Category: Graphic Novels

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Marvel Visionaries: John Romita, Sr.


By John Romita Sr., with Stan Lee, Roger Stern & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-1806-4 (TPB/Digital edition)

We lost one of last giants of the industry this week when John Romita died on Monday. He was 93 and his work is inextricably woven into the Marvel canon: permeating and supporting the entire company’s output from top to tail and from the Sixties to right now… and even before the beginning of the House of Ideas actually began. 

One of the industry’s most polished stylists and a true cornerstone of the Marvel Comics phenomenon, the elder John Romita began his comics career in the late 1940s (ghosting for other artists) before striking out under his own colours. eventually illustrating horror and other anthology tales for Stan Lee at Timely/Atlas.

John Victor Romita was born and bred in Brooklyn, entering the world on January 24th 1930. From Brooklyn Junior High School he moved to the famed Manhattan School of Industrial Art, graduating in 1947. After spending six months creating a medical exhibit for Manhattan General Hospital he moved into comics, in 1949, with work for Famous Funnies. A “day job” working with Forbes Lithograph was abandoned when a friend found him inking and ghosting assignments, until he was drafted in 1951. Showing his portfolio to a US army art director, after boot camp at Fort Dix New Jersey, Romita was promoted to corporal, stationed on Governors Island in New York Bay doing recruitment posters and allowed to live off-base… in Brooklyn. During that period he started doing the rounds and struck up a freelancing acquaintance with Stan Lee at Atlas Comics…

He illustrated horror, science fiction, war stories, westerns, Waku, Prince of the Bantu (in Jungle Tales), a fine run of cowboy adventures starring The Western Kid and 1954’s abortive revival of Captain America, and more, before an industry implosion derailed his – and many other – budding careers. Romita eventually found himself trapped in DC’s romance comics division – a job he hated – before making the reluctant jump again to the resurgent House of Ideas in 1965. As well as steering the career of the wallcrawler and so many other Marvel stars, his greatest influence was felt when he became Art Director in 197. He had a definitive hand in creating or shaping many key characters, such as Mary Jane Watson, Peggy Carter, The Kingpin, The Punisher, Luke Cage, Wolverine, Satana ad infinitum.

This celebratory volume from 2019 re-presents Amazing Spider-Man #39, 40, 42, 50, 108, 109, 365; Captain America & The Falcon #138; Daredevil #16-17; Fantastic Four #105-106; Untold Tales Of Spider-Man #-1; Vampire Tales #2; and material from Strange Tales #4; Menace #6, #11; Young Men #24, 26; Western Kid 12; Tales To Astonish #77; Tales Of Suspense #77 spanning cover-dates December 1951 to July 1997. It opens with a loving Introduction from John Romita Jr., sharing the golden days and anecdotal insights on the “family business”. Not only the second son but also his mother Virginia Romita were key Marvel employees: she was the highly efficient and utterly adored company Traffic Manager for decades.

A chronological cavalcade of wonders begins with official first Marvel masterwork ‘It!’. Possibly scripted by Lee and taken from Strange Tales #4 (December 1951), we share a moment of sheer terror as an alien presence tales over the newest member of a typical suburban family…

Next is verifiable Lee & Romita shocker ‘Flying Saucer!’ (Menace #6, August 1953) and a sneaky invasion attack preceding the first Romita superhero saga as seen in Young Men #24, December 1953.

In the mid-1950s Atlas tried to revive their Timely-era “Big Three” (and super-hero comics in general) on the back of a putative Sub-Mariner television series intended to cash in on the success of The Adventures of Superman show. This led to some impressively creative comics, but no appreciable results or rival in costumed dramas.

Eschewing here the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner segments – and with additional art from Mort Lawrence – ‘Captain America: Back From the Dead’ features a communist Red Skull attacking the UN, with school teacher Steve Rogers and top student Bucky coming out of retirement to tackle the crisis. The Star-Spangled Avenger gets another bite of the cherry in ‘Captain America Turns Traitor’ (Young Men Comics #26, March 1954) with guest shots for Subby and the Torch as the Sentinel of Liberty apparently goes from True Blue to a deadly shade of Red…

Latterly reimagined as one of the modern Agents of Atlas, ‘I, the Robot!’ began as a deadly threat to humanity in Menace #11, and is followed here by a yarn from Romita’s first residency as the wandering hero Tex Dawson and his dauntless dog Lightning and super steed Whirlwind survive sudden stampedes and tackle vile horse butchering killers in a tale from his own eponymous title (Western Kid #12, October 1956)…

Atlas collapsed soon after, due to market conditions when a disastrous distribution decision resulted in their output being reduced to 16 titles per month, distributed by arch rival National Comics/DC. Under those harsh conditions the Marvel revolution started small but soon snowballed, drawing Romita back from ad work and drawing romances for DC.

Romita’s return began with inking and a few short pencilling jobs for the little powerhouse publisher’s split books. Tales To Astonish #77 revealed ‘Bruce Banner is the Hulk!’ (March 1966, written by Lee, laid out by Jack Kirby and finished by the returning prodigal) with the gamma goliath trapped in the future and battling the Asgardian Executioner, whilst in his home era, Rick Jones is pressured into revealing his awful secret…

The Captain America story for May 1966’s Tales of Suspense # 77 added inker Frank Giacoia/Frank Ray to the creative mix for ‘If a Hostage Should Die!’: recounting a moment from the hero’s wartime exploits with a woman he loved and lost. These days we know her as Captain Peggy Carter…

After a brief stint in his preferred role as inker, Romita took over illustrating Daredevil with #12, following a stunning run by Wally Wood & Bob Powell. Initially Kirby provided page layouts to help Romita assimilate the style and pacing of Marvel tales, but soon “Jazzy Johnny” was in full control of his pages. He drew DD until #19, by which time he had been handed the assignment of a lifetime… The Amazing Spider-Man!

A backdoor pilot for that jump came in Daredevil #16-17 (May and June 1996) with ‘Enter… Spider-Man’ wherein criminal mastermind Masked Marauder manipulates the amazing arachnid into attacking the Man Without Fear. The schemer had big plans, the first of which was having DD and the wallcrawler kill each other, but after Spidey almost exposes Matt Murdock’s secret in ‘None are so Blind!’ they mend fences and go after the real foe…

By 1966 Stan Lee and Steve Ditko could no longer work together on their greatest creation. After increasingly fraught months Ditko resigned, leaving Marvel’s second best-selling title without an illustrator. Nervous new guy Romita was handed the ball and told to run. ‘How Green Was My Goblin!’ and ‘Spidey Saves the Day!’ – “Featuring the End of the Green Goblin!” – as it so dubiously proclaimed) was the climactic battle fans had been clamouring for since the viridian villain’s debut. It didn’t disappoint – and still doesn’t today.

Reprinted from issues #39 and 40 (August & September 1966 and inked by old DC colleague Mike Esposito as “Mickey Demeo”), this remains one of the best Spider-Man yarns ever, and heralded a run of classic sagas from the Lee/Romita team that actually saw sales rise, even after the departure of the seemingly irreplaceable Ditko. If you need further convincing, it sees the villain learn Peter Parker’s identity, capture and torture our hero and share his own origins before falling in the first of many final clashes…

Amazing Spider-Man #42 heralded ‘The Birth of a Super-Hero!’, with John Jameson (Jonah’s astronaut son) mutated by space-spores and going on a Manhattan rampage. It’s a solid, entertaining yarn that is only really remembered for the last panel of the final page.

Mary Jane Watson had been a running gag in the series for years: a prospective blind-date arranged by Aunt May who Peter had avoided – and Ditko skilfully never depicted – for the duration of time that our hero had been involved with Betty Brant, Liz Allen, and latterly Gwen Stacy.

Now, in that last frame the gobsmacked young man finally realises that for years he’s been ducking the “hottest chick in New York”! I’m sure we all know how MJ has built her place in the Marvel Universe…

Issue #50 (July 1967) featured the debut of one of Marvel’s greatest villains in the first chapter of a 3-part yarn that saw the first stirrings of romance between Parker and Gwen, the death of a cast regular, and re-established the webslinger’s war on cheap thugs and common criminals. Here it all begins with a crisis of conscience that compels him to quit in ‘Spider-Man No More!’

Romita was clearly considered a safe pair of hands and “go-to-guy” by Stan Lee. When Jack Kirby left to create his incredible Fourth World for DC, Romita was handed the company’s other flagship title – in the middle of an on-going storyline. Here we focus on Fantastic Four #105-106 (December 1970 and January 1971 and both inked with angular, brittle brilliance by John Verpoorten). and ‘The Monster’s Secret’.

Scripted by Lee, they comprise a low-key yet extremely effective suspense thriller played against a resuming subplot of Johnny Storm’s failing romance. When his Inhuman girlfriend Crystal is taken ill – preparatory to writing her out of the series – Reed Richards’ diligent examination reveals a potential method of curing the misshapen Thing of his rocky curse.

Tragically, as Ben Grimm is prepped for the radical process in ‘The Monster in the Streets!’ a mysterious energy-beast begins tearing up Manhattan. By the time ‘The Monster’s Secret!’ is exposed, the team strongman is almost dead and Crystal is gone… seemingly forever.

