Category: Comedy

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Lucky Luke volume 31 – Lucky Luke versus the Pinkertons


By Achdé, Daniel Pennac & Tonino Benacquista, in the style of Morris: coloured by Anne-Marie Ducasse, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-098-6 (Album PB/Digital edition)

Doughty, dashing and dependable cowboy “good guy” Lucky Luke is a rangy, implacably even-tempered do-gooder able to “draw faster than his own shadow”. He amiably ambles around the mythic Old West, enjoying light-hearted adventures on his petulant and rather sarcastic wonder-horse Jolly Jumper.

Over nine decades, his exploits have made him one of the top-ranking comic characters in the world, generating upwards of 85 individual albums and many spin-off series, with sales thus far totalling in excess of 300 million in 30 languages. That renown has led to a mountain of merchandise, aforementioned tie-in series like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan, plus toys, computer games, animated cartoons, a plethora of TV shows and live-action movies and even commemorative exhibitions. No theme park yet, but you never know…

Originally the brainchild of Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère (“Morris”) and first officially seen in Le Journal de Spirou’s seasonal Annual L’Almanach Spirou 1947, Luke actually sprang to laconic life in mid-1946, before inevitably ambling into his first weekly adventure ‘Arizona 1880’ on December 7th 1946.

Working solo until 1955, Morris produced nine albums of affectionate sagebrush spoofery before teaming with old pal and fellow trans-American émigré Rene Goscinny. With Rene as his regular wordsmith, Luke attained dizzying, legendary, heights starting with Des rails sur la Prairie (Rails on the Prairie) which began serialisation on August 25th 1955. In 1967, the six-gun straight-shooter switched sides, joining Goscinny’s own magazine Pilote in La Diligence (The Stagecoach).

Goscinny co-created 45 albums with Morris before his untimely death, whereupon Morris soldiered on both singly and with other collaborators. He died in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus numerous sidebar sagebrush sagas crafted with Achdé, Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac, Xavier Fauche, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and more, all taking their own shot at the venerable vigilante …as in this tale from 2010 which so neatly fits the week’s theme of “detective fiction”…

Lucky Luke has a long history in Britain, having first pseudonymously amused and enthralled young readers during the late 1950s, syndicated to weekly anthology Film Fun. He later rode back into comics-town in 1967 for comedy paper Giggle, using nom de plume Buck Bingo. And that’s not counting the many attempts to establish him as a book star beginning in 1972 with Brockhampton Press, and continuing with Knight Books, Hodder Dargaud UK, Ravette Books and Glo’Worm, until Cinebook finally and thankfully found the way in 2006.

The taciturn trailblazer regularly interacts with historical and legendary figures as well as even odder fictional folk in tales drawn from key themes of classic cowboy films – as well as some uniquely European notions, and interpretations. That’s used to sublime effect in Lucky Luke contre Pinkerton released as Cinebook’s 31st album in 2011, but only latterly added to the official continental cannon.

In France, it had graced Le Journal de Spirou #3779-3784 before being compiled and released as the 4th edition of sub-strand Les Aventures de Lucky Luke d’après Morris.

Since the Europeans take their comics seriously – especially the funny ones – they aren’t afraid to be bold or brave and this riotous romp cheekily plays with established chronology and even employs creative anachronism to carry an edged – if not actually barbed – pop at government oversight, the rise of a surveillance state and arguments pro and con concerning necessary evils and zealous protections versus plain old liberty and equality…

In America, Abraham Lincoln has just been elected President . The world is changing and modernity looms, but the nefarious Daltons think nothing of it until a train robbery goes hideously awry.

Instead of their usual duel with Lucky Luke they are ambushed and arrested by an army of detectives employed by iconoclastic, ambitious lawman Allan Pinkerton. The detective then begins a publicity campaign trumpeting that the day of the gifted amateur is done and that Lucky is passe and over the hill…

Untroubled by all the modern foolishness, Luke busies himself hunting a counterfeiting gang but thinks again when Pinkerton pips him to the post and abrasively tells him that from now on, there will be no room for amateurs…

Egotistically sharing his cutting edge crimefighting scheme, Pinkerton unveils modern incarceration, rapid communications, intelligence-led pre-emptive investigation, forensic methodology and ruthless methods of “interrogation” – and operates on the principle that everyone is guilty of something…

He’s compiling incriminating dossiers on everyone, with his legion of detectives building an (analogue) database holding all those dark secrets in one secure office.

Pinkerton’s authority comes from Lincoln, who has made the innovator his chief of security, unaware of the detective’s own vaulting ambition – which includes acting as an agent provocateur and manufacturing threats against PotUS. Lucky sticks to his guns and the old moral ways and battlelines are drawn…

Initially, everything seems to go the way of the moderniser, but his success proves his undoing when a sudden influx of arrests fills all the prisons and the Daltons are given early release to make room. With turmoil gripping the nation and Lincoln’s popularity plunging, Pinkerton seems unassailable until unrepentant recidivist Joe Dalton cherry picks modern ordnance and applies old fashioned predatory behaviour to beat Pinkerton at his own game.

The little monster is particularly impressed by that huge store of files and calculates how much most decent people will pay to keep their secrets unexposed…

Happily Lucky Luke also cherishes the old ways and is ready to set things right his way…

A wickedly wry exploration of the other side of the investigation game, Lucky Luke versus the Pinkertons blends fun and adventure with some salient views of where we’ve been and where we’re going in our ever more urgent quest for safety and security. Nevertheless, the yarn also revels in classic set-piece slapstick and witty wordplay: poking fun at the fundamental components of the genre and successfully embracing tradition with action in another wildly entertaining all-ages confection.
© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1971 by Goscinny & Morris. © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2009 Cinebook Ltd.

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Rick and Morty: Sometimes Science Is More Art Than Science – The Official Colouring Book


Illustrated by Austin Baechle (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-80336-598-5 (PB)

Multi award-winning Adult Swim (the grown-up after-dark division of Cartoon Network) animated comedy science fiction series Rick and Morty was created by Justin Roiland & Dan Harmon. It was developed from the former’s parody short of Back to The Future in 2006, and with Harmon’s eventual collaboration was unleashed on the universe – arguably all of them – in December 2013. We’re up to Season 7, with 3 more contracted for.

The show combines edgy domestic comedy with outrageous fantasy spread across all of reality, as moral and impressionable Rick Smith is consistently lured into incredible and upsetting situations by his grandfather Morty Sanchez: an alcoholic and extremely brilliant mad scientist who lives with the Smith family. It’s all very funny, wildly imaginative and better read than talked about. (Un)Naturally, there’s a comic book tie-in too, and even a crossover series with the Dungeons & Dragons franchise that you can try too…

This decidedly peculiar and utterly interactive tribute to a strange time all around offers over 60 lusciously large and madly memorable images inspired by the show. Ranging from bizarrely disturbing to profoundly comic, these cartoon confabulations include weird places, odd characters, the Smiths in all their hoary glory, icky, sticky things, dragons, monsters and so much more, all delivered by animator Austin Baechle (Pre Fab), who preloads the magic of the grand parade through time, space, parallel dimensions and the backyard and bedroom in seductive style to delight the already dedicated and entice the uninitiated…

It’s never too soon or too late to unhinge your personal reality and get in touch with your visually expressive side, and the only way this wonderfully whacky experience could be improved is with crayons, paints and pens. Or maybe glue, glitter, fur and precious metals? No digital edition as yet, so if you want to play on a computer, you’ll need to get scanning. However, if you can work a keyboard and acclimatise to Rick and Morty’s many worlds you can surely get by…

Irreverent, subversive and appallingly addictive, the combination of great characters, compelling pictures and mirthful attention-seizing is a welcome way to while away the hours between life and the beyond…

Forget video-games – buy this (renewably resourced) book. If you’re worried about exercise, do the colouring-in standing up and if a mess (or winged dinosaur invasion) ensues, you can boost your cardio rate by cleaning it all up.

Challengingly eccentric and modernistically retro wonderment, this is a fun you can’t imagine …but can purchase.

© 2023 Cartoon Network. RICK AND MORTY and all related characters and elements are © & ™ Cartoon Network.  All Rights Reserved.

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The Songs of Michael Flanders & Donald Swann


Lyrics by Michael Flanders & Donald Swann, illustrated by H. M. Bateman, Gerard Hoffnung, Osbert Lancaster, David Low, Gerald Scarfe, Trog (Willy Fawkes), Edward Burra, Ionicus (Joshua Charles Armitage), William Hewison, Michael ffolkes, Ronald Searle and Many & Various (Elm Tree Books/International Music Publications Limited)
ISBN: 978-0-24189-738 6 (HB) 978-1-85909-439-6 (PB)

When music becomes global major news and both a political hot potato and celebration of Gay Pride, I’d be a sucker not to mark the occasion with a cheap shot and hearty paean for my own aspirational dreams. I want new people to recognise some good old days of my own – in words and pictures as well as musically. If you are intrigued, track these down…

I’m stretching my brief again here (and isn’t that a grisly image to conjure with?) to review this superb slice of comedy nostalgia that’s still readily available. Michael Flanders (1922-1975) and Donald Swann (1923-1994) were primarily songwriters who became a huge international success performing their own material and acting as charming social commentators.

All this they did, live on stage in a vibrant, satirical manner that captivated audiences both in theatres across the globe, but also on the increasingly important television variety circuit.

Their brand of gently jibing whimsy (mostly skewering themselves and a rapidly changing Britain and “Englishness”) through mordant sarcasm delighted the folk of many nations, and songs such as “The Hippopotamus” (you may know it as “Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud”) or “The Reluctant Cannibal” are still liable to break out whenever people of a certain age congregate near a piano.

The dapper duo first teamed up in 1948 and were brilliantly funny on stage. Live albums like At the Drop of a Hat and At the Drop of Another Hat are classic examples of comedy stand-up that still leave contemporary improv performers agog and breathless. Both of them died far too early.

