quiet day out, with simmering racial tensions studiously put on hold. However, as the sun set something happened and another race riot erupted

Casualties quickly mounted, the police moved in and again almost exclusively attacked and arrested black men. In an era before telecommunications, the situation was clouded in confusion, misinformation and even secrecy. Scared families on all sides were ignored or deliberately deceived by the authorities who believed daylight would bring calm. Instead, morning only brought escalation and ‘Trouble in Paradise’ as the clash evolved into a mobile clash extending deep into the black parts of town.

…And as violence and disorder grew, scurrilous lies on both sides ramped up the fear, outrage and furious responses. Before long white districts were also on the firing line as seen in ‘Rumor, Riots, and Rebellion’…

‘Topsy/Eva’ then deconstructs the event via an anthropological construct derived from the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, demonstrating how trigger stories repeatedly used to fuel racial clashes are the same, but flipped to fit each listener’s ethnicity. It’s backed up here by a sampling of typical tales told to potential victims of justifiable outrage, before ‘Up and Down the Street’ resumes as the Island clash assumed mythic intensity, drawing fresh and aggrieved white and black combatants from further afield to defend “their kind” from a ruthless enemy. Fires were lit, rioters became looters and the battle began its second day…

Adapting first-hand accounts, the story builds into an appalling account of institutionalised racism and deprivation that continued for three days, with unprovoked and unsanctioned police reprisals against black citizens continuing for weeks after. Then a sustained police cover up began. The actual riot was not ended by cops, but only after the criminally ineffectual Mayor Jeffries and t State Governor Harry Kelly capitulated to citizens’ demands for federal troops. By the time they requisitioned forces from the President, it was to stop white mobs hunting black citizens…

The troops remained until after the July 4th celebrations, and the uprising’s official death toll was 9 white people and 25 black. City police had killed 17 of the latter. Almost exclusively, the 2,000 arrested were black…

The artful removal of the story from history and shifting of the narrative began immediately and is covered in ‘White Lies’, revealing how opportunistic politicians built their careers on managing how the uprising was remembered, whilst ‘Aftermath’ focuses on contemporary attitudes of the public, indicating how meaningful change had once again been delayed by the hard lessons of fear and intimidation…

The Detroit race riot was one of five confronting the USA in the summer of 1943, and the topic is granted intriguing perspective in ‘Eden’ as survivors of the event recall its worst moments and assess its impact from the safe distance of 1968: a time when the nation again reeled from panic in the streets based on skin colour and good men of all colours were being murdered for seeking change…

Staggeringly forthright and frequently truly disturbing, this tract is chilling, contentious and often overwhelming as it picks at social scabs many believed long healed or non-existent. It is engaging, astoundingly informative and should be compulsory reading for anyone in a multi-cultural society. However, it’s not all doom, gloom and injustice and offers as a ‘Coda’ an adaptation of the Philip Levine poem Belle Isle, 1949 plus an ‘Author’s Note’ detailing her debt to comics journalist Joe Sacco and the road to this book. It also includes even more context on the plight of the poor and disenfranchised in the last century and just how little things have change in today’s world of Black Lives Matter.,,

Completing the experience, a ‘Glossary of People, Organizations, and Laws’ lists in forensic detail the many players and groups (54 in all) that helped shape this occluded debacle, and is supplemented by copious, cogent and compelling chapter ‘Notes’ and a splendidly broad ‘Bibliography’.

There are books you should read, books you Must Read and books like this that one can’t afford not to read. Who you are is determined by which category you fall under…
© 2021 The University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved. “Belle Isle, 1949” © 1976 by Philip Levine, from THEY FEED THEY LION AND THE NAMES OF THE LOST: POEMS by Philip Levine

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Mélusine volume 3: The Vampires Ball


By Clarke & Gilson, coloured by Cerise and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1905460694 (Album PB/Digital edition)

Witches – especially cute and sassy teenage ones – have a long and distinguished pedigree in fiction. One of the most engaging first appeared in legendary Belgian magazine Le Journal de Spirou in 1992. Mélusine is actually a sprightly 119-years old and spends her days – and many nights – working as an au pair/general dogsbody to a most ungracious family of haunts and horrors inhabiting a vast monster-packed, ghost-afflicted chateau. It pays her bills whilst she diligently studies to perfect her craft at Witches’ School…

The long-lived much-loved feature is presented in every format from one-page gag strips to full-length comedy tales, all riffing wickedly on supernatural themes and detailing her rather fraught life, filled with the demands of the appallingly demanding master and mistress of the castle and even her large circle of exceedingly peculiar family and friends.

The strip was devised by writer François Gilson (Rebecca, Cactus Club, Garage Isidore) and cartoon humourist Frédéric Seron – AKA Clarke – whose many features for the all-ages LJdS and acerbic adult humour publication Fluide Glacial include Rebecca, Les Cambrioleurs, Durant les Travaux, l’Exposition Continue… and Le Miracle de la Vie.

Under pen name Valda, Seron also created Les Babysitters and as Bluttwurst Les Enquêtes de l’Inspecteur Archibaldo Massicotti, Château Montrachet, Mister President and P.38 et Bas Nylo.

A former fashion illustrator and nephew of comics veteran Pierre Seron, Clarke is one of those insufferable guys who just draws non-stop and is unremittingly funny. He also doubles up as a creator of historical and genre pieces such as Cosa Nostra, Les Histoires de France, Luna Almaden and Nocturnes – apparently he is free from the curse of having to sleep…

Collected editions began appearing annually or better from 1995, with the 27th published in 2019. Thus far five of those have transformed into English translations thanks to the fine folk at Cinebook.

Originally released on the Continent in 1996, Le bal des vampires was the second Mélusine album, setting the scene delightfully for newcomers as the majority of content is comprised of 1- or 2-page gags starring the sassy sorceress who makes excessive play with fairy tale and horror film icons, conventions and themes.

When brittle, moody Mélusine isn’t being bullied for her inept cleaning skills by the matriarchal ghost-duchess running the castle, ducking cat-eating monster Winston, dodging frisky vampire The Count or avoiding unwelcome and often hostile attentions of horny peasants and over-zealous witch-hunting priests, the domestic enchantress can usually be found practising spells or consoling and coaching inept, un-improvable and lethally unskilled classmate Cancrelune.