Romita briefly and regularly returned to the Star-Spangled Avenger in the 1970s and June 1971’s Captain America & The Falcon #138 reveals how ‘It Happens in Harlem!’ sporting a full art job by Romita, Lee’s tale sees new hero The Falcon foolishly try to prove himself by capturing the outlaw Spider-Man, only to be himself kidnapped by gang lord Stoneface. Cue a spectacular three-way team up and just desserts all round…

The Amazing Spider-Man was never far from Romita’s drawing board and in #108 the secret of high school bully Flash Thompson – freshly returned from the ongoing war in Indochina – finally unfolds ‘Vengeance from Vietnam!’ With Romita inking his own pencils, it details how our troubled war hero was connected to an American war atrocity that left a peaceful village devastated and a benign wise man comatose and near-dead. The events consequently set a vengeful cult upon the saddened soldier’s guilt-ridden heels, which all the Arachnid’s best efforts could not deflect or deter.

The campaign of terror is only concluded in #109 as ‘Enter: Dr. Strange!’ sees the Master of the Mystic Arts divine the truth and set things right… but only after an extraordinary amount of unnecessary violence…

Marvel was expanding and experimenting as always and a horror boom saw them move into mature reader monochrome magazines. In Vampire Tales #2 (October 1973), Roy Thomas scripted a short vignette of a woman apparently imperilled who turned out to be anything but. Delivered in moody line and wash, Devil’s Daughter Satana began her predations via Romita before joining the Macabre Marvel Universe. Her debut is supplanted by a house ad…

Commemorating the hero’s 30th anniversary, Amazing Spider-Man 365 (August 1992) carried a bunch of extras including sentimental reverie ‘I Remember Gwen’ (Tom DeFalco, Lee & Romita) before we close with a wild ride from Roger Stern, inked by Al Milgrom.

‘There’s a Man Who Leads a Life of Danger’ comes from July 1997’s Untold Tales Of Spider-Man #minus 1: an adventure of Peter Parker’s parents and part of the Flashback publishing event. It pits the married secret agents against deadly Baroness Adelicia von Krupp and guest-stars a pre-Weapon-X Logan/Wolverine in a delightful spy-romp.

Added extras here include Romita’s unused splash page from Young Men Comics #24, character designs for Robbie Robertson, Mary Jane, Captain Stacy and his daughter Gwen, John Jameson, The Prowler, Wolverine and The Punisher; Fan sketches and doodles; an Amazing Spider-Man poster (painted); the covers of Spectacular Spider-Man Magazine #1 & 2 (ditto) plus original proposal art for the Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip. There are also covers for F.O.O.M. #18, Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 (1987), New Avengers #8 and Mighty Marvel Heroes & Villains (with Alex Ross) and a vintage self-portrait.

This is absolutely one of the most cohesive and satisfactory career compilations available and one no fan should miss.
© 2019 MARVEL.

For a slightly different selection, I’d advise also tracking down Marvel Masters: The art of John Romita Sr (ISBN: 978-1-84653-403-4), although that’s not available in digital formats.

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Superman Smashes the Klan


By Gene Luen Yang & Gurihiru (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0421-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

It’s indisputable that the American comic book industry – if it existed at all – would have been an utterly unrecognisable thing without Superman. Siegel & Shuster’s unprecedented invention was rapturously adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation, quite literally giving birth to a genre if not an actual art form.

Spawning an astounding army of imitators within 3 years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of breakneck breathtaking action and cathartic wish-fulfilment epitomising the primal Man of Tomorrow expanded to encompass cops-&-robbers crime-busting, science fiction, fantasy, whimsical comedy, socially reforming dramas – and, once the war in Europe and the East engulfed America – patriotic relevance for a host of gods, champions and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous dashing derring-do.

In comic book terms Superman was master of the world and, whilst transforming the fledgling funnybook industry, the Metropolis Marvel was also inexorably expanding into all areas of entertainment media. Although we all think of Jerry & Joe’s iconic invention as the epitome and acme of kid stuff creation, the truth is that very soon after his debut in Action Comics #1, the Man of Steel became an all-ages fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Popeye, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Mickey Mouse.

We parochial, possessive comics fans too often regard our purest and most powerful icons in purely graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, The Avengers and all their hyperkinetic kin long ago outgrew their 4-colour origins. These days, comics characters don’t really succeed until they’ve been fully mythologized creatures instantly recognisable across all platforms and age ranges… especially by TV, video games and movies…

Far more people have seen or heard an actor as Superman than have ever read his comic tales. The globally syndicated newspaper strips alone reached untold millions, and by the time his 20th anniversary rolled around at the very start of what we know as the Silver Age of Comics, Superman had become an immensely popular, thrice-weekly radio serial milestone with its own spin-off: a landmark novel by radio-show scripter George Lowther.

The audible exploits were translated into 17 astounding animated cartoons by the Fleischer Studios and latterly into live action via two movie serials (Superman 1948 and Atom Man vs Superman 1950) plus a proper movie in 1951 (Superman and the Mole Men).

These paved the way for groundbreaking television series Adventures of Superman which owned the 1950s: running 104 original episodes across six seasons, from September 1952 to April 1958 and for decades after in reruns.

The Man of Steel was a perennial sure-fire success for toy, game, puzzle and apparel manufacturers and had just ended that first smash live-action television presence. In his future were more shows (Superboy, Lois & Clark, Smallville, Superman & Lois), a stage musical, two blockbuster movie franchises and an almost seamless succession of games, bubble gum cards and TV cartoons beginning with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and continuing ever since. Even superdog Krypto got in on the small-screen act, and that’s not including spin-offs for Supergirl and even planet Krypton…

There have always been “other” versions of Superman, but arguably the most important – even more than his epic newspaper strip career – was the radio serial. The daily newspaper strip launched on 16th January 1939, supplemented by a full-colour Sunday page from November 5th and on February 12th 1940, the Mutual Network transmitted the Man of Tomorrow into homes across America. Initially sponsored by Kellog’s Pep and broadcast as 15-minute episodes three times a week (and in some regions 5 days a week), the show grew into half-hour instalments by August 1942 and continued until February 4th 1949. Thereafter it shifted to ABC in an evening slot and thrice weekly afternoons until March 1st 1951: a total of 2,088 episodes and 128 different storylines. There was even an Australian version with Anzac actors: a total of 1040 episodes from 1949 -1954…

The US serial’s scripters and directors (including B. P. Freeman & Jack Johnstone, Robert & Jessica Maxwell, George F. Lowther, Allen Ducovny & Mitchell Grayson) introduced many innovations that became canonical in comics continuity – such as team-ups with Batman & Robin, inventing Jimmy Olsen and Kryptonite and the immortal opening mantra that began “Up in the Sky! It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane!”…

The show fuelled the imaginations of millions through wonder and action, but also embraced the refugee hero’s socially crusading roots. In 1946, inspired by a resurgence of activity by the Ku Klux Klan, the writers used the 118th saga to fight back against intolerance and bigotry with ‘The Clan of the Fiery Cross’. It began on June 10th and ran16 episodes into July, detailing how a Chinese -American family moves to Metropolis and is targeted by hooded racists until the Action Ace steps in and steps up…

How that ancient tale was revived and adapted into a 3-issue miniseries for DC’s Young Adult imprint by award-winning Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese, Boxers and Saints, Avatar: The Last Airbender, New Super-Man) and Japanese women’s illustration collective Gurihiru AKA Chifuyu Sasaki & Naoko Kawano (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sonic, Unbelievable Gwenpool Power Pack, Tails of the Pet Avengers and more) is recounted at the end of this enthralling adaptation.

‘Superman and Me by Gene Luen Yang’ traces the turbulent and often ludicrous history of the Ku Klux Klan; slavery in the US, Jim Crow laws; The Chinese Exclusion Act; the advent and impact of Superman; abuses of the well-intentioned 1944 G.I. Bill and the radio show that uniquely united non-racist Americans whilst effectively setting the Klan back 20 years…

The story itself is charming, inspirational and decidedly hard-hitting in a manner easily accessible to youngsters; beginning with the Metropolis Marvel still learning about his powers. Strong, fast and able to leap tall buildings, Superman knows very little about his origins but still drives himself tirelessly to save the helpless and punish the guilty.

That starts to change after a titanic battle against leftover Nazi terrorist Atom Man. In the course of a brutal clash, our hero is exposed to a strange green crystal empowering his foe: one that which makes him sick for the first time in his life and triggers bizarre hallucinations – weird smells, odd conversations and images of being a monstrous alien…

As Superman’s friend – “negro” Police Inspector William Henderson – carts off the defeated Nazi, across town Lan-Shin Li is also feeling billious. Her family are driving into Metropolis and their new house, but she already misses Chinatown. She also can’t get used to being called “Roberta Lee” now…

Father’s new job as Chief Bacteriologist for Doctors Segret Wilson and William Jennings at the Metropolis Health Department is a huge triumph and advancement, and her easy-going brother Tommy is ecstatic to move into a white neighbourhood, but mother speaks very little English and is always frightened. Roberta just hates change and misses old friends…

Her anxiety remains high even after new neighbour Jimmy Olsen welcomes them and invites the kids to join the local baseball team. It only really fades after seeing Superman running past at superspeed. Something about him nudges Roberta’s brilliant scientific mind…

Sporting paragon Tommy is a big hit at the Unity House community center, but Roberta just feels out of place, especially after starting pitcher Chuck Riggs uses racist slurs and is fired from the team.