This brain-blistering book gathers 41 of their funniest, most sarcastic, touching and best songs, with both sheet music and separate lyrics. It’s also augmented by cartoons and illustrations from some of Britain’s greatest humorous illustrators such as H. M. Bateman, Hoffnung, Osbert Lancaster, David Low, Gerald Scarfe, Trog, Edward Burra, Ionicus, Hewison, ffolkes, Ronald Searle and many others.

If you’re a sucker for shopping lists the delicious ditties done here are In The Bath, Design For Living, Misalliance, The Gas-Man Cometh, A Song Of The Weather, Pillar To Post, Rain On The Plage, Motor Perpetuo, Slow Train, A Transport Of Delight (Omnibus), Last Of The Line, Twenty Tons Of TNT, The Reluctant Cannibal, Pee-Po-Belly-Bum-Drawers, Budget Song, Ballad For The Rich, All Gall, Philological Waltz (Tonga), Song Of Patriotic Prejudice, The Lord Chamberlain’s Regulations, The Album, Ill Wind, Guide To Britten, Song Of Reproduction, Bedstead Men, Excelsior, Vanessa, Twice Shy and the rather worrisome-by-modern-standards Madeira, M’dear?

Also included are a selection of their generally child-friendly airs such as The Armadillo, …Hippopotamus, …Ostrich, …Elephant, …Gnu, …Rhinoceros, …Sloth, …Spider, …Wild Boar, The Whale (Mopy Dick), The Warthog and The Wompom, acting in concert to make this grand book a delight to look at as well read. If you ever needed a reason to dust off the old piano lessons…
© 1977, 1996 International Music Publications Limited. Illustrations © 1977 their respective copyright holders.

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Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer, With Not Enough Drawings by Ronald Searle


By Tom Lehrer & Ronald Searle (Methuen)
ISBN: 978-0-41348-570-0 (HB) 978-0-41374-230-8 (PB)

And we will all go together when we go.
What a comforting fact that is to know.
Universal bereavement – an inspiring achievement,
Yes, we all will go together when we go.
We will all go together when we go.
All suffused with an incandescent glow.
No one will have the endurance – to collect on his insurance
Lloyd’s of London will be loaded when they go.

Are you musical? I already know that you are a lover of graphic narrative excellence and fine art, so the wonderfully dark, sinister, disturbing and utterly brilliant cartoon illustrations of Ronald Searle will delight you.

But the name of mathematician, songwriter, satirist, Intellectual and early proponent of sick and bad taste humour Tom Lehrer is perhaps not so well known, although his achievements are as remarkable and far-reaching. If you already know of him you’ll know why I’m such a fanatical fan. If not, crack open your search engines. It’ll be the most fun you’ve had in ages.

This terrifically terse yet near-terpsichorean tome – often re-issued as a comedy classic (the last time was 1999) – contains the music, lyrics, words, tunes, piano accompaniments, and guitar chords for 34 classics from a frankly staggering oeuvre and back-catalogue comprising decades of educational and comedic songs. From such classics as “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”, the deeply disturbing yet hilarious “I Hold your Hand in Mine”, “The Old Dope Peddler” and “The Masochism Tango” to the lightly spiky “Be Prepared” or “I Got it from Agnes”, Lehrer makes smart people laugh, venal people squirm and all people think.

Also included are edgy examples from his tenure as songwriter for That Was The Week That Was and educational ditties penned for the Electric Company/Children’s Television Workshop (now the Sesame Workshop).

Some songs have been adapted by George Woodbridge in Mad Magazine,

In 2020, aged of 92, Professor Lehrer donated all lyrics and music written by him to the public domain, and on November 1st, followed up with all recording and performing rights of any kind, making all his originally composed or performed confections free for anyone to use. They are available directly from his site for free download (http://tomlehrersongs.com/).

His accompanying statement concluded with: “This website will be shut down at some date in the not-too-distant future, so if you want to download anything, don’t wait too long.”

Just as with Flanders & Swann there’s no substitute for actual performances, but in case you need more to go on, lurking here all snappy and sharp arias including The Irish Ballad, Fight Fiercely Harvard!, Be Prepared, The Old Dope Peddler, The Wild West Is Where I Want to Be, I Wanna Go Back to Dixie, Lobachevsky, The Hunting Song, I Hold Your Hand in Mine, My Home Town, L-Y, When You Are Old and Gray, The Wiener Schnitzel Waltz, Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, A Christmas Carol, Bright College Days, In Old Mexico, She’s My Girl, The Elements, The Masochism Tango, National Brotherhood Week, MLF Lullaby, The Folk Song Army, Smut, Send the Marines, New Math, Pollution, So Long Mom, Who’s Next?, The Vatican Rag, Wernher Von Braun, I Got It from Agnes, Silent E and We Will All Go Together When We Go.

Wedded to the razor-wrought drawings of Ronald Searle, this is an astoundingly entertaining book and what every liberal should make the piano teacher use on the kids: a melodic match for EC horror comics. Lehrer’s music and performances are readily available: go avail yourself of them online – or via your favoured news platform or source.

Moreover, I can’t resist ending with a famous quote. Just remember, please, this is not a malicious man, just a keenly observant Wit who claimed he’d stopped doing satire because “Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger made political satire obsolete”…
© 1981, 1999 Tom Lehrer. Illustrations © 1981 Ronald Searle.

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The Fosdyke Saga volume 1


By Bill Tidy (Wolfe Publishing)
ISBN: 72340499-2/978-0-72340-499-6 (Landscape PB)

The world became a far less smart and infinitely grimmer place over the last weeks, due to the loss of three cartooning giants many of you have probably never heard of.

As so little of their superb output is readily accessible to digital-age readers, I’m celebrating their amazing achievements and acknowledging my personal debt to them here with items that can still be easily sourced and the heartfelt advice that if you like to laugh and have a surreal bent, these are comedy craftsmen you need to know.

Today, let’s plunge full-on into a lost world of sheerly startling shoddy grandeur…

William Edward “Bill” Tidy (MBE) was born on the 9th of October 1933 and died on March 11th 2023. For most of those 89 years he charmed people and made them laugh. Happily, many of his books are available digitally, although incomprehensibly not his sublimely daft (and that’s “Daffft” as in daffodil not “Darhhhhhhhhhhft” as in Dalek or Darling) 14 volume “magnificent octopus” The Fosdyke Saga.

But first, a few words about amusing folk…

Nothing is universally funny, but other people’s idiosyncrasies come pretty close. Comedy is cruel and can be mean-spirited at its core: it all depends on who’s saying what and how. Bill Tidy’s Fosdyke Saga is a grand exemplar: combining a smart, painfully self-aware surreal blend of parody, insular localised legend and working-class aspiration with sheer surrealism.

It is therefore utterly inexplicable to the young or the “Johnny Foreigner” of our Empire Days. In this case that also includes people of other utterly alien cultures – like Americans or Millennials – but also probably incorporates anyone British from further south than bucolic Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire, or Buckinghamshire’s austere Aston Clinton and hoity-toity Tring.

Indeed, rumour has it that until recently, travellers using the Grand Union Canal – grizzled, gruff and grubby bargees hauling coal and rubbing liniment down to the sunlit uplands whilst posh snobs pleasure-boating as disaster tourists trekked a little way into the grim north – had to have their passports checked and stamped at the Apsley/Kings Langley buffer quay…

Seriously though, once upon a time British humour was fiercely and proudly local, regional and factional: cherishing warring accents and nurturing civic rivalries, ancient prejudices (still got plenty of them, though, Ta Very Much!!) and generational grudges. Midlands comedians weren’t funny in Glasgow and Manchester mirth-makers stayed the heck out of Liverpool. But then, after the war – the second one – we began homogenising aspects of life.

In the world of laughter, everything now had a manic, off-kilter skew. Random madcappery abounded where once only genteel wit grazed. The Goon Show and its bastard offspring Do Not Adjust Your Set and Monty Python’s Flying Circus challenged the rational senses whilst racism, sexism, jingoism, wife/mother-in-law jokes, illicit sex, smut, double entendres, “my doctor said” and sporting jibes could no longer securely address all our giggling needs.

Over in a corner somewhere, the bigger picture, establishment inertia and adamantine class structures were still being poked at by a dying cadre of satirists. Then, suddenly, it were 1971 and cartoonist Bill Tidy had a splendidly wicked idea…

He was born in Tranmere, Cheshire and proudly embraced his Northern working-class heritage in everything he did. Raised and educated in Liverpool, his first published work was a cartoon in his school magazine.

Bill joined the Royal Engineers in 1952 and made his first professional cartoon sale three years later whilst posted in Japan. Demobbed and back in Blighty, Tidy joined a Liverpool art agency, creating small ads and doing illustrations for various magazines, and sold his cartoons wherever he could.

Regular clients soon included The Daily Mirror and Daily Sketch so he moved down to London. Time passed and he met other freelancers and in 1966 co-founded a workers club – The British Cartoonists Association. A true wit and natural raconteur, he was mesmerising to listen to and even more so if you were lucky enough to chat with him over a pint…

Although a master of done-in-one single image gags – such as the immortal “Is There Any news of the Iceberg?” (look it up – both the cartoon itself and the illustrated autobiography it now fronts), Tidy inevitably told big stories. He cherished strong narratives powering the engines of his work, and his tales were delivered in a loose flowing, hyper-energetic style perfectly carrying the machine-gun rapidity of his ideas and whacky wordplay.