This sorry sorceress-in-training is a sad case: her transformation spells go awfully awry, she can’t remember incantations and her broomstick-riding makes her a menace to herself, any unfortunate observers and even the terrain and buildings around her…

At least Mel’s boyfriend is a werewolf, so he only troubles her a couple of nights each month…

This turbulent tome features the regular procession of slick sight gags and pun-ishing pranks but also features some longer jocular jaunts such as the fate of a rather rude knight in armour, a brush with what probably isn’t a poltergeist in the Library and Mel’s unfortunate experience with daunting dowager Aunt Adrezelle’s patented Elixir of Youth…

Wrapping up a barrage of ghostly gaffes, ghastly goofs and grisly goblin gaucheries is the sordid saga of the eternal elite at their most drunkenly degenerate, as poor Mélusine is not only expected to organise and cater ‘The Vampires’ Ball’ but has to stick around and handle the explosive clean-up for those especially intoxicated Nosferatus who tend to forget why the revelry has to die down before dawn…

Wry, sly, fast-paced and uproariously funny, this compendium of arcane antics is a great taste of the magic of European comics and a beguiling delight for all lovers of the cartoonist’s art. Read before bedtime and don’t eat any hairy sweets…
Original edition © Dupuis, 2000 by Clarke & Gilson. All rights reserved. English translation 2007 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Showcase Presents The Phantom Stranger volume 2


By Bob Haney, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Arnold Drake, Michael J Pellowski, Steve Skeates, David Michelinie, Paul Levitz, Gerry Conway, Marty Pasko, Jim Aparo, Gerry Talaoc, Michael Kaluta, Mike Grell, Fred Carrillo, Bernard Baily, Ross Andru/Mike Esposito, Dick Dillin, Tony DeZuñiga, Bill Draut, Romeo Tanghal, Dick Giordano, Bob Layton & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1722-8 (TPB)

The Phantom Stranger was also one of the earliest transitional heroes of the Golden Age of comics, created at the very end of the first superhero boom as readers moved from costumed crimefighters to other genres such as mystery, crime, war and western tales. A trench-coated, mysterious know-it-all, with shadowed eyes and hat pulled down low, he would appear, debunk a legend or foil a supernatural-seeming plot, and then vanish again.

He was coolly ambiguous, never conclusively revealed as man, mystic or personally paranormal. Created by John Broome & Carmine Infantino, who produced the first story in Phantom Stranger #1 (August/September 1952 – Happy Anniversary, Mystery Man!) and most of the others, the 6-issue run also boasted contributions from Jack Miller, Manny Stallman and John Giunta. The last issue was cover-dated June/July, 1953, after which he vanished.

Flash-forward to the end of 1968. The second superhero boom is rapidly becoming a bust, and traditional costumed heroes are dropping like flies. Suspense and mystery titles are the Coming Thing and somebody – probably unsung genius E. Nelson Bridwell – has the bright idea of reviving Phantom Stranger.

He was the last hero revival of DC’s Silver Age and the last to win his own title: another graduate of a star-studded later run in Showcase. After only one appearance in #80 (cover-dated January/February 1969) he returned in his own comic three months later. This time, he found an appreciative audience, running for 41 issues over seven years.

Rather than completely renovate the character, or simply run simple reprints as DC had when trying to revive espionage ace King Faraday (in Showcase #50-51), editor Joe Orlando had writer Mike Friedrich & artist Jerry Grandenetti craft a modern framing sequence around a partial reprint, and – in a masterstroke of print economy – reintroduced another lost 1950s mystery hero to pad out the comic, and provide a rationalist’s contemporary counterpoint.

Dr. Terrence Thirteen was a parapsychologist known as the Ghost Breaker. He predated the Stranger, with his own feature in Star-Spangled Comics (#122-130; November 1951-July 1952). With fiancée (later wife) Marie, the parapsychologist roamed America and the world, debunking supernatural hoaxes and catching mystic-themed fraudsters, a vocal and resolute cynic imported whole into the modern series as a foil for the Stranger.

(Follow Me… For I Am…) The Phantom Stranger launched with a May/June 1969 cover-date. By the end of 1972, the horror/mystery boom had stabilized, and was a key component of both DC and Marvel’s mainstream output, with fantasy and sword & sorcery adventurers also scoring well with fans. However, the glory days of huge comic book print-runs were gone forever. And yet, although a depleted force, superhero comics did not disappear as many older heads suspected they might, and an initially unwieldy amalgam, the horror-hero, soon became a useful crossover sales tool.

Never as common as Marvel’s burgeoning pantheon of spooky crusaders, the most successful and enduring of DC’s supernatural stalwarts were Swamp Thing and Phantom Stranger. This sequel mammoth monochrome tome concludes that impressive second incarnation, incorporating not only his crossover trips into the greater DCU, but also rare appearances that closed his career …until he was resurrected post Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Spanning April/May 1970 to Winter 1978, this collects The Brave and the Bold #89 & 98; Justice League of America #103; Phantom Stranger #22-41; DC Super-Stars #18 and House of Secrets #150, blending a popular taste for blood and horror with traditional mystery man derring-do…

The magic begins with an impressive chiller from Bob Haney, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito originally seen in Batman team-up vehicle The Brave and the Bold (#89, April/May 1970). ‘Arise Ye Ghosts of Gotham’ sees a religious sect return to the city that had driven them out two centuries previously, only to awaken the vengeful spirits of their banished ancestors until pacified by our initially squabbling heroes.

The Stranger’s rerise in Brave and the Bold (#98, October/November 1971) was a more recognisably spooky tale, superbly crafted by Haney & Jim Aparo. ‘Mansion of the Misbegotten!’ is a twist-ridden riot of demon-cults, scheming plots and contemporary-cinema styled possession carefully exploiting the global obsession with Satanism that began with Rosemary’s Baby and peaked with The Exorcist. Here the Gotham Guardian finds himself outwitted, outmatched and in dire need of assistance to foil a truly diabolical force threatening the life of his godson.

Following on is ‘A Stranger Walks Among Us!’ by Len Wein, Dick Dillin & Dick Giordano, as the haunted hero saves Halloween and the World’s Greatest Superheroes from a magical murder plot. He was consequently offered membership in the Justice League of America (in issue #103 of their comic, December 1972) but seldom made any meetings or took a turn on monitor duty…

In the same month, his solo adventures featured ‘Circle of Evil’ (Phantom Stranger #22, by Wein & Aparo), wherein a coalition of evil calling itself the Dark Circle initiates a master plan: attacking the hero through blind psychic – and notional love-interest – Cassandra Craft. At the back of the book, Ghost-Breaker Dr. Thirteen exposes another hoary hoax in Steve Skeates & Tony DeZuñiga’s ‘Creatures of the Night’. These counterpoints to eldritch adventure – although usually excellent – were rapidly reaching their sell-by date, and very soon Thirteen would be battling real monsters he couldn’t rationalize away…

‘Panic in the Night!’ in #23 saw the Stranger and Cassandra in Paris, battling analogues of the Phantom of the Opera and Hunchback of Notre Dame whilst gathering an unlikely ally for the imminent final clash with the Dark Circle. However, great as this yarn is, the real gem is the back-up feature which transformed Terry Thirteen.

‘The Spawn of Frankenstein!’ saw the discovery of an ice-entombed man-monster lead to dark personal tragedy. When Thirteen’s colleague Victor Adams attempted to revive the legendary literary beast, it resulted in his death and Thirteen’s wife Marie being beaten into a coma. Vengeance-crazed, the Ghost-Breaker resolved to hunt down and destroy the monster, utterly unaware – and perhaps uncaring – that the beast was both rational and wholly innocent of any misdeed.