The incident escalates when Chuck sounds off to his Uncle Matt, and that unrepentant racist has his friends leave a burning cross on the Lee’s lawn. As Grand Scorpion of the Klan of the Fiery Kross, he strives to keep America free from impurity, and decides it’s time Chuck also started defending the besieged white race…

Scared and already regretful and repentant, Chuck goes along with the adults, but when he tries to firebomb the house, Roberta recognises him despite his hooded robes…

By-passer Bill Henderson and his buddies help extinguish the flames, but the Inspector cannot convince the Lees to file a complaint. The incident does, however, make Roberta determined to stay and fight back…

Clark Kent and Lois Lane soon arrive and start asking questions. Something about little Roberta reminds the clandestine Kryptonian of growing up in Smallville, particularly those times when his hidden abilities made him feel like an outsider… or even a monster.

… And elsewhere, the secrets of Atom Man and the alien green rock are being decoded by mysterious scientists with a nasty agenda: potential tyrants intent on making mischief at the heart of a brave new society. Soon after, events escalate when the Klan kidnap Tommy and Roberta furiously confronts Chuck…

Thus begins a powerful and rewarding adventure detailing not simply the antagonisms of outsiders and ultra-conservatives, and incomers against entrenched privilege, but also how diversity and inclusion benefits everyone on so many levels. It’s also a smart saga of good versus evil, growth, accommodation and acceptance and a parable of how a wise child taught the Man of Steel where he was going wrong and how to use his powers correctly…

An immigrant’s tale about knowing oneself and adapting to change, Superman Smashes the Klan is wise and welcoming and wants you to see the best in everyone everywhere.
© 2020, DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. Essay by Gene Luen Yang © 2019 Humble Comics LLC.

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Popeye Classics volume 9: The Sea Hag’s ‘Magic Flute’ and More!


By Bud Sagendorf, edited and designed by Craig Yoe (Yoe Books/IDW Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-63140-772-7 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68406-092-4

How many cartoon classics can you think of still going after a century? Here’s one…

There are a few fictional personages to enter communal world consciousness – and fewer still from comics – but this grizzled, bluff, uneducated, visually impaired old tar with a speech impediment is possibly the most well-known of that august bunch.

Elzie Crisler Segar was born in Chester, Illinois on 8th December 1894. His father was a general handyman, and the boy’s early life was filled with the solid, dependable blue-collar jobs that typified the formative years of his generation of cartoonists. Segar worked as a decorator, house-painter and also played drums; accompanying vaudeville acts at the local theatre.

When the town got a movie-house, Elzie played silent films, absorbing all the staging, timing and narrative tricks from keen observation of the screen. Those lessons would become his greatest assets as a cartoonist. It was while working as the film projectionist, at age 18, that he decided to become a cartoonist and tell his own stories.

Like so many others in those hard times, he studied art via mail, specifically W.L. Evans’ cartooning correspondence course out of Cleveland, Ohio, before gravitating to Chicago where he was “discovered” by Richard F. Outcault – regarded as the inventor of modern newspaper comic strips with The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown. The celebrated pioneer introduced Segar around at the prestigious Chicago Herald. Still wet behind the ears, the kid’s first strip, Charley Chaplin’s Comedy Capers, debuted on 12th March 1916.

In 1918, Segar married Myrtle Johnson and moved to William Randolph Hearst’s Chicago Evening American to create Looping the Loop, where Managing Editor William Curley foresaw a big future for Segar and promptly packed the newlyweds off to New York: HQ of the mighty King Features Syndicate. Within a year Segar was producing Thimble Theatre, (launching December 19th 1919) in the New York Journal: a smart pastiche of cinema and knock-off of movie-inspired features like Hairbreadth Harry and Midget Movies, with a repertory of stock players acting out comedies, melodramas, comedies, crime-stories, chases and especially comedies for vast daily audiences. It didn’t stay that way for long…

The core cartoon cast included parental pillars Nana & Cole Oyl; their lanky, cranky, highly-strung daughter Olive; diminutive-but-pushy son Castor and the homely ingenue’s plain and (so very) simple occasional boyfriend Horace Hamgravy (latterly, plain Ham Gravy).

Thimble Theatre had already run for a decade when, on January 17th 1929, a brusque, vulgar “sailor man” shambled into the daily ongoing saga of hapless halfwits. Nobody dreamed the giddy heights that stubbornly cantankerous walk-on would reach…

In 1924, Segar created a second daily strip. Surreal domestic comedy The 5:15 featured weedy commuter/aspiring inventor John Sappo and his formidable spouse Myrtle. It endured – in one form or another – as a topper/footer-feature accompanying the main Sunday page throughout Segar’s career, survived his untimely death, and eventually became the trainee-playground of Popeye’s second great humour stylist – Bud Sagendorf.

After Segar’s premature passing in 1938, Doc Winner, Tom Sims, Ralph Stein and Bela Zambouly all took on the strip as the Fleischer Studio’s animated features brought Popeye to the entire world, albeit a slightly variant vision of the old salt of the funny pages. Sadly, none had the eccentric flair and raw inventiveness that had put Thimble Theatre at the forefront of cartoon entertainments. And then, finally, Bud arrived…

Born in 1915, Forrest “Bud” Sagendorf was barely 17 when his sister – who worked in the Santa Monica art store where Segar bought his drawing supplies – introduced the kid to the master cartoonist who became his teacher and employer as well as a father-figure. In 1958, after years on the periphery, Sagendorf finally took over the strip and all the merchandise design, becoming Popeye’s prime originator…

With Sagendorf as main man, his loose, rangy style and breezy scripts brought the strip itself back to the forefront of popularity and made reading it cool and fun all over again. Bud wrote and drew Popeye in every graphic arena for 24 years. When he died in 1994, his successor was controversial “Underground” cartoonist Bobby London.

Bud had been Segar’s assistant and apprentice, and in 1948 became exclusive writer/artist of Popeye’s comic book exploits. That venture launched in February of that year: a regular title published by America’s unassailable king of periodical licensing, Dell Comics.

On his debut, Popeye was a rude, crude brawler: a gambling, cheating, uncivilised ne’er-do-well, but was soon revered as the ultimate working-class hero. Raw and rough-hewn, he was also practical, with an innate, unshakable sense of what’s fair and what’s not: a joker who wanted kids to be themselves – but not necessarily “good”. Above all else he was someone who took no guff from anyone…

Naturally, as his popularity grew, Popeye mellowed somewhat. He was still ready to defend the weak and had absolutely no pretensions or aspirations to rise above his fellows, but the shocking sense of dangerous unpredictability and comedic anarchy he initially provided was sorely missed… except in Sagendorf’s sagas…

Collected here are Popeye #40-44, crafted by irrepressible “Bud” and collectively spanning April-June 1957 to April-June 1958. The stunning, nigh stream-of-consciousness slapstick sagas and nautical nuttiness are preceded by a treasure-stuffed treatise on ‘The Big Guy who Hates Popeye!’, as Fred M. Grandinetti details all you need to know about archetypal “heavy” Bluto. The lecture on the thug of many names is backed up by character and model sheets from animated appearances, comic book covers, and numerous comic excepts. Also emergent are strip precursors and alternate big bullies, original strip art from Sagendorf and London, plus a kind-of guest shot from Jackson Beck – the meaty matelot’s on-screen voice…

Sadly missing the usual ‘Society of Sagendorks’ briefing by inspired aficionado, historian and publisher Craig Yoe, and the ever-tantalising teasers of ephemera and merchandise of ‘Bud Sagendorf Scrapbooks’, we instead plunge straight back into ceaseless sea-savoured voyages of laughter, surreal imagination and explosive thrills with quarterly comic book #40, opening with a monochrome inside front cover gag concerning the sailor’s ward Swee’Pea and his fondness for digging in the dirt, before ‘Thimble Theatre presents Popeye the Sailor in The Mystery of the “Magic Flute!”’ once more pits the mariner marvel against the ghastly and nefarious Sea Hag.

Here she unleashes an army of agents to locate and secure a mystic talisman safeguarded by Popeye. With it, she can rid the world of her great enemy…

With the family house overrun, impetuous elder Poopdeck Pappy unthinkingly hands over the wishing whistle and instantly Popeye is whisked into a pit with lions, thugs and Bluto all lined up to kill him. It doesn’t work out well for any of them…

‘Popeye the Sailor and Eugene the Jeep’ then reintroduces another of Segar’s uniquely wonderful cartoon cryptids. The little marvel had originally debuted on March 20th 1936: a fantastic 4th dimensional beast with incredible powers whom Olive and Wimpy use to get very rich, very quickly. Of course, they quickly lost it all betting on the wrong guy in another of Segar’s classic and hilarious set-piece boxing matches between Popeye and yet another barely-human pugilist…

This time he pops up after Olive and the old salt clash over setting an engagement date, and Wimpey suggests asking the Jeep’s advice. Instantly he materialises, and the question is nervously asked. The response is ambiguous and draws nothing but trouble…

Prose filler ‘Ol’ Blabber Mouth’ tells how a parrot accidentally causes all his friends to be captured by pet trade hunters before we arrive at the ever-changing back-up feature. Sappo – now reduced to gullible foil and hapless landlord to the world’s worst lodger – endured the ethics-free experiments of Professor O.G. Wotasnozzle “The Professor with the Atomic Brain”.