In April 1967 he created The Cloggies – an Everyday Saga in the Life of Clog Dancing Folk – which ran in Private Eye until 1981 and thereafter The Listener until 1986. He had a few comic residencies: weird/evil science spoof Grimbledon Down (1970-1994 in New Scientist), Dr. Whittle (1970-2001 in General Practitioner) and – from 1974 – imbibers strip Kegbusters in the Campaign for Real Ale’s periodical What’s Brewing? Other regular venues included Classic FM Magazine, The Oldie, The Mail on Sunday, The Yorkshire Post and Punch. When that last venerable humour institution (1841-2002) went bust, Tidy unsuccessfully tried to buy it and keep it going…

Tidy also authored 20 books and illustrated 70 more. If you’re interested, my favourites are The Bedside Book of Final Words and Disgraceful Archaeology: or Things You Shouldn’t Know About the History of Mankind…

From cartooning and dedicated charity work with the Lords Taverners, he latterly drifted into radio and TV presentation, appearing on or hosting shows such as I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, Draw Me, Countdown, Watercolour Challenge, Blankety Blank and Countryfile. There will never be another like him.

The best way to remember him is through his work: most notably the multi-volume Fosdyke Saga as gathered in collections from the 1970s and 1980s (but not so much the 2016 compilation).

Perhaps a little context is appropriate. In 1906, author John Galsworthy began in The Man of Property a sequence of novels detailing the lives of an English upper-middle class “new money” family. Spanning half a century (1886-1936) and augmented by In Chancery and To Let, the generational tale was formally repackaged as The Forsyte Saga in 1922. From then onwards, the societal epic has been adapted regularly as movies, immense radio plays and – in 1967 – a groundbreaking BBC television serial. Galsworthy wrote two more trilogies of novels plus spin-off “interludes” – like Indian Summer of a Forsyte and Awakening – cumulatively known as the Forsyte Chronicles. The effort won him 1932’s Nobel Prize for Literature.

Generally, it all showed how even posh folk don’t get to be secure or content and remains a powerful literary presence. The saga was revived in 1994 in a new novel by Suleika Dawson.

The British truly love their television and the BBC especially have produced numerous game changing dramas – everything from the Quatermass stories to I, Claudius. However, their 26-part Forsyte Saga adaptation utterly captivated viewers in a whole new way, so in regard to what’s we’re reviewing here, a little further clarification is required.

The Galsworthy adaptation had originally run from January 7th to July 1st 1967, in BBC 1’s prestigious prime Saturday slot. It was augmented by repeat showings three days later on BBC 2, and the entire series was re-screened on Sundays from September 8th 1968 with the final episode in 1969 seen by 18 million viewers. Overseas sales were staggering (it was the first BBC product sold to the Soviet Union!) and worldwide viewing figures topped in excess of 160 million. All this in the era before home recordings were available. If you missed an episode of anything, all you could was endure other people’s smug gloating…

The TV sensation inspired much imitation, such as ITV’s Upstairs Downstairs, which ran on Sundays from October 10th 1971 to December 21st 1975… just as Bill Tidy’s delirious spoof was hitting its baggy-trousered stride…

I mention this simply because Upstairs Downstairs also highlighted disparities, similarities and interactions of upper-class toffs and working people in a weekly accessible form, but explored the same Edwardian and Georgian eras as Tidy’s wickedly whacky wonders. It ensured the cartoon’s strong historical underpinnings were familiar to the hoi-polloi Daily Mirror readership who might have slept through school, but avidly paid attention to the goggle box…

Just like its inspiration, The Fosdyke Saga is no stranger to media adaptations: spawning a TV series, a play co-written by Alan Plater, two radio series and latterday sequels…

Describing itself as “a classic tale of Struggle, Power, Personalities and Tripe” the story follows Josiah Fosdyke and his family, who in 1900 emigrate from Lancashire mining town Griddlesbury to cosmopolitan Manchester. The move follows another near-death experience “down pit” as the aspiration scab labourer crosses picket lines and nearly ends up another casualty of “King Coal”…

Resolved that this is no way to get ahead, Jos, wife Rebecca, daughter Victoria and sons Tom, Albert and newborn Tim eschew aid from Becky’s wealthy brother and head for Manchester – “where streets are studded wi’ meat pies!”…

A chance meeting with old Ben Ditchley – the Lancashire Tripe King – sets them on the path to prosperity. As Jos repeatedly impresses the self-made millionaire with his cunning and ruthless work ethic, Ditchley’s dissolute son Roger dishonours and debauches Vicky and ultimately is disinherited in Fosdyke’s favour. The end result is by-blow Sylvia Fosdyke, Victoria’s radicalisation and eternal involvement with the paramilitary wing of the Women’s Suffrage Movement and Roger’s lifelong vendetta to crush the family who cost him his inheritance…

The Fosdyke Saga ran from March 1971 to February 1985 and was purportedly personally killed by unctuous, sleazily gentrifying corporate bandit Robert Maxwell after he acquired Mirror Group Newspapers in 1984. This volume is a severely edited compilation of the first few years of the sublime bizarre strip, packed with gags about fierce powerful women (many with full beards and steel toecap boots), privation, music halls, and new inventions. It’s populated by rogues, scoundrels, wastrels and gobsmacked bystanders, and stuffed with shocking foodstuffs like pigs trotters, cowheels, tripe and assorted offal, pigs ears and pickled cabbage, Bavarian Death’s Head Infantry Sausage, Sauerkraut und Schweinwurst and Tinned Tripe for the Troops, all of which act as milestones tracing Fosdyke fortunes in war and peace…

After inheriting old Ben’s business, Jos imaginatively expands and diversifies, but family troubles and Roger’s machinations constantly confound his plans for repast supremacy. Sub-plots reference contemporary turning points like the Titanic’s launch, the Salvation Army movement, suffragettes and the King’s horse, poverty, depression and the day-by day-absurdist drama of the Great War at home, at the Front and everywhere in between…

We see how Tom converts from staunch Conscientious Objector to trench infantryman/POW (with Jos naturally seeking to corner the white feather trade), and Albert’s astounding duel of wills and imagination with Red Baron Von Richthoven and sordid French air ace Marcel Waive, as well as Tom’s thriving prison camp restaurant trade.

The tripeworks is sabotaged and bombed by zeppelins and Jos is accused of being the Salford Ripper, before being blackmailed by Roger for colluding with the enemy, but always the Fosdykes soldier on…

High points for young Ditchley include sending aviator Albert on countless suicide missions, fomenting the Manchester Tripe Wars, seducing a quasi-mystical Tripe Inspector, and hiring the murderous O’Malley Sisters to crush Jos’ trade. When Ditchley’s scheme is quashed by Vicky’s suffragette comrades, the cad enlists “Legendary Lancashire Lothario” T. Edgar Shufflebottom to seduce them in job lots, before being foiled by a simple twist of fate…

When straightforward murder fails too, Roger blackmails “Russian Nightingale” Nadine Buzom into compromising Jos just as little Tim ships out as a cabin boy and is lost at sea…

With the war ended, attacks on the factory resume, Albert is lost in an air race that lands him and Albion’s adored aviatrix the Hon. Cynthia Spofforth at the mercy of a lusty and frustrated Arab sheik and Tom heads west to America’s ease Prohibition woes with Fosdyke’s latest innovation. Sadly, Ditchley is already there, getting rich in Chicago with whisky-soaked offal in his illicit Tripe-Easy…

As Tom joins Elliot Ness and the Untouchables, the volume ends with Jos’s hunger to expand his markets landing him in big trouble: held captive by a Soviet Commissar who just wanted a million tons of free tripe for her starving people… until the elder Fosdyke’s devastatingly manly demeanour turns her Red head…

A forgotten treat for us oldsters and a potential new delight for smart youngsters, Bill Tidy’s surreal tour de force is a delicious treat just waiting to be rediscovered. Over to you…
© Daily Mirror Newspapers Limited 1972.

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Totally Mad – 60 Years of Humor, Satire, Stupidity and Stupidity


By “The Usual Gang of Idiots” & edited by John Ficarra (Time Home Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-61893-030-9 (HB)

The world has become a measurably less smart and infinitely less funny place over the last month or so, due to the loss of three cartooning giants many of you have probably never heard of.

As it’s unforgivably crass to bundle them all up together – especially because so little of their incredible output is readily accessible to modern readers – I’m celebrating their amazing achievements and acknowledging my personal debt to them over the next few days with items that can still be easily sourced and the heartfelt advice that if you like to laugh and have a surreal bent, these are comedy craftsmen you need to know.

We’re kicking off with the unsung god of cunningly contrived chortles…

Eldest of 4 sons, Abraham Jaffee was born in Savannah, Georgia on March 13th 1921. A successfully transplanted New Yorker, he died in the Big Apple on April 10th 2023, after three years of retirement. For 74 years – 65 of them as an invaluable and unmissable regular contributor to Mad Magazine – he had been paid to make people laugh and think…

Jaffee garnered many awards, inspired millions – including Steven Colbert, John Stewart and generations of other satirists like Gary Larson, Matt Groening and Ted Rall – and he holds the Guinness World Record for longest career as a comics artist. The writer/artist officially retired in 2020 aged 99, and between April 1964 and April 2013 appeared in all but one issue of Mad. And that’s only consecutively – he also joined earlier than you think and carried on after he quit.

Those facts barely scrape the surface of an incredible career…

Jaffee’s early life was troubled: a succession of brief stays in Savannah, Far Rockaway, Queens and Zarasai, Lithuania, resulted from his mother arbitrarily and repeatedly returning to the Old Country with her sons. Eventually he and they at last escaped domestic turmoil to settle in New York.

For escape, he read comic strips (primarily those by Harold Foster, Milton Caniff, Noel Sickles, Otto Soglow, Alex Raymond and Rube Goldberg) and devised ingenious little contraptions from rubbish and junk – a habit that served him well during his later Mad days on the long running Crazy Inventions feature…

During the 1930s, he studied at the NYC High School of Music and Art. That institution also tutored his troubled brother/lifelong assistant Harry Jaffee and future co-workers Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, John Severin and Al Feldstein…

Abraham was a brilliantly innovative writer and gifted, multi-disciplined artist who officially started work in late 1942: acting as an illustrator for Timely’s Joker Comics. Soon he was an editor too, all whilst creating features such as Super Rabbit and Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal – originally two singles who became a knockout double act.