Written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated by the unique talent of Michael Kaluta, this debut promised much, but the feature was plagued by inconsistency. Phantom Stranger #24 (March/April 1973) offered the epic conclusion of the Dark Circle war as the Stranger and Cassandra defrayed the ‘Apocalypse!’ in the shadow of Mount Corcovado (that’s the one with the Jesus statue “Christo Redentor” overlooking Rio de Janeiro) with old foes Tannarak and Tala, Queen of Darkness along for the spectacular and long-overdue ride…

Wolfman & Kaluta’s The Spawn of Frankenstein continued as the revived revenant opted to revenge itself upon Victor Adams for dragging him back to cruel, unwanted life by returning the favour and resurrecting the dead scientist.

A fresh tone and resumption of episodic, supernatural triage marked issue #25 as the Man in the Hat confronted a voodoo cult in ‘Dance of the Serpent’ (Wein – from an idea by Michael J Pellowski – & Aparo), whilst Kaluta ended his run on Frankenstein with another untitled tale wherein Rachel Adams (wife of the departed Victor) was kidnapped by Satanists before being rescued by the monster; leading into #26’s crossover ‘From Dust Thou Art…’

Here Wein, Wolfman & Aparo teamed the Monster and the Stranger against demons seeking earthly bodies.

The radical change was completed with the next issue as innovative horror-anthology artist Gerry Talaoc replaced the sleekly realistic Aparo (moved to The Brave and the Bold for a long career illustrating Batman), whilst journeyman mainstay Arnold Drake assumed the writer’s seat on the stranger. He introduced another long-term nemesis in deeply disturbed psychiatrist/parapsychologist ‘Dr. Zorn: Soul-Master!’

This driven meddler callously warped his patients and performed illicit experiments for the US Military-Industrialist Complex: a far more insidious and freshly contemporary threat in tune with modern mores. Thwarted but seldom defeated, he constantly returned to bedevil the Stranger.

Skeates and legendary veteran Bernard Baily (Golden Age co-creator of Hourman and The Spectre) now helmed Frankenstein, with ‘The Terror and the Compassion’ seeing the misunderstood beast stumble into a commune that is actually a demonic coven intent on blood sacrifice and raising the devil…

‘The Counterfeit Madman!’ by Drake & Talaoc saw the Stranger explore the mind of mad-dog killer Johnny Ganz. Was the young offender a true psychopath or a cunning crook pretending to be a multiple-personality sufferer? Was there another innocent victim trapped inside the killer’s skull with him? An element of moral ambiguity had been added by Drake, layering later adventures with enticing, challenging dilemmas absent from most comic fiction and only matched by Steve Gerber’s challenging work on Man-Thing.

Back-up ‘Night of the Snake God’ was a more traditional tale which continued Frankenstein’s battle against the hippie cult in a solid, if undemanding manner.

Zorn resumed his unscrupulous scientific explorations of the supernatural in PS #29’s ‘The Devil Dolls of Dr. Z!’, whilst matters barely progressed at all in ‘The Snake-God Revealed!’, which saw the Spawn of Frankenstein lose momentum – and story-space – as his strip was reduced to 6 pages. The next issue contained more contemporary chills in ‘The Children’s Crusade!’ as a modern Pied Piper lures a town’s youngsters into his charismatic cult whilst ‘Turn-about!’ concludes – and not before time – the Spawn of Frankenstein’s run.

Issue #31 (June-July 1974) offers an exotic yarn dealing with the aftermath of the Vietnam war as a disgraced US “general” smuggling drugs for a local warlord awakens a slumbering demon in ‘Sacred is the Monster Kang!’ The Stranger’s tales were usually 12-pages long at this period, but the back-up feature that originally filled up the comics – The Black Orchid – is not included in this volume.

Bill Draut, one of the Stranger’s earliest illustrators returned in #32’s ‘It Takes a Witch…!’: an old-fashioned scary whodunit, whilst superstar-in-waiting Mike Grell illustrated a Dr. Zorn vehicle guest-starring Boston Brand. In ‘Deadman’s Bluff!’, the ghost’s protracted hunt for his own murderer ended as usual in frustration, but an antagonistic partnership was established for the future…

Talaoc was back in #34 for ‘A Death in the Family!’ wherein a “clean” brother is compelled to assume control of the family business – running an organised crime mob. His guilt is further compounded when his dead sibling returns from the grave to give him some pointers. Increasingly, the Stranger was becoming a mere witness to supernatural events in his own series, so perhaps it’s no coincidence that this issue featured a return for the more hands-on Dr. Thirteen (wife Marie cured and both of them ignoring that brief stint of Frankensteinian tragedy).

‘…And the Dog Howls Through the Night!’ is another straightforward yet gripping adventure from Skeates & DeZuñiga, which had probably been sitting in a drawer for years before publication.

‘The Demon Gate’ was writer David Michelinie’s debut tale, with the Stranger targeted by derivative Dr. Nathan Seine – who wanted to siphon off the hero’s mystic energy and soul to cure his dying wife. Like ‘Crimson Gold’, a deadly African treasure hunt for Nazi treasure in #36, it briefly betokened a more active role for the immortal wanderer.

Drake & Paul Levitz scripted ‘Images of the Dead’ in Phantom Stranger #37: another highly charged moral quandary with a young artist forced to commit reprehensible crimes to earn money for his wife’s hospital bills…

Talaoc made way for fellow Filipino artist Fred Carrillo with issue #38, as Dr Seine sought to extract bitter vengeance in Levitz’s ‘The Curse of the Stalking Skull’. The new creative team brought back Boston Brand for ‘Death Calls Twice for a Deadman’: a last-ditch effort to revive dwindling sales. Also including Batman villain The Sensei, it signalled a belated return to the company’s over-arching continuity, but was too little, too late.

Deadman also co-starred in #40’s ‘In the Kingdom of the Blind’ and #41’s concluding chapter (February-March 1976) ‘A Time for Endings’ as Seine sought to bring Elder Gods to Earth using long-absent Cassandra Craft as a medium. With that tale’s finish the series ended and the Stranger all-but vanished until the winter of 1978 and a giant-sized tale from DC Super-Stars #18.

‘Phantom Stranger and Deadman’ (by Gerry Conway, Marty Pasko, Romeo Tanghal, Dick Giordano & Bob Layton) was an extended Halloween extravaganza with the supernatural champions – and Dr. Thirteen and Tala in attendance – attempting to eradicate an infestation of demons infiltrating the comic book Mecca of the season: Rutland, Vermont (long associated in both Marvel and DC titles as the only place to be on the Eve of All Hallows).