Callously and constantly inflicting the brunt of his genius on the poor schmuck, here the boffin seizes top billing with The Brain of O.G. Wotasnozzle, building a robot replica of his landlord and running rings around the sap in ‘Double Double Who’s Got Trouble’…

The issue ends with an endpaper monochrome gag with Popeye and the precious “infink” disputing bedtimes and a colour back cover jape with them disastrously fishing…

Issue #41 (July-September) opens with ‘Popeye the Sailor in Spinach Soap!’ as the sailor battles Olive’s new beau. He looks just like Bluto, but has one advantage the sailor cannot match …a steady job!

In response, the money-disdaining matelot calls his secret weapon and Wimpey takes charge of Popeye’s savings – a million bucks – all so that he can set up a business to employ the sailor man…

An engaging Micawber-like coward, cad and conman, the insatiably ravenous J. Wellington Wimpy debuted in the newspaper strip on May 3rd 1931 as an unnamed, decidedly partisan referee in one of Popeye’s pugilistic bouts. Scurrilous, aggressively humble and scrupulously polite, the devious oaf struck a chord and Segar made him a fixture. Preternaturally hungry, ever-keen to solicit bribes and a cunning coiner of many immortal catchphrases – such as “I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” and “Let’s you and him fight” – Wimpy was the perfect foil for our straight-shooting action hero and increasingly stole the entire show… and anything else unless it was very heavy or extremely well nailed down.

Full of good intentions but unable to control himself, Wimpey naturally embezzles it all and fobs off his pal with a get-rich-scheme. However when Popeye starts selling his vegetable-based cleanser door to door he soon finds his old tactics are enough to wash that man out of Olive’s hair…

Co-starring Popeye, Swee’Pea and the Jeep!, ‘Sucker Gold!’ sees the cowboy-obsessed kid head for the desert and perilous Apache Mountain to be a prospector. Happily, with Eugene along for the ride his safety and prosperity are assured…

The story of Bradley fills the prose section this revealing how the ‘Horse Student’ was kicked out of human high school, after which O.G. Wotasnozzle! thinks himself into an invulnerable, inert state and the authorities resort to explosives to wake him up, before the back cover finds Popeye giving his kid a (kind-of) haircut…

Cover-dated October-December, Popeye #42 opens with the main event as the entire cast is caught on ‘Trap Island!’ as The Sea Hag and her hefty hench-lout target them from her mobile mechanised islet, before using doppelgangers to lure the sailor into ultimately useless death traps. Even her monster spinach-fuelled gorilla Smash is helpless before the power of spinach inside Popeye…

Popeye then discovers Swee’Pea can get into trouble anywhere, anytime when he sends him to fetch ‘Today’s Paper!’ Through no fault of his own the mighty mite ends up trapped in a weather balloon, a target of the air force, 2300 miles from home in Harbor City, a blood enemy of angry Indian Chief Rock’n’roll and locked in a missile, before dutifully bringing back that pesky periodical…

A duck with a speech impediment finds his purpose in prose yarn ‘Big Toot’ prior to Sappo giving O.G. Wotasnozzle the push. Typically, the toxic tenant terrorises every prospective replacement for his lodgings and the status quo is reluctantly re-established…

Another endpaper monochrome gag sees Popeye and Olive experiencing a little car trouble before Popeye #43 (cover-dated January-March 1958) opens in mono with another dig at Swee’Pea and his shovel whilst main event ‘Mind over Muscles!’ finds Popeye in high spirits and utterly oblivious to Sea Hag’s sinister surveillance. As the sailor eagerly anticipates his annual physical exam, she sends in her Sonny Boy – AKA Bluto disguised as a physician – to undermine his confidence and poison his mind with the notion that spinach is killing him. However, even doctor’s orders can’t make him give up his green cuisine and everyone gets what they deserve in the end…

‘Popeye and Swee’Pea in “The Voyage!”’ finds the sailor man sent on a dangerous mission to an island of “wild savages” with his boy outrageously left behind and babysat by Poopdeck Pappy. The infernal infink’s unhappy state is swiftly shifted by capricious fate though, and his soapbox boat is caught by wind, tide and a welcoming whale. When Popeye finally arrives, there’s a big little surprise awaiting him…

Prose parable ‘Diet!’ reveals what happens when Mrs. Smith declares the family is going vegetarian and pet dog Winky disagrees, after which O.G. Wotasnozzle apparently mends his ways and declares himself ‘“A Friend to Man” or “Be Kind to Sappo Week!”’ Sadly, even his best intentions and domestic inventions are severely hazardous to his landlord’s health – and the town’s wellbeing…

Concluding with an endpaper monochrome gag seeing Popeye severely tested by the kid’s bath time and a spot of gardening brings us to the last happy hurrah as Popeye #44 (April-June 1958) opens with black & white wisdom and Wimpy showing Olive the only way to Popeye’s heart…

Full-colour feature ‘Popeye meets “Orbert”’ embraces a wider-screened, more dynamic illustration style for Sagendorf as occasional amorous arch rival Bluto makes another play for Olive. Whilst he and Popeye enjoy their violent clash, Swee’Pea opens the box Bluto brought and unleashes a strangely alien flying beast. When its odd orbits kayo the blustering brute, Swee’Pea christens it Orbert. Soon they are inseparable and its ability to grant wishes have turned the kid into a bully and tyrant, and it’s time for some stern parenting …and spinach…

Sappo’s détente with O.G. Wotasnozzle is still in play but comes under extreme pressure when the Prof joins a quiet day’s fishing, and starts devising ways to make the pastime more efficient…

‘Specks’ reflects in prose upon the life of short-sighted fish George, before Popeye and Swee’Pea star in self-proclaimed “horrible story” ‘Follow the Leader!’ as spies kidnap the kid and try to make him tell where Popeye’s pirate gold is stashed. The map he eventually draws them only leads to trouble and the issue and this volume wrap up on a monochrome end gag proving Swee’Pea’s punch is a powerful as his wits…

Outrageous and side-splitting, these universally appealing yarns are evergreen examples of narrative cartooning at its most absurd and inspirational. Over the last nine decades Thimble Theatre’s most successful son and his family have delighted readers and viewers around the world. This book is simply one of many, but each is sure-fire, top-tier entertainment for all those who love lunacy, laughter, frantic fantasy and rollicking adventure. If that’s you, add this compendium of wonder to your collection.
Popeye Classics volume 9 © 2016 Gussoni-Yoe Studio, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Popeye © 2016 King Features Syndicate. ™ Heart Holdings Inc.

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Mighty Marvel Masterworks The Avengers volume 3: Among Us Walks a Goliath


By Stan Lee & Don Heck with Frank Giacoia, Wallace Wood, Dick Ayers, John Romita & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4895-5 (PB/Digital edition)

Probably Marvel’s biggest global franchise success, The Avengers celebrate their 60th anniversary in 2023, so let’s again acknowledge that landmark and offer more of the same…

These stories are timeless and have been gathered many times before but here we’re enjoying an example of The Mighty Marvel Masterworks line: designed with economy in mind and newcomers as target audience. These books are far cheaper, on lower quality paper and smaller – like a paperback novel. Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but at 152 x 227mm, they’re perfect for kids. If you opt for digital editions, that’s no issue at all.

After a period of meteoric expansion, in 1963 the burgeoning Marvel Universe was finally ready to emulate the successful DC concept that had cemented the legitimacy of the Silver Age of American comics. The notion of putting a bunch of all-star eggs in one basket had made the Justice League of America a winner and subsequently inspired the moribund Atlas outfit – primarily Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko – into conceiving “super-characters” of their own. The result – in 1961 – was The Fantastic Four…

After 18 months, the fledgling House of Ideas had generated a small successful stable of costumed leading men (but still only 2 sidekick women!), allowing Lee & Kirby to at last assemble a select handful of them into an all-star squad, moulded into a force for justice and soaring sales…

Cover dated September 1963, and on sale from early July, The Avengers #1 launched as part of an expansion package which also included Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and The X-Men. This edition collects The Avengers #21-30 (cover-dates October 1965 to July 1966): groundbreaking tales no lover of superhero stories can do without…

Here the team consists of Captain America, Hawkeye and mutant twins Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch who had replaced big guns Thor, Iron Man, Giant-Man and The Wasp and were already proving a firm fan-favourite. Spectacle had been nudged aside in favour of melodrama sub-plots, leavening the action through compelling soap-opera elements which kept readers riveted.

After debuting insidious infiltrator Swordsman in the previous volume, scripter Stan Lee and illustrators Don Heck & Wally Wood launched another soon-to-be big-name villain in the form of Power Man. ‘The Bitter Taste of Defeat!’ (#21) depicted his origins and a diabolical plan hatched with evil Asgardian archfoe The Enchantress to discredit and replace the quarrelsome quartet. The scheme was only narrowly foiled in a cavalcade of cunning countermoves in concluding episode ‘The Road Back’…

An epic 2-part tale follows when the turbulent team is shanghaied into the far-future to battle against – and eventually beside – Kang the Conqueror. ‘Once an Avenger…’ (Avengers #23 with, incidentally, my vote for the best cover Jack Kirby ever drew) is inked by slick John Romita (senior), and pits the heroes against an army of fearsome future men. The yarn explosively and tragically ends in ‘From the Ashes of Defeat!’ with inker Dick Ayers backing up Lee & Heck.