In truth, Jaffee had begun selling comedy a year earlier: working for a “Studio Shop” and inventing spoof hero Inferior Man, who debuted in Quality Comics’ Military Comics #7 (cover-dated February 1942 and on sale from December 10th 1941). When his own call-up time came, Jaffee’s war service involved working at the Pentagon as a military draughtsman. He found his first wife there and used the Service’s name-change facility to become Allan “Al” Jaffee…

Returned to civvy street in 1946, he hooked up with Stan Lee again at Timely/Atlas, and became editor of the hugely popular teen division headlined by Patsy Walker Comics.

Al was apparently tireless, freelancing all over even whilst in his ascendancy at Mad. He first worked there in 1955, on the second issue after conversion from colour comic book to monochrome magazine). His school pal Kurtzman was editor then and quit three months later in a fractious dispute with owner Bill Gaines. Al went with him and worked on Kurtzman’s retaliatory rival satire magazines Trump and Humbug. Only when the later closed in 1958 did Jaffee head back to Mad to formally become one of “The Usual Gang of Idiots”.

Between 1957-1963, he wrote and drew 2200 episodes of internationally syndicated strip Tall Tales for the New York Herald Tribune, before ghosting Frank Bolle’s soap opera melodrama Debbie Deere from 1966-1969 and Jason between 1971-1974. From 1984 Jaffee produced kids strip The Shpy for The Moshiac Times. He was an illustrator for Boy’s Life for 25 years and a stalwart of World’s Best Science Fiction (1977) and Ghoulish Book of Weird Records (1979).

Between 1963-1964, Al co-ghosted Kurtzman & Elder’s legendary adult satire Little Annie Fanny for Playboy: a tenure that surely inspired his most memorable Mad creation – the “Fold-In”. Hugh Hefner’s men’s magazine was infamous for its nude “fold-outs”, revealing even more pulchritudinous flesh than other skin mags, so what could be more potent and fitting than a graphic creation that exposed an uncomfortable truth by covering up an innocuous image?

Jaffee’s first fold-in appeared in Mad #86 (April 1964) and became one its most popular and immortal features. Other Jaffee landmarks include Vietnam-war era strip Hawks and Doves, Don’t You Hate…, Scenes We’d Like to See, Mad Inventions, Crazy Gadgets and Fake Ads, assorted covers, movie and TV parodies and utterly irresistible Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions. Many of these have been seen in countless Mad Paperback collections released since the mid-Sixties…

I’ll hopefully get around to his Tall Tales strip collection soon, or maybe some of his Mad paperbacks or even 4-volume HB Boxed set The Mad Fold-In Collection: 1964-2010, but don’t wait for me: buy them if you see them…

For now, however, here’s a great big compendium jam-packed with Jaffe goodness showing him amongst his kind and playing in his natural environment… the world’s greatest humourists…

 

Totally Mad – 60 Years of Humor, Satire, Stupidity and Stupidity

EC Comics began in 1944 when comicbook pioneer Max Gaines sold the superhero properties of his All-American Comics company to half-sister National/DC, retaining only Picture Stories from the Bible. His plan was to produce a line of Educational Comics with schools and church groups as the major target market.

Gaines augmented this core title with Picture Stories from American History, Picture Stories from Science and Picture Stories from World History, but the so-worthy notion was already struggling when he died in a boating accident in 1947. With disaster looming, son William was dragged into the family business and with much support and encouragement from unsung hero Sol Cohen – who held the company together until the initially unwilling Bill Gaines abandoned his dreams of a career in chemistry – transformed the ailing enterprise into Entertaining Comics…

After a few tentative false starts and abortive experiments, Gaines and his multi-talented associate Al Feldstein settled into a bold, fresh publishing strategy, utilising the most gifted illustrators in the field to tell a “New Trend” of stories aimed at an older and more discerning readership. From 1950 to 1954 EC was the most innovative, influential publisher in America, dominating the genres of crime, horror, war and science fiction, spawning a host of cash-in imitations and, under the auspices of writer, artist and editor Harvey Kurtzman, the inventor of an entirely new beast: the satirical comic book…

Mad also inspired dozens of knock-offs and even a controversial sister publication, Panic.

Kurtzman was a cartoon genius and probably the most important cartoonist of the last half of the 20th century. His early triumphs in the fledgling field of comicbooks (Mad, Two-Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat) would be enough for most creators to lean back on, but Kurtzman was a force in newspaper strips (See Flash Gordon Complete Daily Strips 1951-1953) and a restless innovator, a commentator and social explorer who kept on looking at folk and their doings: a man with exacting standards who just couldn’t stop creating.

By inventing a whole new format he gave the USA Populist Satire: transforming highly distasteful, disgraceful, highly successful colour comic Mad into a mainstream monochrome magazine, safely distancing the outrageously comedic publication from fall-out caused by the 1950s socio-political witch-hunt that eventually killed all EC’s other titles, and bringing the now more socially acceptable publication to a far wider, broader audience. Kurtzman wasn’t around for long…

He then pursued his unique brand of thoughtfully outré comedy and social satire in Trump, Humbug and Help!, all the while conceiving challenging and powerfully effective humour strips like Little Annie Fannie (in Playboy), The Jungle Book, Nutz, Goodman Beaver, and Betsy and her Buddies. Seemingly tireless, he inspired a new generation through his creations on Sesame Street and by teaching cartooning at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He died far too early in 1993.

… And he was just one of the astonishingly gifted creators who made Mad an international franchise, a staggeringly influential cultural phenomenon and a global brand in the years that followed…

Totally Mad -and we’re long overdue for an updated edition, y’all – reviews the rise and rise of the magazine, with tantalising snippets of gags and features accompanied by big excerpts and illustrations from many brilliant creators to have contributed to its success.

Be Warned: this is not a “best of” collection – it would be impossible to choose, and there are hundreds of reprint compilations and websites for that. This is a joyous celebration of past glories and a compulsive taster for further exploration, albeit with few complete stories…

At 256 pages, this luxuriously huge (312x235mm) compendium is regrettably only on sale in physical form but does include historical articles, amazingly funny art and cleverly barbed observations, all divided by decade and augmented by many full-colour, iconic cover reproductions. The minimal text references favourite features such as Spy vs Spy (both by originator Antonio Prohias and successor Peter Kuper), Dave Berg’s The Lighter Side of…, Mad Mini-Posters, Film and TV parodies including ‘Gunsmoked’, ‘My Fair Ad-Man’, ‘East Side Story’, ‘Flawrence of Arabia’, ‘Star Blecch’, ‘Jaw’d’, ‘Saturday Night Feeble’, ‘LA Lewd’, ‘Dorky Dancing’, and assorted mega-movie franchises ad infinitum as well as sterling examples of Jaffee’s uniquely barbed ‘Mad Fold-Ins, ‘Scenes We’d Like to See’ and ‘Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions’.

Whatever your period, and whichever is your most dearly revered, it’s probably sampled and trammelled here…

Following an eccentric and loving Introduction from Stephen Colbert and Eric Drysdale -ably illustrated by Sam Viviano – veteran contributor Frank Jacobs provides a photo-packed profile of Mad’s unique father-figure by asking – and answering – ‘Who Was Bill Gaines?’ after which ‘Mad in the 1950s’ recalls the Kurtzman era with brightly-hued extracts from giant ape spoof ‘Ping Pong!’, ‘Superduperman!’, ‘Lone Stranger Rides Again!’, ‘Sound Effects!’, ‘Melvin of the Apes!’, ‘Mad Reader!’, ‘Bringing Back Father!’ and ‘Starchie’. These highlight the talents of Will Elder, Wallace Wood, Jack Davis, John Severin, Basil Wolverton & Bernie Krigstein before moving into the magazine phase via spoof advertising and popular pastimes such as ‘Readers Disgust’, ‘What Makes a Glass of Beer Taste so Good?’ and more.

Arch-caricaturist Mort Drucker began a stellar run at this time, as did mildly maniacal Don Martin, whilst comics legends Joe Orlando, Wood, Davis and George Woodbridge reached astonishing peaks of artistic excellence as seen via a parade of stunning covers and end-pages with additional contributions by Kurtzman, Kelly Freas, Norman Mingo and others…

In ‘Who is Alfred E. Neuman?’, Jacobs recounts the twisted, turbulent origins of the iconic gap-toothed-idiot company mascot, after which ‘Mad in the 1960s’ highlights the rise of Television and the counter-culture before ‘Was Mad Ever Sued?’ sees Jacobs testify to some truly daft and troubling moments in the mag’s life…

Many of the very best bits of ‘Mad in the 1970s’ is followed by the conclusion of ‘Who Was Bill Gaines?’ prior to Davis, Dick DeBartolo & Jacobs’ iconic ‘Raiders of the Lost Art skit heralding ‘Mad in the 1980s’ wherein patriotism, movie blockbusters, Hip-hop and computer games seized the public’s collective imagination…

‘What Were the Mad Trips?’ explores a grand tradition of company holidays, after which ‘Mad in the 1990s’ covers Rap music, the rise of celeb culture and the magazine’s frenzied forays into a rapidly changing world. Then comes ‘Mad After Gaines’, detailing internal adjustments necessitated by the death of its hands-on, larger-than life publisher in 1992. ‘Mad in the 2000s’ details the brand’s shift into the digital world, with exemplars from creators old and new spoofing medicines, newspaper strips, elections, religion, dead phrases, celebrity causes, cell-phones, man-boobs, war in Iraq, obesity, satirical competitor ‘The Bunion’, contemporary Racism and media sensations Donald Trump (Who He?): all accompanied by parodies including ‘Bored of the Rings’, ‘Sluts in the City’, ‘Spider-Sham’, and more…

Editor John Ficarra offers his Afterword and this magnificent tome also includes a poster pack of a dozen of the very best covers from Mad’s epochal run.