One final tale appeared a few months later in the 150th issue of House of Secrets (February-March 1978) wherein Conway & Talaoc related a generational tale of restless evil in ‘A God by any Other Name.’

Here, the Stranger and Dr. Thirteen united to complete the work of Rabbi Samuel Shulman and Father John Christian who, in the dire environs of London, 1892, had joined spiritual forces to destroy the World’s first malignant machine intellect Molloch. Sadly, those Satanic Mills had a habit of being rebuilt by greedy men…

More than most, The Phantom Stranger is a strong character and concept at the mercy of pitiless fashion. Revived as the 1960s closed on a wave of interest in the supernatural, and seemingly immune to harm, he struggled to find an audience in the general marketplace before direct sales techniques made publishing a less hit-or-miss proposition. However, blessed with a cohort of talented creators, the stories themselves have proved to be of lasting quality, and would so easily transfer to today’s television screens that I wonder why they haven’t yet (and no, that doesn’t mean animated appearances or cameos on the Swamp Thing series). Mystery, exotic locales, forbidden monsters spectacular effects, a medallion and a cool hat: C’mon, you know you’d watch it…

But until then you’ll have to thrill and scare yourselves with these fantastic tales.
© 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1978, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur volume one: BFF


By Brandon Montclare, Amy Reeder, Natacha Bustos, Tamra Bonvillain & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-0005-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

The Marvel Universe is absolutely stuffed with astounding young geniuses but Lunella Lafayette is probably the most memorable you’ll ever meet. Very young, very gifted and proudly black, she lives with her parents on Manhattan’s Lower East Side when not attending Public School 20 Anna Silver on Essex Street.

Thanks to her obsessive interest in astronomy and alien races the other kids mockingly call her “Moon Girl” whilst the brilliant, bored 4th grader’s teachers universally despair because she already knows so much more than they do…

It’s a hassle, but Lunella actually has bigger problems. Time is running out and her numerous applications to specialist schools such as the Fantastic Four’s Future Foundation have all gone unanswered. The situation needs resolving as it’s pretty important and urgent. Lunella has – correctly – deduced that she carries dormant Inhuman genes, and the constantly moving mutagenic Terrigen Cloud recently released into Earth’s atmosphere (see both the Infinity and Inhumanity events) could transform her into a monster at any windswept moment…

Thanks to her investigations, she’s an expert in advanced and extraterrestrial technology, and her quest for a cure or Terrigen-deterrence procedure sees her perpetually sneaking out past bedtime in search of gadgets and detritus left behind after frequent superhero clashes around town…

That impetus reaches its hope-filled climax when her handmade detectors locate a discarded Kree Omni-Wave Projector in opening chapter ‘Repeat After Me’…

At some unspecified time in Earth’s distant prehistory, various emergent species of hominids eked out a perilous existence beside the last of the great lizards and other primordial giants. At one particular key moment, a wide-eyed innocent of the timid yet clever Small Folk saved a baby tyrannosaur from ruthless pre-human hunters the Killer Folk.

They had already slaughtered its mother and siblings with cunning snares and were merrily torturing the little lizard with blazing firebrands – which turned its scorched hide a livid, blazing red – before Moon Boy intervened…

Under the roaring light of a blazing volcano, boy and beast bonded, becoming inseparable companions. It was soon apparent the scarlet saurian was no ordinary reptile: blessed with uncanny intelligence and unmatchable ferocity, Devil became an equal partner in a relationship never before seen in the world. It did not, however, prevent the duo becoming targets for ruthless Killer Folk leader Thorn-Teeth who now slaughters and sacrifices beasts and Small Folk to a mystic “Nightstone”. A more advanced observer might remark on how much it resembles a Kree Omni-Wave Projector…

When Moon-Boy steals the dread talisman, he is savagely beaten near to death even as – in a gym class on Essex Street – Coach Hrbek confiscates and accidentally activates a fancy doodad Lunella’s been playing with instead of paying attention to getting fit.

Lights flash, time shreds and universes collide. A hole opens in space and a pack of bizarre monkey men shamble into modern New York. Arriving too late in the antediluvian valley, Devil Dinosaur thunders straight through the portal, intent on avenging his dying comrade…

Arriving in an impossibly confusing new world, Devil understandably panics. After causing much chaos and carnage, the bombastic beast sniffs little Lunella and snatches her up…

A mad chase ensues in ‘Old Dogs and New Tricks’ as deeply confused Devil marauds through Manhattan with outraged Lunella unable to escape or control the ferocious thunder lizard.

Meanwhile, the Killer Folk rapidly adapt to the new environment. Hiding out and observing everything occurring in the Yancy Street Subway Station, they soon prove the old adage about primitive not meaning stupid. Within days they have grasped the fundamentals of English and new concepts like money and clothes, as well as the  trickier notions of “gangs” and “protection rackets”…

Most importantly, Thorn-Teeth remembers that when they arrived, one of the hairless Small Folk was holding his Nightstone…

In ‘Out of the Frying Pan’, Moon Girl is having little luck ditching the overly-attentive, attention-attracting Torrid T-Rex. Tragically, when she finally does, the Killer Folk grab her and the Omni-Wave…

Their triumph is short-lived, since the lizard’s superior sense of smell summons Devil to the rescue, although, in the resulting melee, the precious device is lost. Growing grudgingly fond of the colossal critter, Lunella stashes Devil in her super-secret lab underneath PS 20, but when a spot of student arson sets the school ablaze, her hideaway is exposed and Devil bursts up through the ground to rescue kids trapped on an upper floor…

The fracas also unfortunately attracts the kind of superhero response Lunella has been dreading. ‘Hulk + Devil Dinosaur – ‘Nuff Said’ sees smug, teenaged Gamma-powered Avenger Amadeus Cho butt in with his bulging muscles and inability to listen to reason…

Poor Devil is no match for the Totally Awesome Hulk, forcing Moon Girl to intervene with some her own inventions. Across town, the Killer Folk – proudly carrying the Nightstone – deal with the last obstacle to their supremacy in the Yancy Street criminal underworld…

The Battle of PS 20 reaches its inevitable conclusion and Cho confiscates Devil Dinosaur, leaving Lunella thoroughly grounded and (apparently) behaving like a normal little girl in ‘Know How’.