The still-learning but ever-improving squad then face their greatest test yet after being lured to Latveria and captured by the deadliest man alive in #25’s ‘Enter… Dr. Doom!’ and forced to fight their way out of the tyrant’s utterly cowed, hyper-militarised kingdom…

As change is ever the watchword for this series, the next two issues combine a threat from subsea barbarian Attuma to drown the world with the epic return of some old comrades. ‘The Voice of the Wasp!’ and ‘Four Against the Floodtide!’ (pseudonymously inked by Frank Giacoia as Frank Ray) form a superlative action-romp but are merely prelude to the main event – issue #28’s revival of founding Avenger Giant-Man in a new guise. ‘Among us Walks… a Goliath!’ was an instant classic that reinvented the Master of Many Sizes whilst also introducing the villainous – and ultimately immortally alien – hobbyist dubbed The Collector whilst extending the company’s pet motif of heroic alienation. After rushing to save Wasp from the cosmic kleptomaniac and his stooge The Beetle, the team are unable to prevent Hank Pym becoming tragically trapped at a freakish ten-foot height, seemingly forever…

As Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch briefly bow out – returning to Europe to reinvigorate their fading powers – Avengers #29 features ‘This Power Unleashed!’: bringing back Hawkeye’s lost love Black Widow as a brainwashed Soviet agent tasked with destroying the team.

Despite recruiting seasoned foes Power Man and Swordsman as cannon-fodder, her plan fails due to her incompletely submerged feelings for Hawkeye…

This titanic tome terminates on a cliffhanger as ‘Frenzy in a Far-Off Land!’ sees dispirited, despondent colossus Dr. Pym heading south to consult with his old college mentor Professor Anton. He never expected to find a hidden South American civilisation or become embroiled in a high-tech civil war that threatened to destroy the entire planet…

To Be Continued…

Supplementing the narrative joys is a single behind-the-scenes treasure: a Tee-shirt design by Jack Kirby & Wally Wood…

These immortal tales defined the early Marvel experience and are still an unbounded joy no fan should deny themselves or their kids.
© 2023 MARVEL.

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Superman: The Man of Steel volume 1


By John Byrne, Marv Wolfman, Jerry Ordway, Dick Giordano, Terry Austin, Mike Machlan, Karl Kesel & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0491-3 (HB/Digital edition)

In 1985 when DC Comics decided to rationalise, reconstruct and reinvigorate their continuity with Crisis on Infinite Earths they used the event to simultaneously regenerate their key properties at the same time. The biggest gun they had was Superman and it’s hard to argue that the change was not before time.

The big guy was in a bit of a slump, but he’d weathered those before. So how could a root and branch retooling be anything but a pathetic marketing ploy that would alienate the real fans for a few fly-by-night Johnny-come-latelies who would jump ship as soon as the next fad surfaced? This new Superman was going to suck…

They couldn’t have been more wrong.

The public furore began with all DC’s Superman titles being “cancelled” (actually suspended) for three months, and yes, that did make the real-world media sit-up and take notice of the character everybody thought they knew for the first time in decades. However, there was method in this seeming corporate madness.

The missing mainstays were replaced by a 6-part miniseries running from October to December 1986. Entitled Man of Steel, it was written and drawn by Marvel’s mainstream superstar John Byrne and inked by venerated veteran Dick Giordano.

The bold manoeuvre was a huge and instant success. So much so that when it was first collected as a stand-alone compilation album in 1991, it became one of comics’ premiere “break-out” hits in a new format that would eventually become the industry standard for reaching mass readerships. Nowadays few people buy the periodical pamphlets but almost everybody has read a graphic novel…

From that overwhelming start the Action Ace seamlessly returned to his suspended comic book homes, enjoying the addition of a third monthly title which premiered that same month.

Superman, Adventures of Superman, and Action Comics (which acted as a fan-pleasing team-up book guest-starring other favourites of the DC Universe, in the manner of the cancelled DC Comics Presents) were instant best-sellers.

So successful was the relaunch that by the early 1990’s Superman would be carrying four monthly titles as well as Specials, Annuals, guest shots and regular appearances in titles such as Justice League.

Quite a turnaround from the earlier heydays of the Man of Steel when editors were frantic about never overexposing their meal-ticket.

In Superman’s 85th year of more-or-less consecutive and continuous publication, this collection begins with the six self-contained stories from key points in Superman’s career, newly readjusted for contemporary consumption in the wake of that aforementioned worlds-shattering Crisis.

Spanning to cover-dates October 1986 to June 1987 and re-presenting The Man of Steel #1-6, Superman #1-4, Action #584-587 and Adventures of Superman #424-428 plus relevant pages from Who’s Who: Update ‘87 #1, 3, 4 this initial herculean compilation opens with the a reprinting of Byrne’s introduction from the 1991 collection ‘Superman: A Personal View’ before the revelations unfold…

Newsstands and comic stores on July 10th 1986 welcomed a startlingly new and bleakly dystopian Krypton in #1 as ‘Prologue: From Out of the Green Dawn…’ followed the child’s voyage in a self-propelled birthing matrix to a primitive world.

Discovered by childless couple Jonathan and Martha Kent, the alien foundling spends his years growing secretly in Smallville, indistinguishable from other earthlings until strange abilities begin to gradually manifest and hint at ‘The Secret’…

Eighteen years after his arrival, the boy learns of his extraterrestrial origins and leaves home to wander the world. Clark Kent eventually settles in Metropolis and we get a rapid re-education of what is and isn’t canonical as he performs his first public super-exploit, meets with Lois Lane, joins the Daily Planet and gets an identity-obscuring costume in ‘The Exposure’ and ‘Epilogue: The Super-Hero’…

Lois takes centre-stage for the second issue, scheming and manipulating to secure the first in-depth interview with the new hero before losing out to neophyte colleague Kent whose first big scoop becomes ‘The Story of the Century!’

The third chapter recounts the Metropolis Marvel’s first meeting with Batman as ‘One Night in Gotham City…’ reveals a fractious and reluctant team-up to capture murdering thief Magpie. The unsatisfactory encounter sees the heroes part warily, not knowing if they will become friends or foes…

‘Enemy Mine…’ in MoS #4 expands and redefines the new Lex Luthor: a genius, multi-billionaire industrialist who was the most powerful man in Metropolis until the Caped Crime-buster appeared. When the tycoon overreaches himself in trying to suborn the hero with cash, he is publicly humiliated and swears vengeance and eternal enmity…

By the time of ‘The Mirror, Crack’d…’ in #5, Luthor is Superman’s greatest foe – albeit one who scrupulously maintains a veneer of respectability and plausible deniability. Here, Luthor’s clandestine attempt to clone his own Man of Tomorrow results in a monstrous flawed duplicate dubbed Bizarro and introduces Lois’ sister Lucy to play hapless victim in a moving tale of triumph and tragedy.

The reimagination concludes with ‘The Haunting’ as a troubled Clark/Superman returns to Smallville. Reuniting with childhood sweetheart Lana Lang – who shares his secrets and knows as much as he of his alien origins – the strange visitor finally learns of his Kryptonian origins and heritage when the long-hidden birthing matrix projects a recorded message from his long-dead parents and details their hopes and plans for him…

The shock and reaction of his foster family only affirms his dedication and connection to humanity…

John Byrne was a controversial choice at the time, but he magnificently recaptured the exuberant excitement and visually compelling, socially aware innovation which informed and galvanised Jerry Seigel & Joe Shuster’s inspired creation. Man of Steel granted a new generation the same kind of intoxicating four-colour fantasy that was the original Superman, and made it possible to be a fan again, no matter your age or prejudice. Superman had always been great, but Byrne had once again made him thrilling. Rivetingly so.

The never-ending battle recommenced on a monthly schedule with Superman volume 2 #1, where Byrne & Terry Austin reveal a ‘Heart of Stone’: presenting a new Metallo as thug John Corben is remade as a Terminator-style cyborg with a human brain and a Kryptonite heart by a deranged xenophobic scientist. The transition culminates in a deadly battle and baffling mystery portending big troubles to come. The focus then shifts to Action #584 and ‘Squatter!’ (by Byrne & Giordano) as a body-snatching mental force suborns the Metropolis Marvel and necessitates a team-up with the Teen Titans. The accent is predominantly on breakneck pace and all-out costumed conflict here…

Superman #2 (by Byrne & Austin) then describes ‘The Secret Revealed!’ as modern-day robber baron Luthor makes the biggest mistake of his life after kidnapping and torturing Kent’s first girlfriend Lana Lang…

This is followed by Marv Wolfman & Jerry Ordway’s ‘Man O’War!’ and ‘Going the Gauntlet’ (Adventures of Superman #424 & 425, and inked by Mike Machlan). The drama introduces tragic Dr. Emil Hamilton and rival reporter Cat Grant to the mythology as the Action Ace battles high-tech terrorists sponsored by rogue state Qurac and proves to be no respecter of international boundaries like his pre-Crisis counterpart…

These politically and socially aware dramas would become a truer and more lasting template for the modern Man of Tomorrow after Byrne’s eventual retirement from the character…

The Phantom Stranger guests in a battle against a deadly manifestation of unquiet spirits in ‘And the Graves Give Up Their Dead…’ (Byrne & Giordano, Action #585) before the next three chapters address the Superman segment of multi-part crossover event Legends.