Most of you can happily stop now, but if you’re into shopping lists, here’s a small portion of other contributing “idiots” making Mad a national institution… like graft, perjury, prison and pimples:

Sergio Aragonés is represented throughout with Mad Marginals and many masterful cartoons and pastiches, whilst guest writers include Vic Cohen, Tom Koch, Larry Siegel, Nick Meglin, Earl Doud, Lou Silverstone, Jacobs, DeBartolo, Arnie Kogen, Chevy Chase, Max Brandel, Stan Hart, Marylyn Ippolito, Billy Doherty, Barry Liebman, Desmond Devlin, Russ Cooper, Joe Raiola, Charlie Kadau, Robert Bramble, Michael Gallagher, and Butch D’Ambrosio.

All-rounders both scripting and scribbling include Berg, Aragonés, Martin, Kuper, John Caldwell, Drew Friedman, Paul Peter Porges, Don “Duck” Edwing, Tom Cheney, Feggo, Christopher Baldwin and the incomparable Mister Jaffee.

There are also star artists making a rare splash amongst these venerable veterans. These include Frank Frazetta, John Cullen Murphy, Angelo Torres, Bill Wray, Mark Frederickson, Bob Clarke, Gary Belkin, Paul Coker Jr., Mutz, Jack Rickard, Irving Schild, Gerry Gersten, Rick Tulka, Harry North, Richard Williams, Tom Bunk, Steve Brodner, Mark Stutzman, Tom Richmond, and Gary Hallgren… Heck! – the list is nigh endless.

Wrist-wreckingly huge, eye-poppingly great and mind-bogglingly fun, this is one to treasure and pore through… and probably fight over…
© 2012 E.C. Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Gomer Goof volume 6: Gomer: Gofer, Loafer


By Franquin, with Michel, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-535-6 (PB Album/Digital edition)

Like so much in Franco-Belgian comics, it all started with Le Journal de Spirou, which debuted on April 2nd 1938, with its iconic lead strip created by François Robert Velter AKA Rob-Vel. In 1943, publisher Dupuis purchased all rights to the comic and its titular star, and comic-strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (Jijé) took the helm for the redheaded kid’s further exploits as the magazine gradually became a cornerstone of European culture.

In 1946, Jijé’s assistant André Franquin was handed creative control. Slowly moving from gag vignettes to extended adventure serials, Franquin introduced a broad and engaging supporting cast of regulars as well as phenomenally popular wonder beast The Marsupilami. Debuting in 1952 (in Spirou et les héritiers) that critter eventually became a spin-off star of screen, plush toys, console games and albums in his own right.

Franquin crafted increasingly fantastic and absorbing Spirou sagas until a final resignation in 1969. Over two decades he had enlarged the feature’s scope and horizons, until it became purely his own. In almost every episode, fans met startling and memorable new characters like comrade/rival Fantasio, crackpot inventor Count of Champignac and even supervillains. Spirou & Fantasio evolved into globetrotting journalists visiting exotic places, exposing crimes, exploring the incredible and clashing with bizarre and exotic arch-enemies.

Throughout it all, Fantasio remained a full-fledged – albeit fictional – Le Journal de Spirou reporter who had to pop into the office between cases. Sadly, lurking there was an accident-prone, big-headed junior in charge of minor jobs and dogs-bodying. He was Gaston Lagaffe – Franquin’s other immortal creation…

There’s a long tradition of comics personalising fictitiously mysterious creatives and the arcane processes they indulge in, whether it’s the Marvel Bullpen or DC Thomson’s lugubrious Editor and underlings at The Beano and Dandy – it’s a truly international practise.

Occasional asides on text pages featured well-meaning foul-up/office gofer “Gaston” (who debuted in #985, February 28th 1957). He grew to be one of the most popular and perennial components of the comic, whether as a guest in Spirou’s cases or his own short illustrated strips and faux editorial reports on the editorial pages.

In terms of actual schtick and delivery, older readers will recognise favourite beats and timeless elements of well-intentioned self-delusion as seen in Benny Hill and Jacques Tati and recognise recurring situations from Some Mothers Do Have ’Em or Mr Bean. It’s slapstick, paralysing puns, infernal ingenuity and invention, pomposity lampooned and no good deed going noticed, rewarded or unpunished…

As previously stated, Gaston/Gomer draws a regular pay check (let’s not dignify or mis-categorise what he does as “work”) from Spirou’s editorial offices: reporting to journalist Fantasio, or complicating the lives of office manager Léon Prunelle and other, more diligent staffers, all whilst effectively ignoring those minor jobs he’s paid to handle. These include page paste-up, posting (initially fragile) packages and editing readers’ letters… and that’s the official reason why fans’ requests and suggestions are never answered…

Gomer is lazy, peckish, opinionated, ever-ravenous, impetuous, underfed, forgetful and eternally hungry, with his most manic moments all stemming from cutting work corners and stashing or illicitly consuming contraband food in the office…

This leads to constant clashes with police officer Longsnoot and fireman Captain Morwater, yet our office oaf remains eternally easy-going and incorrigible. Only three questions are really important here: why everyone keeps giving him one last chance, what can gentle, lovelorn Miss Jeanne possible see in the self-opinionated idiot and will angry capitalist/ever-outraged financier De Mesmaeker ever get his perennial, pestiferous contracts signed?

From a reformatted edition of earlier strips that were remastered in 1987, Gaston – Le repos du Gaffeur becomes Cinebook’s sixth translated compilation: again focussing on non-stop all-Franquin comics gags in single-page bursts.

Here our well-meaning, overly helpful know-it-all/office hindrance invents more stuff that makes life unnecessarily dangerous (such as super-sticky plastic floor wax, “handchairs”, hyper-elastic paddleball bats, an anti-burglary system or his own Marsupilami onesie) and proves that even when he actually does his job – like tidying the office or bringing papers – the gods and his own ill-fortune ensure the result is chaos and calamity…

There are further catastrophic developments in the evolution of his Instrument of Musical Destruction – the truly terrifying Brontosaurophone/Goofophone. In celebration of the magazine’s 600th issue it is electrified and “improved” by modern amplifiers and features ponderously in the boy’s new band – with shocking consequences. Other G-phone inclusions vex the military and pauperise anyone with windows, watches or glasses…

We experience first-hand the appalling fallout of Gomer’s new hobby, as enraged and often wounded beachgoers are caught in the blast radius of his kite-flying, leading to the return of opposite number Jules-from-Smith’s-across-the-street.

This office junior is a like-minded soul and born accomplice, always eager to slope off for a chat: a confirmed devotee of Gomer’s methods of passing the time whilst at work. He even collaborates on any retaliations Gomer inflicts on officer Longsnoot, but here regrets becoming a guinea pig for his inventive pal’s anti-moth deterrent. Moreover, at least one bug spray delivery system finds greater purpose as a means of aerial transportation…

As summer progresses towards Christmas, there are many holiday moments, but Gomer spends most of them tinkering with his infernal congestion-powered pride-&-joy. Many strips feature his doomed love affair with and manic efforts to modify and mollify the accursed motorised atrocity he calls his car. Sadly, the decrepit, dilapidated Fiat 509 is more in need of a merciful execution than his many desperately well-meant engineering interventions to counter its lethal road pollution and failure to function…

The remainder of the volume’s picture strip pandemonium encapsulates the imbecile’s numerous clashes with a bowling ball that clearly despises him; office culinary near-misses (dubbed by lucky survivor Lebrac as “horror-cuisine”) ranging from arson-in-the-raw to political assassination attempts, as well as dabbling with radio-controlled model planes, attempts at getting rid of minor illnesses, ailments and new office innovations.

The lad does try a few moonlighting jobs, but security guard in a China shop, musical backing vocalist and personal plumber are never going to work out, whilst attempts to save and replace the Christmas turkey with crepes are equally ambitious-but-doomed…

In the recurrent saga of office and interpersonal politics, the Goof finds himself the target of increasingly arcane and ingenious pranks, and naturally retaliates in good spirit. Of course, it all gets out of hand when Lebrac introduces termites to the Goofophone and they reject it in favour of tastier fare …like bricks and mortar.

Benighted industrialist De Mesmaeker learns a hard lesson when he foolishly invests in a goof gadget and Gomer increasingly shows his softer side by adopting new pets to keep his goldfish company. Of course, wild mice, a surly blacked-headed gull and the feral cat from behind the building wouldn’t be most people’s first choices, but as they settle in the office staff quickly learn to steer clear of them…

Far better enjoyed than précised or described, these strips allowed Franquin and occasional co-scenarists Michel, Yvan Delporte & Jidéhem (AKA Jean De Mesmaeker – just one of many in-joke analogues who populate the strip) to flex their whimsical muscles and even subversively sneak in some satirical support for their beliefs in pacifism, environmentalism and animal rights. These gags remain supreme examples of all-ages comedy: wholesome, barbed, daft and incrementally funnier with every re-reading.

Why haven’t you Goofed off yet?
© Dupuis, Dargaud-Lombard s.a. 2009 by Franquin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2020 Cinebook Ltd.