Of course, it’s all a trick and as soon as everybody is lulled into complacency Moon Girl kits herself out with more devious gadgetry and busts Devil out of the Top Secret Wing of the Natural History Museum. She’s on a tight deadline now: her weather-monitoring gear confirms the Terrigen Cloud is rolling back towards Manhattan…

The spectacular jailbreak results in a ‘Eureka!’ moment coinciding with the Killer Folk consolidating their grip on the streets and using the Omni-Wave to capture Moon Girl. It also results in Lunella’s mother discovering who broke a dinosaur out of jail, and she furiously heads to the school for a reckoning with her wayward child…

The final conflict sees our little warrior at last victorious over the Killer Folk, albeit too late. As Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur roar in triumph on the rooftops, Lunella realises she is trapped outside with the Terrigen cloud descending. Her time and opportunity to create a cure has come and gone…

To Be Continued…

Collecting Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #1-6 from January to June 2016, this compelling, immensely entertaining romp is crafted by writers Brandon Montclare & Amy Reeder, with art from Natacha Bustos, colours by Tamra Bonvillain and letters from Travis Lanham. With a cover and variants gallery from Trevor Von Eeden, Pascal Campton, Paul Pope, Jeffrey Veregge & Pia Guerra, this addictively engaging yarn affords non-stop fun: a wonderful all-ages Marvel saga that is as fresh, thrilling, moving and hilariously funny now as it ever was.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: BFF is the kind of tale to lure youngsters into the comics habit and a perfect tool to seduce jaded older fans back into the fold…
© 2016 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Kindred – A Graphic Novel Adaptation


By Octavia E. Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy & John Jennings (Abrams ComicArts)
ISBN: 978-14197-0947-0 (TPB/Digital)

This month we’re (rather crazily!) focussing on material pertinent to Black History Month and simultaneously indulging ourselves in the regular Halloween fright-fest. Maybe one year minorities and women will get a whole month to themselves or perhaps the powers that decree these arbitrary festivals might even acknowledge that these subjects are acceptable everyday fare…

However, here and now let’s consider a very different kind of scary story that qualifies on either and both counts..

Octavia Estelle Butler (1947-2006) overcame the stacked handicaps of being female, shy, dyslexic, depressive, fatherless, poor and black in post-war America to become a shining light of the socially-aware science fiction scene that grew out of the works of Philip K Dick, Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Samuel R. Delaney, Zenna Henderson, John Brunner and others.

Reared in ethnically diverse but still segregated Pasadena, California, she studied hard, followed her passions, took every opportunity available to studious young women of colour and became one of the most innovative and lauded science fiction authors of her generation. Butler went to community college just as the Black Power Movement took off and – attending writers workshops – realised that her own experiences could and should inform her writing.

In series like her Parable books, Patternist and Xenogenesis sequences, stand-alone novels and dozens of award-winning short stories, she explored how societies and splinter groups acted, addressing themes of alienation, exclusion, social and biological evolution, control through belief systems, mutual coexistence of species, genetic manipulation, parapsychic abilities and biological adjustment. These subjects were screened through a lens of co-dependent cultures of dominance and submission, and framed in terms of “racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other ‘isms’ that cause so much suffering in the world.”

Elements of loss, contamination, interbreeding, miscegenation, mutation, symbiosis, surrender of autonomy and especially fear continually resurface as scenes of coercion, rape and violence: exploring how and why the weak are ruled by the strong and suggesting such actions are a kind of evolutionary parasitism which might be corrected by sociobiological interventions…

Her works are often associated with the vibrant subgenre of Afrofuturism – as so ideally depicted in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther stories – but Butler’s stories are rife with disenfranchised outsiders or lowly minority characters who are putatively weak: born compromised, enduring and tolerating appalling changes of state and status simply to survive.

Such is certainly the case with the protagonist of Kindred. Adapted here by Damien Duffy and illustrated by John Jennings, the 1979 novel was a stand-alone time-travel tale written by Butler in response to a colleague’s questions about why antebellum slaves tolerated captivity and treatment. Her response was this story, offering brutal, inescapable context justifying  how those accepting years of “willing” subservience might have worked…

It’s still in preproduction-limbo for a TV series , but until then you can hunt it out in two kinds of print – prose and pictorial…

The graphic odyssey is preceded by a heartfelt ‘Introduction by Nnedi Okorafor’ before the shocking drama opens with a ‘Prologue’ as African American Dana contemplates the limb she no longer has…

A mystery starts to unravel on June 9th 1976, as she and her white husband Kevin Franklin celebrate her 26th birthday by unpacking the boxes that brought all their worldly goods into their new home. They’re both writers and have lots to stuff into this house, but dreamy domesticity ends abruptly as she’s seized by an uncanny force and vanishes. She reappears by ‘The River’ just in time to save a little a white boy named Rufus from drowning…

Dana is then attacked and beaten by his mother and shot at by his father before warping back to Kevin and home. Her soaked, dishevelled condition categorically proves that what she experienced was no delusion: an inexplicable event that has shattered her joy and composure. Dana no longer feels safe or secure: here or anywhere…

The dreaded incident reoccurs mere hours later with Dana manifesting in Rufus’ bedroom just as he’s sparking ‘The Fire’ that would have destroyed the vast plantation house he lives in. The boy is at least four years older and deeply disturbed, but Dana patiently establishes a working relationship with him, based on a shared fear of his parents. With open mind and terrified conviction, Dana has concluded that she is somehow being pulled through time to a place where her kind are objects bought and sold, a fact Rufus confirms when he reveals the year is 1815…

Further cautious conversation draws from the boy his surname – Weylin – and the plantation’s location in Maryland. With horror, Dana recalls snippets of her own family history and realizes this half-crazed, privileged, firebug – WHITE – brat is her direct ancestor…

Despite her bizarre clothes, hair, manners and spurious claims to be a freed woman, Dana tries to flee the manorial house but is caught up in a slave-taker’s punishment raid. After torturing runaways, they then turn on her and a callous beating edges into a sexual assault that only a sudden switch back to 20th century California prevents from becoming her last moment.

Grievously battered, she refuses to let Kevin call an ambulance. By his reckoning, she’s only been gone for three minutes, but cannot bear the thought of vanishing again from a hospital…

Anticipating another vanishing, they assemble a “go-bag” of 20th century medicines and tools for her next abduction and Kevin bones up on black history from their reference library. Here and now, knowledge is power…

Fondly recalling how they first got together, Dana is unprepared for the next summoning, but when the force grips her now, Kevin reacts rapidly. Grabbing her, he goes with her and sees for himself the living past. Rufus is visibly older and has just broken his leg in ‘The Fall’…

Reacting with fury to the news that these adults are married – scandalously illegal miscegenation! – Rufus is taken into their confidence as they conclusively prove they come from the future.