Byrne & Austin’s Superman #3 began with ‘Legends of the Darkside!’, as Clark Kent is abducted to Apokolips by its evil master. He escapes to become a rebel leader of the lowly “Hunger Dogs” in Adventures… #426, wherein Wolfman, Ordway & Machlan give us an amnesiac Superman on Apokolips rising ‘From the Dregs’ before the rousing yarn concludes with ‘The Champion!’ as Action Comics #586 (Byrne & Giordano) reintroduces Jack Kirby’s New Gods post-Crisis icons Orion and Lightray, just in time for a blistering battle royale beyond the stars between the Man of Steel and deadly Darkseid…

Once the cosmic dust settled, it was back to the regular Never-Ending Battle, with Superman #4 introducing deranged lone gunman ‘Bloodsport!’ courtesy of Byrne & inker Karl Kesel. The merciless shooter is more than just crazy, however: some hidden genius has given him the ability to manifest wonder weapons from thin air and he never runs out of ammo…

Wolfman & Ordway generally concentrated on longer, more suspensefully dramatic character-based tales. Adventures of Superman #427-428 (cover-dated April & May 1987) took the Man of Tomorrow on a punishing visit to rogue state Qurac and an encounter with hidden alien telepaths The Circle: a visceral and beautiful tale of un-realpolitik. ‘Mind Games’ and ‘Personal Best’ combine a much more relevant, realistic slant with lots of character sub-plots featuring assorted staff and family of the Daily Planet.

The story portion of this first volume concludes with Byrne & Giordano back in Action (#587), crafting spectacle, thrills and instant gratification with ‘Cityscape!’ by teaming Superman with Jack Kirby’s Etrigan the Demon. The magic happens when sorceress Morgaine Le Fay seeks to become immortal by warping time itself…

Augmenting the Costumed Dramas are more recovered text commentaries and appreciations from earlier collections: specifically Ray Bradbury’s ‘Why Superman? Why Today?’ (1991), Wolfman’s ‘Reinventing the Wheel’ (2003) and Ordway’s ‘The Adventures of Superman’ from 2004. These are followed by the covers of earlier Superman: The Man of Steel compendia – all by Ordway – and pages taken from supplemental comics reading tool Who’s Who: Update ‘87.

Plucked from issues #1, 3, 4 are Byrne’s Amazing Grace, Bizarro, Bloodsport, Host, Lex Luthor, Krypton and Kryptonite, Lois Lane, Magpie and Metallo before a big bold pin-up of the Man of Steel ends the fun for now.

The back-to-basics approach successfully lured many readers to – and back to – the Superman franchise, but the sheer quality of the stories and art are what convinced them to stay. Such cracking, clear-cut superhero exploits are a high point in the Action Ace’s decades-long career, and these collections are the best way to enjoy one of the most impressive reinventions of the ultimate comic-book icon.
© 1986, 1987, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Fann Club: Batman Squad – the Justiest Justice of All


By Jim Benton (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0889-8 (PB/Digital edition)

In recent years DC has opened up its vast and comprehensive shared superhero universe: generating Original Graphic Novels featuring its many stars in stand-alone adventures specifically tailored for kids and also that tricky demographic so sadly misnamed Young Adult. To date, results have been rather hit or miss, but when they’re good, they are very good indeed…

Another sublime example of the process at its best is this cheery elegy to the joys of crimefighting as channelled through the pristine but so-blinkered purview and perceptions of a youngster who believes in the process with all he’s got…

Ernest Fann is a little kid with a big imagination and a colossal passion. This drive has made him an absolute expert on Superheroes, Vengeance, Justice and The Batman, and that status comes with a necessary burden.

There is anxiety, impatience and even a motivating tragic loss – when something chewed his precious collectors’ item socks. His life is troubled by flashbacks and his sleep by the oddest dreams. It’s a mystery even his dog Westy can’t explain, whilst the neighbours’ kid and babysitter Harriet are completely oblivious to his inner life and secret…

Aware at he is probably the World’s Second Greatest Detective, he swears to share his gifts and the way of the Batman by founding… a fan club.

When willing recruits drawn by his cunning outreach arrive, he clothes them in the costumes he made and code names the (completely anonymous) strangers Night Terrier, Nightstand and Eyeshadow. He, of course, is the mighty Gerbilwing and Evil has never been more scared…

With his Batman Squad equipped it’s ‘Time to Begin: Fanning the Flames’ as their training montage shares secrets – like learning how to scowl and stand mysteriously – before going ‘On Patrol’ to note all the wickedness and mystery besetting the neighbourhood. All those little clues add up to trouble and before long Gerbilwing & Co. are unleashed when they intercept a bank robbery and uncover the true source of all the strange events…

Jim Benton began his illustration work making up crazy characters in a T-Shirt shop and designing greetings cards. Born in 1960, he’d grown up in Birmingham, Michigan before studying Fine Arts at Western Michigan University.

Tirelessly earning a living exercising his creativity, he started self-promoting those weird funny things he’d dreamed up and soon was raking in the dosh from properties such as Dear Dumb Diary, Dog of Glee, Franny K. Stein, Just Jimmy, Just Plain Mean, Sweetypuss, The Misters, Meany Doodles, Vampy Doodles, Kissy Doodles, jOkObo and It’s Happy Bunny via a variety of magazines and other venue…

His gags, jests and japes are delivered in a huge variety of styles and manners: each perfectly in accord with whatever sick, sweet, clever, sentimental, whimsical or just plain strange content each idea demanded, and his SpyDogs effortlessly made the jump to kids’ animated TV success.

He seamlessly segued into best-selling cartoon books (those are the best kind) such as Man, I Hate Cursive, Clyde, Catwad, Jop and Blip Wanna Know, Dog Butts and Love. And Stuff Like That. (And Cats) and Attack of the Stuff. It’ been 10 minutes since I started typing this, so there might be a few more published since then…

Perfectly capturing the wonder of childhood and sheer force of a kid’s unbridled imagination, Fann Club: Batman Squad is hilarious with a huge amount of heart and empathy and literally cloaked in the moody charisma of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight. The combination is utterly irresistible.

Also include is a teaser preview of ‘Young Alfred: Pain in the Butler’, but that’s not the point and can wait for its own review. Here you just need to swear your oath, kit up in your own justice gear and join The Bat Squad ASAP.

Tell them Gerbilwing said it was okay and Eyeshadow would be there to keep things safe…
© 20223 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Fann Club: Batman Squad will be published on June 6th 2023 and is available for pre-order now.

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Action Heroes Archive volume 1: Captain Atom & volume 2: Captain Atom, Blue Beetle & The Question


By Steve Ditko, Joe Gill, Gary Friedrich, Dave Kaler, Steve Skeates, Rocke Mastroserio, Frank McLaughlin, Al Milgrom, Roger Stern, John Byrne, Michael Uslan, Alex Toth, and various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0302-3 (HB vol. 1) 978-1-4012-1346-6 (HB vol. 2)

Clearly I’m cashing in on the pre-release hype around a new DC Cinema blockbuster here, but I take honest refuge and some comfort in the fact that these books and the stories they contain are actually germane as well as being some of the best Silver Age comics ever crafted… 

Despite being dead – and so very much missed – Steve Ditko remains comics’ most unique stylist. Love him or hate him, you can’t mistake his work for anyone else’s. His career began in the early 1950s and, depending on whether you’re a superhero fan or prefer deeper, more challenging experimental work, peaked in either the mid-1960s or 1970s.

Leaving the Avenging World, Mr. A and his other philosophically-derived creations for another time, the superhero crowd should heartily celebrate and clamour for new editions of these deluxe collections of the first costumed do-gooder that Ditko worked on. Although I’m a huge fan of his linework – which is always best served by monochrome printing – the crisp, sharp colour of these Archive editions is still much better than the appalling reproduction on bog-paper that first displayed Charlton Comics’ Atomic Ace and latterly the Bug Bombshell to the kids of Commie-obsessed America.

As discussed in the Foreword by historian and Ditko-expert Blake Bell, Action Heroes Archive volume 1: Captain Atom reveals – in all the full-on, simplistic furore of a 1950s B-Movie – how a Cold War-obsessed America copes with a modern-day miracle just as the concept of costumed superheroes was being reimagined…

With covers by Ditko and/or Mastroserio, this tome amasses pertinent tales from Space Adventures #33-40 & 42 (spanning cover-dates March 1960 to October 1961), augmented by the contents of the revived, solo-starring Captain Atom #78-82, as published for December 1965 through September 1966.

In those simpler times the short, terse adventures of Captain Atom seemed somehow more telling than the innovative yet rather anodyne DC fare, whilst Marvel was still pushing romances, westerns and monsters in underpants, explorers in pith helmets and citizen scientists with labs in their garden sheds. Their particular heroic revolution was still months away even though Steve Ditko was producing top-flight work for both companies.

Nevertheless, Ditko’s hero was different and we few who read him all knew it….

As scripted by Jo Gill and predating Fantastic Four #1 by more than 18 months, Space Adventures #33 even cover-featured the new sensation-in-waiting as ‘Introducing Captain Atom’ in a brief but vivid vignette, giving us a true American hero and man of his time before instantly killing him.