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Bizarro Comics! – The Deluxe Edition


By a big bunch of very funny people AKA Jessica Abel, Todd Alcott, Rick Altergott, Peter Bagge, Kyle Baker, Gregory Benton, Charles Berberian, Aaron Bergeron, Nick Bertozzi, Ariel Bordeaux, Rand & David Borden, Ivan Brunetti, Eddie Campbell, Jim Campbell, Dave Cooper, Leela Corman, Mark Crilley, Jef Czekaj, Farel Dalrymple, Brian David-Marshall, Paul Dini, Paul Di Filippo, D’Israeli, Evan Dorkin, Mike Doughty, Eric Drysdale, Ben Dunn, Philippe Dupuy, Sarah Dyer, Phil Elliott, Hunt Emerson, Maggie Estep, Bob Fingerman, Abe Foreu, Ellen Forney, Liz Glass, Paul Grist, Matt Groening, Tom Hart, Dean Haglund, Tomer & Asaf Hanuka, Dean Haspiel, Danny Hellman, Sam Henderson, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Matt Hollingsworth, Paul Hornschemeier, Dylan Horrocks, Nathan Kane, John Kerschbaum, Chip Kidd, Derek Kirk Kim, James Kochalka, John Krewson, Michael Kupperbaum, Tim Lane, Roger Langridge, Carol Lay, Jason Little, Lee Loughridge, Matt Madden, Tom McCraw, Pat McEown, Andy Merrill, Scott Morse, Peter Murrietta, Tony Millionaire, Jason Paulos, Harvey Pekar, Will Pfeifer, Paul Pope, Patton Oswalt, Brian Ralph, Dave Roman, Johnny Ryan, Alvin Schwartz, Marie Severin, R. Sikoryak, Don Simpson, Jeff Smith, Jay Stephens, Rick Taylor, Raina Telgermeier, Craig Thompson, Jill Thompson, M. Wartella, Andi Watson, Steven Weissman, Mo Willems, Kurt Wolfgang, Bill Wray, Jason Yungbluth, & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-1012-9 (HB/Digital)

Here am big, dull shopping list of top-ranking cartoonists from beginning of twenty-oneth century. Bunch of names not very entertaining, but what they draw and write am, especially when taking loving pot-shots at beloved DC Comics icons and moments…

I’ll happily go on record and say that practically all of the fun and true creativity in comics has come out of the ‘alternative’ or non-mainstream writers and artists these days. To prove my point I’d list a bunch of things, and very near the top of that list would be this book -actually two older, smaller books sensibly nailed together in 2021.

In its near 90 years of comics publishing, DC Comics has produced many of the most memorable, most engaging and most peculiar comic characters and concepts you could imagine. For all that, they also managed to stir echoes and forge a deep and abiding affection in the hearts and minds of some of the most creative people on the planet.

As I’ve already said, the material in this titanic tome of titters (sorry, apparently I’m channelling my inner Frankie Howerd today) first emerged in a brace of cartoon anthology volumes: Bizarro Comics and Bizarro World in 2001 and 2005, disrespectively.

They delivered fast and furious skits, sketches and gags by profoundly engaged – often deeply disturbed – fans turned pros. There was a heavy dependence on small-press and self-published creators all used to having complete control of their work…

It was all meant to make you laugh and feel longing for simpler whackier times, and the Introduction by Kyle Baker should be all you need to steer you through what follows.

If I were you, I’d stop here and just buy the book, but just in case you’re a stubborn holdout, I’m going to add to my editor and proof-reader’s many woes by listing exactly who is in the thing, what they did and even add a few critical comments, just to earn my keep.

Then I’ll make my poor staff read the book too, just to cheer them up after all my word salad…

Following Matt Groening’s Bizarro Comics cover (which you get here for free) lurks a hilarious framing sequence, as a monstrous unbeatable creature attempts to conquer Mr Mxyzptlk’s 5th dimensional home. Chris Duffy & Stephen DeStefano – aided by legendary cartoonist and colourist Marie Severin – tell a weird and wonderful tale of outlandish failed Superman clone Bizarro that begins in ‘Bizarre Wars Part One’ and diverges into a wonderland of individual battles against cosmic games player A.

As the appointed defender of the entire endangered dimension, Bizarro resorts to a heretofore unsuspected ultimate power: producing comic strips featuring unfamiliar adventures of DC’s most recognizable heroes that come to life …ish.

Cue a veritable Who’s Who of the cool and wonderful of modern comics creating a plethora of wacky, dreamy, funny, wistful and just plain un-put-downable strips that would delight any kid who read comics but then accidentally grew up.

In rapid rollercoaster fashion and Fighting the Goof Fight for reality come ‘Bizarro-X-Ray One’ by Gregory Benton, Bizarro-X-Ray Two’ by John Kerschbaum and Bizarro-X-Ray Three’ by Gilbert Hernandez – all coloured by Tom McCraw. Sam Henderson & Bob Fingerman reconvene the ‘Super-Pets’ whilst Duffy & Craig Thompson expose Green Lantern in ‘The Afterthoughts’. Chip Kidd & Tony Millionaire revisit early days of ‘The Bat-Man’ in stylish monochrome before Henderson, Dean Haspiel, Bill Oakley & Matt Madden recount the silly charm-packed saga of ‘Captain Marvel and the Sham Shazam’…

Baker & Elizabeth Glass test the mettle of ‘Letitia Lerner, Superman’s Babysitter!’ and Aquaman endures double trouble as Evan Dorkin, Brian David-Marshall, Bill Wray & Matt Hollingsworth draw attention to ‘Silence of the Fishes’ before Andy Merrill & Jason Little douse the Sea King in ‘Porcine Panic!’

Fingerman, Pat McEown, Oakley & Hollingsworth inflict ‘The Tinnocchio Syndrome’ on The Metal Men before Andi Watson, Mark Crilley & Lee Loughridge orchestrate ‘Wonder Girl vs Wonder Tot’ and James Kochalka, Dylan Horrocks & Abe Foreau pit Hawkman against ‘The Egg-Napper!’, even as ‘The GL Corps: The Few, The Proud’ glean more story glory courtesy due to Will Pfeifer, Jill Thompson, Clem Robins, Rick Taylor & Digital Chameleon.

Horrocks, Jessica Abel & Madden then see Supergirl and Mary Marvel have a moment in ‘The Clubhouse of Solitude’ whilst Nick Bertozzi & Tom Hart tune in to ‘Kamandi: The Last Band on Earth!’ before Jeff Smith, Paul Pope & Loughridge depict Bizarro demanding ‘Help! Superman!’ as Jef Czekaj & Brian Ralph confront Aquaman with ‘The Man Who Cried Fish!’ in advance of Wonder Woman pondering ‘One-Piece, Two-Piece, Red-Piece, Blue-Piece’ on a shopping trip organised by Fingerman & Dave Cooper.

Ellen Forney, Ariel Bordeaux & Madden probe a young girl’s ‘Bats Out of Heck’ and Eddie Campbell, Hunt Emerson, Rick Taylor & Digital Chameleon went full-on Batmaniacal in ‘Who Erased the Eraser’ before Crilley & Watson negotiate a shocking ‘First Contact’ with The Atom, after which The Batman invites us ‘Inside the Batcave’ with Pope & Jay Stephens as tour guides.

Dorkin, D’Israeli & Digital Chameleon expose ‘Solomon Grundy: Bored on a Monday’ before Alvin Schwartz, Roger Langridge & Loughridge debut ‘The Most Bizarre Bizarro of All’ and Ivan Brunetti, Dorkin & Sarah Dyer reveal ‘That’s Really Super, Superman!’ to The World’s Finest Team whilst Dorkin, Carol Lay, Tom McCraw & Digital Chameleon invite everyone to ‘The J’onn J’onzz Celebrity Roast’ before Bordeaux, Forney & Madden share ‘Wonder Woman’s Day Off’…

The initial volume and that framing Mxyzptlk yarn are coming to a close as Dorkin, Wray, John Costanza & Hollingsworth craft ‘Unknown Challenges of the Challengers of the Unknown’ and Dorkin, Steven Weissman & Dyer go to bat for all the forgotten creature sidekicks in ‘Without You, I’m Nothing’ before Duffy, DeStefano, Phil Felix, Severin & Digital C reunite for the climactic conclusion of ‘Bizarre Wars – Part Two’…

If you haven’t heard of anybody on that overwhelming list then get Googling. Then get this book and get enjoying.

No? that’s okay… There’s More…

The turn of this century was a particularly fraught time – aren’t they always? – and one of the best ways to combat the impending travail was to make people laugh. A follow up to the remarkably successful Bizarro Comics again invited a coterie of alternative comics creators (and guests!) to make sport of various hallowed DC icons. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and all the lesser gods were dragooned into more tales humorous, dolorous and just plain peculiar, drawn in an eye-wrenching range of styles. Many of those involved continued to display a disturbing knowledge of, if not respect for, the DC continuity of the 1960s whilst others seem to centre on the TV and Movie interpretations, but the fondness for times gone by was readily apparent throughout.

Behind a Bizarro World cover from Jaime Hernandez, Rian Hughes & Coco Shinomiya is unsurprisingly story ‘Bizarro World’ by Duffy, Scott Morse, Rob Leigh & Dave Stewart as a couple of unwary kids fall into a universe stuffed to overflowing with everyday super people…

Answers come from a crusty reporter with extensive files and notes from many stringers…

Kidd, Millionaire & Jim Campbell review ‘Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder’ and Merrill, Langridge & Madden get seasonally silly in ‘Jing Kal-El’, whilst Mo Willems, Forney & Madden reveal ‘The Wonder of it All’ for the youthful feminist before Foreu, Kochalka & Madden have shapeshifter Chameleon Boy ask ‘Where’s Proty?’