Forced to be Dana’s “owner” whilst a guest in the Weylin household, Kevin spends too much time apart from his wife whilst she is assigned to the plantation staff. After savagely beating her for teaching blacks to write, her shameful ability to read is secretly exploited by Rufus’ parents, who remain unaware that the strange slave is making many friends and useful connections amongst the lower orders. However, when the future calls her again, Kevin is nowhere to be found and left behind…

And so the story unfolds, with years passing as eyeblink instalments with Dana gradually building a seditious second life among slaves she secretly seeks to radicalise and protect, under the aegis of her family recollections.  She searches in vain for her missing husband and contrives a disturbing, discordant and deeply unhealthy relationship with the cruelly manipulative – adult – ancestor/owner Rufus in ‘The Fight’, before the time-lost lovers are finally reunited in ‘The Storm’.  And at last an ending arrives after Dana’s lowest moments in ‘The Rope’…

The scattered threads of family are then drawn together in an ‘Epilogue’ that trusts but cannot prove that the mystery is done and the travelling finished…

A chilling, complex and extremely challenging reappraisal of many kinds of status quo, Kindred is more topical and germane than ever, examining social, racial and gender roles in a culture that has never been less stable or secure. Delivered with the full, uncompromising force of graphic narrative and in the charged, unrestrained terms and language of the 19th century via 1970s liberal outrage, this is a rewarding, informative yet potentially shocking narrative demanding your full attention and a tacit acceptance that history must not be shaded or censored. If unsanitised violence, non-voyeuristic nudity and harsh language are more distressing to you than learning uncomfortable truths, you might be better served by today’s other review…

Adding value here, this adaptation (which was followed by the team’s treatment of Butler’s Parable of the Sower and the still-forthcoming Parable of the Talents) includes biographies ‘About Octavia E. Butler’ and ‘About the adaptor and artist’ plus ‘Acknowledgements’ and material recommended ‘For Further Reading’…

Kindred is powerful and upsetting, just like it was always meant to be, and is a story you should know in all its forms. There’s no time like the present…

Kindred © The Estate of Octavia E. Butler. Adaptation © 2017 Damian Duffy and John Jennings. Introduction © 2017 Nnedi Okarador. Based on the novel Kindred by Octavia E.
Butler © 1979. All rights reserved.

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Sheets


By Brenna Thummler (The Lion Forge/Cub House/Oni Press)
ISBN: 978-1-941302-67-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Spirited Fun for All… 9/10

Gloom, doom and death cling to Marjorie Glatt like static. The weary youngster is bullied at school and harassed at home. That’s because she spends every waking moment trying to keep the family business going under ever-escalating pressure. The laundromat was her mom’s refuge, dream and legacy, where they all lived safe, happy and warm above the washers and driers.

…And then Mom drowned.

Situated on a quiet bend of the coast, Finster Bay is like any other small town: everybody lives for themselves and is only concerned with what they want and need, and no one sees how 13-year-old Marj is daily being sucked ever-downwards. Since the funeral she’s now stuck with school, keeping a home and even feeding the family since dad had his breakdown and withdrew from reality.

The Glatts are deep in debt and Marj’s little brother Owen is a typical boy brat who won’t help unless he’s bribed…

The rich mean girls have singled her out for special attention and nasty yoga guy Nigel Saubertuck keeps breaking in, terrorising her by sabotaging all her attempts to turn Glatt’s (formerly Delaway’s) Laundry around. He even smugly boasts of it, saying he’ll take their prime location for his proposed spa centre and make them all work for him folding towels…

That’s not even worst of it, either. Adding to Marj’s woes is the distraction of inexplicably attentive cute boy Colton possibly?/perhaps?/maybe/surely it can’t be? liking her: a novelty that consequently attracts more the full venom fand disdain of obnoxious classmate Tessi Waffleton.

The fact that Marjorie is developing a full blown compulsive aversion to water after seeing her mother drown is mere icing on the cake, but as the floundering girl slowly sinks under impossible adult responsibilities, her stressed teen’s life gets even more complicated after Wendell starts causing trouble…

Finster Bay is a town doubly populated. Existing alongside the self-obsessed adults and kids is an unseen legion of dead people. The Bay is a “Land of Ghosts” and Wendell is having a hard time adjusting to not being alive anymore. A determined and inspired fabulist liar, the little apparition refuses to interact in the support group (DYE: Dead Youth Empathetics), hasn’t read the Book of Ghost Law he was given and won’t even keep clean the standard-issue white shroud which confines and contains all that’s left of him.

He also died in water, and has an unrecalled deep connection to Marjie…

When Mr. Saubertuck makes his big move, surreptitiously adding red dye to the Glatt washers, he’s thinks he’s finally driven Marjorie to surrender. However, he’s shockingly confronted by Wendell! The slimy schemer hasn’t reckoned on an army of spooks coming to her aid, even as she at last realises the free-floating annoyance that has immensely added to her distress…

In the meantime, Marj has been doing some deep diving at the Library and has deduced that the overly-familiar little spectre is the little kid who saved her when she was lost years ago…

Wistful, charming, sadly poignant and unafraid to address both lighter and the darkest issues, Sheets is a sweetly refreshing tale of determination, discovery and enduring friendship, with illustrator-turned-author Brenna Thummler (Anne of Green Gables) delivering a remarkable and enchanting modern fable that has already spawned a sequel, and should be a favourite for generations to come.

This book was released by Lion’s Forge in 2018, and is available in digital formats, but is also schedule for re-release in January 2023 from Oni Press.
© 2018 Brenna Thummler. All rights reserved.

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Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man Ultimate Collection volume 1


By Brian Michael Bendis, Sarah Pichelli, Chris Samnee, David Marquez & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9778-2 (TPB/digital edition)

After Marvel’s financial and creative problems in the late 1990s, the company came back swinging. A key new concept involved remodelling and modernising their core pantheon for the new youth culture. The Ultimate imprint abandoned the monumental, slavish continuity which had always been Marvel’s greatest asset, giving its revamped players a separate reality to play in. Varying degrees of radical makeover appealed to a contemporary 21st century audience and proved a godsend as base material for the new Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Peter Parker was once again reduced to a callow, nerdy high-school geek, brilliant but perpetually bullied by his physical superiors. There were even fresh, fashionable, more scientifically feasible rationales for the fore-destined spider bite which imparted those patented, impossible arachnoid abilities.

His uncle Ben Parker still died because of the lad’s lack of responsibility. The Daily Bugle was still there, as was bombastically outrageous J. Jonah Jameson. Now, however, in a more cynical, litigious world, well-used to cover-ups and conspiracy theories, arch-foe Norman Osborn – a corrupt, ruthless billionaire businessman – was behind everything.

Any gesture towards the faux-realism of traditional superhero fare was surrendered to the tried-and-tested soap-opera melodrama which inevitably links all characters together in invisible threads of karmic coincidence and familial consanguinity but, to be honest, it seldom hurt the narrative. After all, as long as internal logic isn’t contravened, subplots don’t have to make sense to be entertaining.

After a short and spectacularly impressive career, the originally outcast Peter finally gained a measure of acceptance and was hailed a hero when the Ultimate Comics Spider-Man valiantly and very publicly met his end at Osborn’s hands during a catastrophic super-villain showdown…

Soon after he died, a new champion cast in his image arose to carry on the fight…

Written throughout by Brian Michael Bendis, this collection concerns controversial new kid Miles Morales, and contains material published before mega-crossover events Time Runs Out and Secret Wars merged him and other remnants of the Ultimate Universe with the mainstream Marvel continuity. It specifically re-presents an introductory teaser from Ultimate Comics Fallout #4 (August 2011), Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1-12 (-February 2013) and trans-multiversal team-up Spider-men #1-5 (June to September 2012).