Captain Adam was an astronaut accidentally but literally atomised in a rocketry accident. Eerily – and the way it’s drawn spooked the short pants off me when I first read it all those years ago – he gradually reassembles himself on the launch pad…

Now blessed with astounding powers, he reports to the President (Eisenhower) and is swiftly kitted up in a protective outfit, allowing contact with normal, non-irradiated humans and reassigned as a masked superhero who will be the USA’s secret weapon…

Mostly written by or co-written with Joe Gill, the first wonderful, addictive run of 18 stories from Space Adventures #33-42 (and three of those were in fact drawn by uninspired, out-of-his-comfort zone Rocke Mastroserio) are a magnificent example of Ditko’s emerging mastery of mood, pacing, atmosphere and human dynamics.

In 1961, with Ditko increasingly doing more work for blossoming – and better paying – Marvel, Charlton killed the Captain Atom feature. However, when Dick Giordano jumped on the superhero bandwagon and created a costumed character line for Charlton in late 1965, the Captain was revived. Space Adventures was retitled, with Atom’s first full length issue numbered #78.

Since he was still drawing Amazing Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, Ditko could only manage pencils, so Mastroserio was recruited to ink the series, resulting in an oddly jarring finish. With #79, Ditko became lead writer too, and the stories took on an eccentric, compelling edge and tone, lifting them above much of the competition’s fare. Eventually the inker adapted to Ditko’s style and much of the ungainliness disappeared from the figurework, although so had the fine detail that had elevated the early art. This volume ends with issue #82, leaving six more published issues and a complete unpublished seventh for another time…

However, those early, Cold War-fired tales are a truly unique blend of action, tension and sheer whimsy which continued in Space Adventures #34 as ‘The 2nd Man in Space’ cheekily sees the magnanimous hero covertly undercut another Soviet space triumph by saving the USSR’s first cosmonaut from his defective capsule, whilst #35#s ‘The Little Wanderer’ finds him traversing the stars to rescue the spirit of an little boy inadvertently abducted by a well-meaning cosmic traveller…

A thermonuclear double bill graced #36, beginning with ‘The Wreck of X-44’, with a new craft detonating in space and leading Captain Atom to a deadly saboteur, after which ‘Captain Atom on Planet X’ finds him defending a US satellite from all-out attack by the dastardly ruthless Russians…

Geopolitics gives way to fantasy as #37 (December 1960) initially details a fusion-foiled invasion by ‘The Space Prowlers’ before a US probe to the second planet is scuttled by svelte space sirens who score ‘A Victory for Venus’ over the stounded atomic Earthman…

Two months later and the count climbed to three stories, beginning with ‘One Second of War’, wherein the Captain wrecks the doomsday missile attack of Dr. Claudius Jaynes, a suicidal maniac with his own atomic arsenal, before repeating the feat in ‘Backfire’ when a tin-pot dictator seeks to nuke the USA. The issue ends with ‘The Force Beyond’ as an alien entity tries to destroy the world with meteors before encountering our nuclear nemesis…

Space Adventures #39 begins with a ‘Test-Pilot’s Nightmare’ as arrogance threatens the life of a helpless jet jockey and Atom invisibly comes to the rescue after which Mastroserio limns ‘Peace Envoy’ with the energetic enigma turning back another alien invasion. Ditko is back for the final fling as Captain Adam goes undercover in Berlin (just before The Wall went up) to crush an espionage plot in ‘An Ageless Weapon’…

The atomic experiment was coming to a close. After #40’s ‘The Crisis’ – wherein the hero helps a diplomat call a tyrant’s bluff and ‘The Boy and the Stars’ features another Earth tot transported into the wondrous cosmos – the costumed heroics were absent the next issue.

Just as the FF was about to go big, Space Adventures #42 (October 1961) arrived and depleted all the inventory tales at once beginning with a brace of Mastroserio drawn yarns and one last tantalising Ditko masterpiece. ‘The Saucer Scare’ is yet another mediocre space war clash whilst ‘The Man in Saturn’s Moon’ sees the atomic ace hunting a Soviet dissent squirreled away by wicked commies. Those lesser efforts are utterly eclipsed by ‘The Silver Lady from Venus’ as another sexy extraterrestrial beguiles the humans of Earth before making a fool of the fiery champion…

And that was that the end until of 1965 when a global resurgence of costumed capers led to a new line at Charlton. Leading that charge came Captain Atom #78 (cover-dated December) when Gill & Ditko – with Mastroserio inking – revived the Atomic Adventurer in ‘The Gremlins from Planet Blue’. The genre had moved on in four years and the stripped-back, pared-down B-Movie feel of those early tales had evolved into a more uniquely fulsome and flamboyant affair for this particular extraterrestrial infiltration. Here were subplots and supporting cast to spare, as the hero foiled alien sabotage and mind control at Cape Kennedy, romancing Leah Jupe whilst her scientist father fell under the control of insidious infiltrators. There was even a new gadfly for Captain Adam in the grumpy form of martinet military man General Brill before ultimately saving Earth again…

In the next issue (February/March 1966), a true but tragic supervillain arrives in the series as ‘Captain Atom Faces Doctor Spectro, Master of Moods’ when a spy hunt brings the hero into the orbit of an embittered recluse seeking to master light and colour to revolutionise medicine. Sadly, sudden success tips him over the edge and his newfound abilities drive him even more crazy…

Apparently destroyed, the miscreant is soon forgotten when a wandering planetoid nears Earth and sounds the ‘Death Knell of the World’ (#80, Ditko, Gill & Mastroserio). Happily, the High Energy Hero is up to foiling a cosmic tyrant and liberating his captive satellite people before confronting ‘The Five Faces of Doctor Spectro’ as the misunderstood miscreant reappears in five prismatic pieces with a plethora of different plans but one overriding goal: pulling himself together and finally splitting this atom…

The hero hosts a quick fact feature drawn by Frank McLaughlin in ‘Captain Atom’s Secret’ before this initial outing ends with a magnificent step up in tension and quality. Issue #82 – cover-dated September 1966 and by Ditko with Dave Kaler & Mastroserio – debuts not just the series’ ultimate archfoe and a major story arc but also the company’s first female superhero.

With an enigmatic teleporting thief casually robbing the nation and the military of its wealth and top secrets, Captain Adam is sent undercover with mystery operative Nightshade in ‘Captain Atom vs. The Ghost’…

Their mission introduces sleek scoundrel Alec Rois, channels the spy craze of the era and hints at a vast conspiracy underpinning a threat to Earth and even finds time to see the heroes battle an army of thugs and save Fort Knox from bold bullion banditry…

Over half a decade pioneers Steve Ditko and Captain Atom and paved the way and lit a path to a revolution in comics storytelling and these early exploits were only the start…

 

Action Heroes volume 2: Captain Atom, Blue Beetle & The Question

A second – far longer – volume completes Ditko’s controversial Charlton Comics costumed hero contributions with the remainder of Captain Atom’s exploits, the introduction of a new Blue Beetle and debut of his uniquely iconic vigilante The Question.

Following an effusive and extremely informative Introduction by original Action Line inventor and editor Dick Giordano, Captain Atom #83 (November 1966) starts the ball rolling again with a huge blast of reconstructive character surgery.

Although ‘Finally Falls the Mighty!’ was inked by Mastroserio and scripted by relative newcomer Kaler, thematically it’s pure Ditko. Plotted and drawn by him, it sees an ungrateful public swiftly turn on the Atomic Ace, due to the manipulations of a former colleague turned cunning criminal.

Intended to tone down the character’s sheer omnipotence, the added approachable empathy-inducing humanity of malfunctioning powers made his struggles against treacherous Professor Koste all the more poignant.

Moreover, the sheer visual spectacle of his battle against a runaway reactor is some of Ditko’s most imaginative design and layout work. The tale ends on a cliffhanger – a real big deal when the comic came out every two months – and with the last 7 pages dedicated to debuting a new superhero with one of the oldest names in the business.

The Blue Beetle first appeared in Mystery Men Comics #1, released by Fox Comics and cover-dated August 1939. Created by Charles Nicholas (nee Wojtkowski) the character was inexplicably popular: surviving the collapse of numerous publishers before ending up as an acquired Charlton property in the mid-1950s. After releasing a few issues sporadically, Charlton shelved him until the superhero revival of the 1960s when Gill and latterly young Roy Thomas revised and revived the character for a combined 10-issue run (June 1964 – February 1966).

Here however, Ditko accepts but sets aside all that history to utterly recreate him. Ted Kord is an earnest young scientist with a secret tragedy in his past, which Ditko and scripter Gary Friedrich sagely forbear revealing in deference to intrigue and action, in a taut, captivating crime-thriller where the new hero displays his modus operandi by stopping a vicious crime-spree by the Killer Koke Gang.

This untitled short has all the classic elements of a Ditko masterpiece: outlandish intense, fight scenes, compact, claustrophobic yet dynamic layouts, innovative gimmickry and a clear-cut battle between Right and Wrong. It’s one of the very best introductory stories of a new hero anywhere in comics – and it’s 7 pages long…

The remodelling of the Atomic Ace concludes in the next issue with ‘After the Fall a New Beginning’. Once again Ditko rattled his authorial sabre about the fickleness of the public as the villainous Koste exposes the hero’s face on live TV. Escaping, Atom gets a new costume to match his curtailed powers …and consequently, a lot more drama drapes the series.