Nostalgia and childish wish-fulfilment masterfully merge in pants-wettingly funny ‘Batman Smells’ by American National Treasures Patton Oswalt, Fingerman & Stewart, whilst Duffy & Craig Thompson channel ‘The Spectre’ and Jasons Yungbluth & Paulos confirm with Hal Jordan that ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’ even as Aaron Bergeron & Kerschbaum revel in ‘The Power of Positive Batman’…

Mike Doughty & Danny Hellman’s Fish-out-of-water ‘Aquaman’ segues into another true Stand Out story: ‘Batman: Upgrade 5.0’ by Dean Haglund & Peter Murrieta, illustrated by Don Simpson, before comics bad boy John Ryan joins Dave Cooper to explore being ‘Super-Dumped’ via the sad story of Clark and Diana…

Elsewhere, Dorkin & M. Wartella retroactively introduce Batman to ‘Monkey, the Monkey Wonder’ whilst comics verité legends Harvey Pekar & Dean Haspiel declare ‘Bizarro Shmizarro’ just as Dylan Horrocks, Farel Dalrymple & Paul Hornschemeier proposition ‘Dear Superman’ on behalf of a youngster with a secret…

‘The Red Bee Returns’ courtesy of Peter Bagge, Gilbert Hernandez & Madden, after which Eric Drysdale, Tim Lane, Oakley & Madden organise ‘The Break’ for the JLA. Dorkin & Watson then find The Legion of Super-Heroes ‘Out with the In Crowd’ just as Todd Alcott, Michael Kupperman & Ken Lopez detail the ‘Ultimate Crisis of the Justice League’…

Tomer & Asaf Hanuka join Lopez & Campbell to define ‘Batman’ whilst Paul Dini & Carol Lay have the very last word on ‘Krypto the Superdog’ and Ariel Bordeaux & Rick Altergott unwisely launch ‘Legion.com’ before mercurial Harvey Dent enjoys a ‘Dinner for Two’ thanks to Dorkin & Iva Brunetti…

Maggie Estep & Horrocks take on ‘Supergirl’ and her horsey history before Leela Corman & Tom Hart steer a ‘Power Trip’ for Batgirl, Wonder Woman and the Girl of Steel, whilst Eddie Campbell, Paul Grist & Phil Elliott schedule ‘A Day in the Life in the Flash’ before hilariously reprising their manic madness via ‘The Batman Operetta’…

Bizarro returns in an activity page from his ‘Daily Htrae’ – by Dorkin & R. Sikoryak – and the GL Corps turn Japanese in ‘Lantern Sentai’ from Rand & David Borden of Studio Kaiju, manifested by multi-talented Benn Dunn. Philippe Dupuy & Charles Berberian then offer a continental touch in ‘Batman of Paris’, Kurt Wolfgang & Brian Ralph have fun with ‘The Demon’ and John Krewson, Dorkin & Dyer expose ‘Kamandi, The Laziest Boy on Earth’.

Despite all the craziness, the best has wisely been left until last and end begins with The Justice League of America regretting ‘Take Your Kids to Work Day’ (by Dave Roman & Raina Telgemeier) whilst ultimate manservant Alfred Pennyworth conducts his master’s business as a “Personal Shopper” thanks to Kyle Baker & Elizabeth Glass, before we finish with Deadman who learns with horror – from Paul Di Filippo & Derek Kirk Kim – that ‘Good Girls Go to Heaven. Bad Girls Go Everywhere’…

What do you get if you give a whole bunch of vets and alternative comics creators carte blanche and a broad brief? You should get this.
© 2001, 2005, 2021 DC Comics. All rights reserved.

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The Best of Sugar Jones


By Pat Mills, Rafael Busóm Clùa & various (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-770-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

At first glance British comics prior to the advent of 2000 AD fall into fairly ironclad categories. Back then, you had cosily fantastic preschool whimsy, a large selection of adapted TV and media properties, action, adventure, war and comedy strands, with the occasional dash of mild supernatural horror. Closer scrutiny would confirm a persistent subversive undertone, especially in such antihero series as Dennis the Menace and The Spider, or simply quirky fare like Marney the Fox or His Sporting Lordship.

British comics have always been able to tell big stories in satisfyingly moreish small instalments. Coupled with superior creators and the anthological nature of our publications, this has ensured hundreds of memorable characters and series have seared themselves into the little boy’s psyche inside most adult males. I gather that’s equally true of the stuff girls were reading at the time…

Like most of my comics contemporaries I harbour a secret shame. Growing up, I was well aware of the weeklies produced for girls, but would never admit to willingly reading them. My loss: I now know that they were packed with amazing strips by astounding artists and writers, many of whom were (sadly anonymous) favourites who also drafted sagas of stalwart soldiers, marauding monsters, evil aliens or weird wonders …because all British superheroes were bizarrely off-kilter.

I now know that – in terms of quality and respect for the readership’s intelligence, experience and development – girls’ comics were far more in tune with the sensibilities of their target audience, and I wish I’d paid more broad-minded attention back then. Thus, I’m delighted to share here another peek at superb and oddly sophisticated comics from a publication I never went near, even though it was just as groundbreaking as its later stablemates Action or 2000AD – albeit not as nostalgically revered or referenced nowadays…

Girl’s Juvenile Periodicals always addressed modern social ills and issues, and also embraced those things women needed to be indoctrinated in: Fashion, pop trends, pets, toys, style-consumerism, make-up and more (even cooking, general knowledge and sewing!).

Pink came out of IPC’s girl’s publications division in 1973 and was quite successful before finally merging with Mates in 1980, just as television and teen fashion mags finally supplanted the mix of comics stories and trend journalism foe female audiences. Those girls’ grandkids are now lost in social media and the world turns ever on…

During its mercurial run of 377 issues, Pink offered targeted “news” features, games, puzzles, competitions and a wealth of strip mystery, adventure and particularly romantic fare in serials like Don’t Let him Fool You, Faye!, The Haunting of Jilly Johnson, The Island of Stones, Shadows of Fear, Memories of Mike, Rich Girl, Poor Girl, The Sea People and Remember, Rosanna, Remember!

As years rolled by, it was clear that the editors were gradually shifting the demographic, targeting older teens by developing a saucy, cheeky persona in keeping with a readership getting ready for adult life. One of those editors was Pat Mills – arguably the greatest creative force in British comics.

He began his career at DC Thomson in Dundee, scripting and editing for teen romance title Romeo and others before going freelance. At this time Mills wrote girls comics and humour strips, and moved south to London to join IPC and do the same for them. After editing and writing for Tammy, Pink and Sandy – and starting a small evolution in content and style on Jinty – he moved on and killed posh-comics-for-middle-class-boys (and girls) stone-dead.

After creating Battle Picture Weekly (1975, with John Wagner & Gerry Finley-Day), as well as Action (1976) and 2000AD (1977), Mills launched Misty and Starlord (both 1978). Along the way, he also figured large in junior horror comic Chiller…

As a writer he’s responsible for Ro-Busters, ABC Warriors, Nemesis the Warlock, Slaine, Button Man, Metalzoic, Marshal Law and Requiem Vampire Knight among so many, many others. That especially includes Battle’s extraordinary Charley’s War (with brilliant Joe Colquhoun): the best war strip of all time and one of the top five explorations of the First World War in any artistic medium.

Unable to hide the passions that drive him, Mill’s most controversial work is probably Third World War which he created for bravely experimental comics magazine Crisis. This fiercely socially conscious strip blended his trademark bleak, black humour, violence and anti-authoritarianism with a furious assault on Capitalism, Imperialism and Globalisation. It contained elements of myth, mysticism, religion and neo-paganism – also key elements in his mature work. You should also see his run on Doctor Who Weekly and Serial Killer – his final collaboration with Kev O’Neill…

Mills has always kept a judgemental eye on the now and recognised the power of humour and satire. In 1974 that led to his debuting a new kind of star for Pink. In 1973, the much-maligned and deliberately misunderstood (we call it “gaslighting” these days) “Sexual Revolution” hit a media high.

It was an epoch of “cheesecake” and “girly” strips: a genre stuffy old-fashioned Britain used to excel at and happily venerate. Saucy postcards, Carry-On films, ingenuously innocent smut and a passion for double entendre had for decades obscured and obfuscated genuine concerns like institutionalised gender pay-gaps, unwarranted interest in and control of female reproductive rights and sexual behaviour. There were double standards for men and women’s work and recreational behaviours, and that incomprehensible Mystery of Mysteries: just why men are utterly certain that anything they see automatically fancies them back and is therefore fair game for creepy jollity and unwanted attentions excused as “just having bit of fun” or “paying a compliment”…

After years of feminist agitation and balanced by entrenched institutional male mockery, countless publications and TV shows suddenly boiled at a wave of unexpected militancy. Everywhere women were demanding equal rights, equal pay and fair treatment …and isn’t it simply marvellous that they’ve got all those things now?..

Contraception was becoming more readily – if not quite universally – available and apparently everywhere bras were burning. This meant men actually coming to believe that sex might be less expensive and perhaps even repercussion/responsibility free. It was a reactionary Male Chauvinist Pig’s Dream, and unrepentant, old-school stand-up comedians had a field day. The only changes I can recall were more skin on TV, a wave of female-starring comics strips like Amanda, Scarth, Danielle, Axa and Wicked Wanda (in which each of the titular heroes lost her clothes on a daily basis) and the rise of “Page 3” newspaper nudies…

I’m not sure how many editors of daily and Sunday papers were supporters of the Women’s Liberation movement, or whether they simply found a great excuse to turn the industry’s long tradition of beautifully rendered naked birds on their pages into something at least nominally hip, political and contemporary.

I do know that an awful lot of new features appeared, with aggressive, strident (if not actually liberated), forceful women who nevertheless still had hunky take-charge boyfriends in tow…

In comics, Pat Mills created a rather greedy and generally nasty piece of work who – if not actually a villain – was certainly utterly selfish, shallow and self-absorbed. We Brits love rogues and scoundrels and will forgive them for almost anything – just look at the result of any election in the last 30 years

Thus Sugar Jones expertly capitalised on our national tradition of forgiving appallingly egregious actions and public weakness for inept wickedness: standing legs akimbo at the vanguard of a growing compulsion to slavishly follow what we now call “celebrity culture”. She too spent a lot of time in her underwear or less…

The series was illustrated by Spanish master of style Rafael Busóm Clùa who was a fixture of girls comics from the era. As well as The Island of Stones in Pink, he also limned The Three Wishes serial in Tammy, Two of a Kind in Misty and Warm Love in Oh Boy!

The Best of Sugar Jones features material seen in Pink from 16th October 1974 to 21st May 1977: episodic snippets that are all loving and lavish riffs on a single theme: cruel self-delusion.

Sugar is a beautiful, successful sexy thing. She has her popular TV variety show and knows everyone. She sings, dances, does chat and interviews, opens fetes and sponsors charities. The public all love her… or at least the heavily made-up, cynically manufactured image of the sweet 20-something “fabulous super sex symbol” she unceasingly pretends to be.