In the aftermath of Parker’s last moments, brilliant African American/Latino child prodigy Miles Morales was revealed to have gained similar powers. The freshly empowered 13-year old quickly adjusted to his astounding new physical abilities whilst painfully discovering the daily costs of living a life of lies and how an inescapable sense of responsibility is the worst of all possible burdens…

The revelations here begin by spinning back to the relatively recent past when manic industrialist Osborn repeated the genetic experiment which first bestowed incredible powers on Peter Parker via the accidental bite of a deliberately-mutated spider. Unfortunately, the deranged mastermind failed to anticipate a burglar waltzing in and carrying off the latest test animal as part of his haul …

When grade-schooler Miles gets into prestigious, life-changing Brooklyn Visions Academy Boarding School by the most callous of chances, the boy cynically realises life is pretty much a crap-shoot… and unfair to boot. Feeling guilty about his unjust success and sorry for the 697 other poor kids who don’t get his lucky break, he sneaks off to visit his uncle Aaron. The visit has to be secret since his uncle is a “bad influence” and a career criminal …

Whilst there, a huge spider with a number on its back bites Miles and the boy begins to feel very odd. He also starts fading from sight…

Suddenly super-fast and strong, able to leap huge distances and become practically invisible, Miles rushes to consult geeky pal Ganke, a prodigious nerd already attending Brooklyn Visions. Applying “scientific testing”, the self-proclaimed hero-expert confirms Miles is similar to Spider-Man but can also deliver shocking, destructive blasts through his hands.

When Morales heads home, Ganke continues online research and deduces the connection to the wallcrawler, and is soon strenuously pushing his friend towards becoming a costumed crusader just like him…

However, after Miles intervenes during a tenement fire and saving a mother and baby, shock sets in and he resolves never to use his powers again…

Time passes: Miles and Ganke have been roommates at the Academy for almost a year when news of a major metahuman clash rocks the city. Troubled Miles heads out and becomes an accidental witness to Spider-Man’s murder. Seeing a brave man perish so nobly, he is again consumed by guilt: if he had used his own powers when they first manifested, he might have been able to help save a true hero…

Part of the crowds attending Parker’s memorial, Miles and Ganke talk to another mourner, a girl who actually knew Parker. Gwen Stacy offers quiet insights to the grieving boys and a phrase which alters the course of Miles’ life forever – “with great power comes great responsibility…”

Clad in a Halloween Spidey costume borrowed from Ganke, Miles takes to the night streets for the first time and stops minor miscreant Kangaroo from committing murder…

Feeling he’s come full circle, on his third night out the exhilarated 13-year old encounters the terrifying and furiously indignant Spider-Woman who thrashes and arrests him. Morales wakes at a Government agency in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody where Hawkeye, Iron Man and master manipulator Nick Fury coldly assess him.

However, before they can reach a decision on the boy’s fate, murderous malcontent Electro breaks free of the Triskelion’s medical custody ward and goes on a rampage. Despite easily defeating the seasoned heroes, the voltaic villain is completely unprepared for a new Spider-Man: especially as the kid’s extra powers include camouflage capability and an irresistible “venom-strike” sting…

As Miles considers the full implications of his victory, Fury imparts a staggeringly simple homily: “With great power…” even as he arranges for the kid a properly designed and tooled high-tech costume to crusade in…

Now a day resident at the Brooklyn Boarding School, Miles spends only weekends at home and is coming to terms with some unpleasant truths. Foremost is that his secrets must be kept from his parents, but also poisoning the family air is the fact that his father used to be a street-thug and now passionately hates costumed heroes like Spider-Man.

Almost as bad is the discovery that Uncle Aaron is a major thief and bad-guy known in the game as The Prowler …

Ever since a living piece of Aaron’s loot bit Miles and transformed him, the Prowler has been laying low, but the tide turns here as he resurfaces in Mexico, narrowly escaping a deal-gone-sour with local super-powered gang-lord the Scorpion. Meanwhile the new Spider-Man has been making a name for himself in New York, and news of a junior Arachnid Avenger is making global headlines…

With additional art from Chris Samnee, David Messina and David Marquez, classmate, confidante and fellow nerd Ganke undertakes to “train” Miles using candid footage of the deceased Peter Parker in action and – when continued sightings of the boy hero reach Aaron south of the border – the wily rogue instantly puts two and two together and heads back to the Big Apple.

As the troubled teen tackles street scum and old Spidey villains like Omega Red – triumphing more by luck than skill or judgement – Uncle Aaron murders underworld tech-guru The Tinkerer and swipes his ingenious arsenal of criminal gadgets before confronting Miles at school. He’s thinking possible partnership…

Since Parker perished his Aunt May and true love Gwen have been world travelling. They’re in Paris when the shocking news of a successor reaches them…

In New York, Police Captain Quaid is also coming to terms with a new wallcrawling crazy complicating his life, but is utterly unaware that major grief has hit town as the Scorpion, following the Prowler, has realized New York is wide open for a new Kingpin of Crime to step in and take over…

After a brutal battle against The Ringer, Spider-Man and Quaid reach an accommodation of sorts, but Prowler’s first North American clash with the Scorpion doesn’t go nearly as well and Aaron Morales once again accosts his nephew with veiled threats and a shocking offer…

Of course it all devolves into a fist-fight before calmer heads prevail and Miles really thinks over what’s on the table: one of the world’s most effective and capable villains is offering to train him in combat, strategy and survival on the streets whilst schooling him in the myriad ways the underworld works…

Only problem is that the Prowler has no intention of reforming and won’t say what he expects in return…

Eventually Miles realises his uncle has been secretly grooming him ever since some of his loot bit the youngster, and refuses to let the manipulative creep tricks Miles into attacking the seemingly unstoppable Mexican gang-lord seizing control of the city…

The action (illustrated by David Marquez) begins with a blistering raid on the Scorpion’s plush new club where, in the heat of battle, the novice wall-crawler at last realises Aaron will never change or make amends, but his simply eradicating opposition in advance of his own attempt to take over the underworld…

Events explode tragically when Aaron accosts Miles at school, trying to blackmail him with threats of telling the boy’s father all about Spider-Man, and resulting in a devastating showdown. Equipped with years of criminal experience and Tinkerer’s ingenious arsenal, Aaron goes crazy, determined to finish his rebellious nephew.

The fight inevitably escalates, endangering a busload of civilians who all apparently see the neophyte wallcrawler first save them before killing the Prowler in a horrific explosion…

To Be Continued…

Meanwhile in the mainstream Marvel Universe, “our” Peter Parker underwent his own turmoil and travails, surviving to become a more-or-less grown man and first rank superhero…

The miniseries Spider-Men #1-5 was designed as part of celebrations for the webspinner’s 50th anniversary, and offers a slight but magically enthralling guest-star-packed riff on one of the superhero genre’s most popular themes.