Sugar is actually in her 40s: an amalgamated masterpiece of the skills of make-up artists, and art of clothiers, camera technicians and trainers. The enable her to frantically cling on to the illusion of vivacious attainability. She wants everyone to want her, and only her dutiful but increasingly disenchanted and abused assistant Susie Ford knows the plain truth.

Every week Sugar goes through formulaic sitcom motions of another scheme to build the star’s ego, reputation, bank account or bedpost notch count, with Susie forced to assist or secretly sabotage the shameless plot.

It sounds pretty tedious and repetitive, but Mills’ deft scripts and manic plotting, so sublimely rendered by good girl artist Busóm Clùa, make these assorted cheesecake treats absolutely captivating to see. High on glamour, the strips would have made so many pubescent boys rethink their views on girls comics, but thankfully, nobody let us in on the secret…

Here you’ll see the never-long-defeated fame-&-acclaim chaser adopt a hunky jungle man; scupper the careers of up-&-coming rivals; seduce impresarios and showbiz bigwigs; fail to launch a respectable movie/pop/theatrical/dance career; lose many prospective rich husbands or simply sow utter chaos with new and unwise, unsanctioned publicity stunts.

Her plans always fail, but somehow the self-absorbed seductress never really pays for her misdeeds, except in secret shame and frustration. Always, she bounces back with a new notion…

Sugar’s not averse to using her assets to make an illicit buck either, but her financial skulduggery always leaves her poorer in pocket. Even if the oblivious masses can’t get enough of her, whenever she tries to exploit charities, or breaking political crises, Susie’s there to see no one is harmed or suffers hardship…

A wickedly barbed social fantasy and satire on fame, fortune and pride, Sugar Jones presents a truly unique, likably unlovable antihero who’s one step beyond normal role model fare – or even standard raunchy cheesecake classification: someone who also transcends the rather shocking core assumption of that era, which seems to be “women are worthless once they turn 21”…

Exploring fashion, branding, celebrity culture, and the toxic legacy of glamour – on male terms and in a playing field controlled by men – from a time when that “laddish” culture of “banter” and “cheekiness” was even seeping into girls comics and magazines, Sugar Jones affords a totally different view of a woman on top: one any student of sexual politics and legacy of the culture cannot afford to miss…
© 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977 & 2020 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Corpse Talk: Groundbreaking Women


By Adam & Lisa Murphy (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-910989-60-9(Digest PB)

The educational power of comic strips has been long understood and acknowledged: if you can make the material memorably enjoyable, there is nothing that can’t be better taught with pictures. The obverse is also true: comics can make any topic or subject come alive… or at least – as in this delightful almanac of inspiration – outrageously, informatively undead…

The comical conceit at play in Corpse Talk is that your scribbling, cartooning host Adam Murphy (ably abetted off-camera by Lisa Murphy) digs up famous personages from the past: all serially exhumed for a chatty, cheeky This Was Your Life talk-show interview that – in Reithian terms – simultaneously “elucidates, educates and entertains”. It also often grosses one out, which is no bad thing for either a kids’ comic or a learning experience…

Another splendid release culled from the annals of British modern wonder The Phoenix (courtesy of those fine saviours of weekly comics at David Fickling Books) this collection -regrettably still unavailable in digital editions – quizzes a selection of famous, infamous and “why-aren’t-they-household names?” women from history, in what would probably be their own – post-mortem – words…

Be warned, as you absorb these hysterical histories, you may say to yourself again and again “but… that’s not FAIR…” over and over again.

Catching up in order of date of demise, our fact-loving host opens these candid cartoon conferences by digging the dirt with ‘Hatshepsut: Pharaoh 1507-1458 BCE’, tracing her reign and achievements …and why her name and face were literally erased from history for millennia.

As ever, each balmy biography is accompanied by a side feature examining some crucial aspect of their lives, such as here where ‘Temple Complex’ diligently details the controversial pharaoh’s astounding and colossal “Holy of Holies”: the Djeser-Djeseru Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut.

‘Hypatia of Alexandria: Mathematician & Philosopher 360s-415’ sketches out the incredible accomplishments, appalling treatment and tragic fate of a brilliant teacher and number-cruncher, supplemented here by a smart lesson in the almost-mystical concept of ‘The Golden Ratio’.

Throughout all civilisations, (mostly male) historians have painted powerful women with extremely unsavoury reputations and nasty natures. Just this once, however, the facts seem to confirm that ‘Irene of Athens: Empress of Byzantium 752-803’ was every bit as bad as detractors described her. Her atrocious acts against friends, foes and her own son Constantine are offset in the attendant fact-feature ‘Spin Class’, revealing how Irene employed religious industrial espionage to break China’s millennial monopoly on silk production, and comes complete with a detailed breakdown of how the Byzantine silk trade worked…

Every comic reader or fantasy fan is familiar with the idea of women warriors, but a real-life prototype for them all was the great-granddaughter of Genghis Khan. ‘Khutulun: Wrestling Princess 1260-1300s’ refused to be married off unless a suitor could defeat her in the Mongolian grappling martial art Bökh. So effective a fighter, archer and strategist was she, that the Khan appointed her his Chief Military Advisor and even nominated her his successor on his deathbed – an honour and can of worms she wisely sidestepped to become a power behind the throne.

Her incredible account is backed-up by an in-depth peek into the ferocious wrestling style she dominated in ‘Mongolian Moves’, after which ‘Joan of Arc: Saint 1412-1431’ explains how it all went wrong for her in asks-&-answers feature ‘How Do You Become a Saint?’

On more traditional and familiar ground, ‘Elizabeth I: Queen of England 1533-1603’ recounts her glorious reign and explains the how and why of her power dressing signature appearance in ‘A Killer Look!’ whilst transplanted near-contemporary ‘Pocahontas: Powhattan Princess 1596-1617’ shares the true story of her life before ‘Sad Ending, Continued…’ discloses the ultimate fate of her tribe at the hands of English Settlers.

Another astonishing character you’ve presumably never heard of is ‘Julie D’Aubigny: Swashbuckler 1670-1707’. She was a hell-raising social misfit who scandalised and terrorised the hidebound French Aristocracy. Daughter of a fencing teacher, she fought duels, broke laws, travelled wherever she wanted to, enjoyed many lovers – male and female – and even sang with the Paris Opera (now that’s a movie biopic I want to see!). What else could she offer as a sidebar but a lesson on duelling for beginners in ‘Question of Honour’?

‘Granny Nanny: Resistance Fighter 1686-1755’ started life as an Ashanti Princess, taken to Jamaica as a slave. However, once there she organised the ragtag runaways known as Maroons into an army of liberation. The workings of her rainforest citadel Nanny Town (now Moore Town) are explored in ‘Fortresses of Freedom’ after which a more sedate battle against oppression is undertaken with the interrogation of ‘Jane Austen: Novelist 1775-1817’, complete with cartoon precis of her subversive masterpiece ‘Pride & Prejudice (The Corpse Talk Version)’…

‘Ching Shih: Pirate Queen 1775-1844’ tells of another woman who beat all the odds but has since faded from male memory: a young girl kidnapped by China Seas pirates who rose to become their leader. Ravaging the Imperial coast, the corsair created an unshakable pirate code that benefitted the poor, outsmarted the Chinese Emperor and ultimately negotiated a pardon for herself and all her men to live happily ever after!

That salty sea saga is accompanied by the lowdown and technical specs on ‘Punks in Junks’ and followed by another bad girl with a good reputation.

‘Princess Caraboo: Con-Artist 1791-1864’ was never the Malayan royal refugee British High Society was captivated by, but rather a Devonshire serving maid who made the most of outrageous fortune via her quick wits. Her story is backed up by a delightful opportunity to forge your own faux identity with ‘Caraboo’s Character Creation Course!’…

Far more potent and worthy exemplars, ‘Harriet Tubman: Abolitionist 1822-1913’ ferried more than 300 of her fellow slaves from Southern oppression to freedom in northern American states and what we now call Canada: supplemented here by a detailed breakdown of ‘The Underground Railway’ before emancipation martyr ‘Emily Wilding Davison: Suffragette 1872-1913’ shares her brief, troubled life and struggle to win women the right to vote and participatory roles in society. The history is backed up by an absolutely unmissable graphic synopsis of the long struggle in ‘A Brief History of Women’s Rights’…

Someone who made every use of those hard-won concessions was ‘Nellie Bly: Journalist 1864-1922’, whose sensational journalistic feats and headline-grabbing stunts made her as newsworthy as her many, many scoops. One of the most impressive was beating Jules Verne’s fictional miracle of modernity by voyaging for ‘72 Days Around the World’ – as seen in the gripping sidebar spread – whereas the career of ‘Amy Johnston: Aviator 1903-1941’ was cut tragically short by bad luck and male intractability. Her flying triumphs are celebrated through a fascinating tutorial on her preferred sky-chariot. The ‘De Havilland Gypsy Moth’.

The short, tragic life of ‘Anne Frank: Journalist 1864-1922’ follows, accompanied by a detailed breakdown of the secret hideout and necessary tactics employed to conceal Anne, her family and friends in ‘The Secret Annex’.

Closing on an emotional high note, the rags to riches/riches to rags to riches account of dancer, comedian, freedom fighter and social activist ‘Josephine Baker: Entertainer 1906-1975’ details the double rollercoaster life of a true star and ends this book on a big finish with her teaching the secrets of how to ‘Dance the Charleston’.

Clever, moving, irreverently funny and formidably factual throughout, Corpse Talk: Ground-Breaking Women cleverly yet unflinchingly handles history’s more tendentious moments: personalising the great, the grim and the good in ways certain to be unforgettable. It is also a fabulously fun read no parent or kid could possibly resist.

Don’t take my word for it though, just ask any reader, spiritualist or dearly departed go-getter…
Text and illustrations © Adam & Lisa Murphy 2018. All rights reserved.