The action begins in the original universe where Peter is on patrol, stopping some fleeing thieves – and almost getting arrested for his help – when he spots an eerie light. Investigating, he discovers the latest hideout of old foe Mysterio and – after a brief struggle – overpowers the sinister Special Effects savant.

Something is off though and the villain’s babblings make no sense. The creep is clearly delusional, screaming Spider-Man is already dead before breaking loose to trigger a bizarrely glowing device he’d been defending.

In a blaze of light, Spider-Man transits from a dark warehouse at night to a sunny rooftop in a radically different New York. Things get even stranger when he stops a mugging and the victim thanks him but says his costume is in “terrible taste” before enquiring if he knew Peter Parker.

…And that’s when the kid in a way cooler Spider suit shows up…

In another universe, the Ultimate Mysterio wakes up and activates a telemetric avatar of himself to follow Spider-Man across dimensions, where Parker is – in true Marvel style – fighting his namesake in a fever of confused misapprehension. Utterly underestimating his diminutive opponent, the elder Arachnoid is defeated by the kid’s secret powers (invisibility and a debilitating venom sting) and wakes up in a S.H.I.E.L.D. cell where an African-American Nick Fury confirms that he’s fallen into an alternate Earth…

Eventually released into Miles’ custody, the newcomer is introduced to a New York where Peter Parker is a revered – albeit dead – hero. Before he can adapt, the Mysterio avatar attacks with a lethal arsenal of ballistic weapons and mind-warping chemical weapons…

By the time Ultimate operatives Thor, Hawkeye and Iron Man appear, the battle is won and the mechanoid trashed, but as ferociously curious Tony Stark examines the dimensional transfer tech in our world, their Mysterio is preparing another deadly assault…

As the assembled heroes seek a way home for the wallcrawling wanderer, Parker is torturing himself by visiting “his” old haunts and hangouts, leading to gut-wrenching meetings with Aunt May, Mary Jane Watson and a Gwen Stacy who wasn’t murdered by the Green Goblin…

…And in the other universe, Mysterio just can’t let go: once again preparing to launch his devilish devices across the rift to kill Spider-Man… all of them and whoever stands with them…

Aided by painter/colourist Justin Ponsor, Bendis & Sara Pichelli crafted a hugely impressive and fresh take on alternate Earth team-ups: drenched in warmth and tragedy, brimming with breathtaking action and stuffed with light-hearted, razor sharp humour, elevating it from the ranks of formularized Costumed Dramas into it easily one of the best superhero tales of the decade.

This initial Ultimately Ultimate compendium also offers a colossal gallery of covers and variants by Kaare Andrews. Jorge Molina, Marquez, Rain Beredo, Pichelli, Ponsor, Adi Granov Marko Djurdjevic, Mark Bagley, Marcos Martin, Terry & Rachel Dodson, Travis Charest, Tommy Lee Edwards, Jimmy Cheung, Humberto Ramos & Mike Deodato to delight and thrill in a rollercoaster ride of tense, evocative suspense and easy-going adventure that is the essential Spider-Man.

Tense, breathtaking, action-packed, evocative, suspenseful and full of the light-hearted, self-aware razor sharp humour which blessed the original Lee/Ditko tales, this second Spider-Man is here to stay …unless they kill him too…
© 2019 MARVEL.

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The House on the Borderland


By Simon Revelstroke, Richard Corben & various (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-545-6 (HB) 978-1-56389-860-8 (TPB)

So, what’s better, the book or the movie?

This is a highly charged question with only one answer: “It depends”.

Adapting works from one medium to another is always contentious, and often ill-advised – but the only fair response has to be both highly personal and broadly irrelevant. Just because I don’t like any X-Men films doesn’t make them bad, just as my deep love and admiration for the works of Oliver Postgate & Peter Firmin doesn’t make me six years old (no matter how much I’d like it to be true!).

The real issue is whether an adaptation treats the original fairly or callously exploits it – and make no mistake: 99.5 % of all reworkings are done with money in mind. Half of that other percent point is a genuine desire to proselytise: a mission to “bring the original to the masses” whilst the fractional remainder is an artist’s desire to interpret something that moved them in their own arena of expertise: for years I yearned to adapt Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghost-Breaker/Ghost-Finder short stories into graphic novel format. I’m not dead yet and there might still be time unless someone more talented gets there first…

The author of those tales, as well as the source material for this excellent graphic novel from underground comix legends Simon Revelstroke & Richard Corben, is the brilliant William Hope Hodgson. Son of a poor parson, he was born in 1877, and took to sea at 14. In 1899 to make a living he turned to photography and writing. He was an early devote of physical culture (a bodybuilder) and patriot. Aged 40, he died in the Fourth Battle Ypres, sometime between the 17th and 19th of April 1918. Literature is the poorer for his premature departure.

Hodgson’s stories are dark and moody explorations of terrors internal and ghastly, against a backdrop of eternal, malignant forces beyond human comprehension ever waiting to take the incautious, unwary or overly-inquisitive. As Alan Moore describes in his Introduction here, Hodgson was the point-man for a new kind of story.

The gothic ghost-story writers and high fantasists of Victorian publishing gave way as the century turned to such cosmic horrorists as HP Lovecraft, Robert Bloch and Clive Barker, but with such epics as The Night Land and The House on the Borderland, Hodgson lit the way. His too-brief catalogue of works stands as a beacon of pervasive unease and outright terror and why he’s not a household name I simply can’t fathom. His career was cut tragically short in the trenches, but unlike so many of them he faded into relative obscurity and never bloomed into posthumous posterity…

Rather than religiously translate his masterpiece, Revelstroke & Corben truncated and marginally updated the novel, concentrating on what can actually be visualised – so much of Hodgson’s power comes from the ability to stir the subconscious brain – and in fairness, could be called a companion rather than adaptation of the original text.

October, 1952 in the rural hamlet of Kraighten in the Republic of Ireland. Two English students on a walking tour accidentally provoke the locals and must flee for their lives. They are chased to a ramshackle, desolate ruin on the edge of a crumbling abyss, a misty ravine which harks back to a long-forgotten time.

In the bracken they find an old journal. Scared and still hiding, they begin to read the words of Byron Gault, who in 1816 moved himself, his sister Mary and his faithful hound into the infamous but irresistibly inexpensive old house. Of horrors both physical and otherwise that attacked them and the incredible, infinity-spanning journey that resulted…

How this tale proceeds is a treat I’ll save for your own consumption. This adaptation was nominated for Best Graphic Novel of the Year by the International Horror Guild in 2003. It is not, Can Not be the original book. So get both if you can, read both and revel in what makes each unique to their own form, rather than where they can conveniently overlap and coincide.
© 2000 Simon Revelstroke and Richard Corben. All Rights Reserved.