Now there is a definite feeling of no safety or status quo. The untitled Blue Beetle back-up (scripted by Friedrich with full art from Ditko) pits the new kid against a Masked Marauder, but the real kicker is the bombshell revelation that Homicide detective Fisher – investigating the disappearance of Dan Garrett – suspects a possible connection to Kord…

Whilst extending a running plot-line about the mysterious Ghost and his connection to a lost civilization of warrior women, ‘Strings of Punch and Jewelee’ introduces a couple of shady carnival hucksters who find a chest of esoteric alien weapons and use them for robbery. Although Cap and partner Nightshade are somewhat outclassed here, the vigour and vitality of the Blue Beetle is again undeniable as a mid-air hijack is foiled and a spy sub and giant killer octopus are given short shrift by the indomitable rookie crusader.

Captain Atom #86 finally brings the long-simmering plot-thread of tech thief The Ghost to a boil as the malevolent science-wizard goes on a rampage, totally trouncing Nightshade and our hero before being kidnapped by the aforementioned mystery maidens. ‘The Fury of the Faceless Foe! is by Ditko, Kaler & Mastroserio whilst in the (still) untitled Blue Beetle strip by Friedrich & Ditko, the cobalt crusader confronts a ruthless scientist/industrial spy he’s convinced he battled before…

This leads directly into the first issue of his own comic book. Blue Beetle #1 (cover-dated June 1967) is an all-Ditko masterpiece (even scripting it as “D.C. Glanzman”) with the hero in all-out action against a deadly gang of bandits. ‘Blue Beetle… Bugs the Squids’ is crammed with the eccentric vitality that made Amazing Spider-Man such a monster hit, with justice-dispensing joie de vivre balanced by the moody, claustrophobic introduction of Ditko’s most challenging mainstream superhero creation.

‘The Question’ is Vic Sage, a TV journalist with an uncompromising attitude to crime and corruption, employing an alter-ego of faceless, relentless retribution. In his premiere outing he exposes the link between his own employers’ self-righteous sponsors and gambling racketeer Lou Dicer. This theme of unflinching virtue in the teeth of both violent crime and pernicious peer and public pressure marked Ditko’s departure from straight entertainment towards philosophical – some would say polemical – examination of greater societal issues and the true nature of both Good and Evil that would culminate in his controversial Mr. A, Avenging World and other independent ventures.

In Captain Atom #87 (August 1967), ‘The Menace of the Fiery-Icer’ presaged the beginning of the end for the Atomic Ace as Kaler, Ditko & Mastroserio dialled back on plot threads to deliver a visually excellent but run-of-the-mill yarn about a spy ring with a hot line in cold-blooded leaders.

Blue Beetle #2 however – another all-Ditko affair from the same month – showed the master at his peak. Lead story ‘The End is a Beginning!’ at last reveals the origin of the character as well as the fate of Dan Garrett, and even advances Kord’s relationship with his assistant Tracey. The enigmatic Question, meanwhile, tackles flying burglar The Banshee in a vertiginous, moody thriller reminiscent of early Doctor Strange strips.

Frank McLaughlin joins as inker for a satisfying no-nonsense escapist romp ‘Ravage of Ronthor’ (Captain Atom #88, October 1967), as the hero answers a distress call from space to preserve a paradise planet from marauding giant bugs. Blue Beetle #3 was another superbly satisfying read, as the eponymous hero routes malevolent, picturesque thugs ‘The Madmen’ in a sharp parable about paranoia and misperception. Equally captivating is the intense and bizarre Question vignette wherein a murderous ghostly deep-sea diver stalks some shady captains of industry…

Cover-dated December 1967, issue #89 was the last Captain Atom published by Charlton: an early casualty of the burn-out afflicting the superhero genre and leading to a resurrected horror and mystery craze. This resurrected genre would form a new backbone for the company’s 1970’s output; one where Ditko would shine again in his role as master of short story horror.

Scripter Kaler satisfactorily ties up most of the hanging plot threads with the warrior women of Sunuria in sci-fi-meets-witchcraft thriller ‘Thirteen’, although the Ditko/McLaughlin art team was nowhere near top form.

The next episode promised a final ‘Showdown in Sunuria’, but never materialized…

Blue Beetle #4 (released the same month) is visually the best of the bunch as Kord follows a somehow-returned Dan Garrett to an Asian backwater in pursuit of lost treasure and a death cult. ‘The Men of the Mask’ is pure strip poetry and bombastic action, cunningly counterbalanced by a seedy underworld thriller as the Question seeks to discover who gave the order to ‘Kill Vic Sage!’ Scripted by Steve Skeates (as Warren Savin) it was the last action any Charlton hero saw for the better part of a year…

Then, cover-dated October 1968, The Question returned as the star of Mysterious Suspense #1, with Ditko producing a captivating cover and three-chapter thriller (with Mastroserio providing a rather jarring full-page frontispiece). ‘What Makes a Hero?’ (probably rescued from partially completed inventory material) sees crusading Vic Sage pilloried by the public, abandoned by friends and abandoned by his employers yet resolutely sticking to his higher principles in pursuit of hypocritical villains masquerading as pillars of the community. Ditko’s interest in Ayn Rand’s philosophical Objectivism had become increasingly important to him and this story is arguably the dividing line between his “old” and “new” work. It’s also the most powerful and compelling piece in this entire book.

A month later one final issue of Blue Beetle (#5) was published. ‘The Destroyer of Heroes’ is a decidedly quirky tale featuring a nominal team-up of the azure avenger and the Question as a frustrated artist defaces heroic and uplifting paintings and statues. Ditko’s committed if reactionary views of youth culture, which so worried Stan Lee, are fully on view in this charged, absorbing tale.

Other material had been created and languished incomplete in editorial limbo. In the early 1970s a burgeoning and committed fan-base created fanzine Charlton Portfolio. With the willing assistance of the company, a host of kids who would soon become household names in their own right found a way to bring the lost work to the public gaze. Their efforts are also included here, in monochrome as they originally appeared.

For Charlton Portfolio #9 and 10 (1974), the unreleased Blue Beetle #6 was serialized. ‘A Specter is Haunting Hub City!’ is another all-Ditko extravaganza, pitting the hero against an (almost) invisible thief. Follow-up magazine Charlton Bullseye (1975) finally published ‘Showdown in Sunuria’ in its first two issues.

Behind an Al Milgrom Captain Atom cover, Kaler’s plot was scripted by Roger Stern (working as Jon G. Michels) and Ditko’s pencils were inked by rising star John Byrne – a cataclysmic climax almost worth the 8-year wait. But even there, the magic doesn’t end in this magnificent Archive volume.

Charlton Bullseye #5 (1975) offers one last pre-DC tale of The Question: 8 gripping, intense and beautiful pages plotted by Stern, scripted by Michael Uslan and illustrated by the legendary Alex Toth. This alone is worth the price of admission.

These weighty snapshots from another era are packed with classic material by brilliant craftsmen. They are books no Ditko addict, serious fan of the genre or lover of graphic adventure can afford to be without. It’s impossible to describe the grace, finesse, and unique eclectic shape of Steve Ditko’s art. It must be experienced, and this is as good a place to start as any. It’s just a shame DC have let these tales languish so long, but hopefully the power of Hollywood will induce a revival…
© 1966, 1967, 1968, 1974, 1975, 1976, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Ultimate Collection


By Joe Casey, Scott Kolins, Will Rosado, Tom Palmer & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5937-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

Time for another 60th Anniversary shout out…

One of the most momentous events in Marvel Comics history occurred in 1963 when a disparate array of individual heroes banded together to stop apparently marauding monster The Incredible Hulk.

The Avengers combined most of the company’s fledgling superhero line in one bright, shiny and highly commercial package. Over decades the roster has continually changed until now almost every character in their universe has at some time numbered amongst the team’s colourful ranks…

For Marvel’s transformational rebirth in the early 1960’s, Stan Lee & Jack Kirby took their lead from a small but growing band of costumed characters debuting or reimagined and revived at the Distinguished Competition. Julie Schwartz’ retooling of DC’s Golden Age stars had paid big dividends for the industry leader, and as the decade turned Managing Editor Lee’s boss (uncle/publisher Martin Goodman) insisted his company should go where the money was.

Although National/DC achieved incredible success with revised and updated versions of the company’s old stable, the natural gambit of trying the same revivification process on characters who had dominated Timely/Atlas in those halcyon days didn’t go quite so well.

The Justice League of America-inspired Fantastic Four indeed featured a new Human Torch, but his subsequent solo series began to founder almost as soon as Kirby stopped drawing it. Sub-Mariner was soon returned too, but as a deadly vengeful villain, as yet incapable of carrying his own title…

So a procession of new costumed heroes was created, with Lee, Kirby and Steve Ditko focussing on all-original inventive and inspired “super-characters”…

Not all caught on: The Hulk folded after six issues and even Spider-Man would have failed if writer/editor Lee hadn’t really, really pushed Uncle Martin…

After nearly 18 months, during which the fledgling House of Ideas churned out a small stable of leading men (but only two sidekick women), Lee & Kirby finally had enough players to stock an all-star ensemble – the precise format which had made the JLA a commercial winner – and thus swiftly assembled a handful of them into a force for justice and higher sales…

Cover-dated September 1963, The Avengers #1 launched as part of an expansion package which also included Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and The X-Men, and, despite a few rocky patches, the series grew into one of the company’s perennial best sellers.

The early Avengers yarns became a cornerstone of the company’s crucially interlinked continuity. As decades passed they were frequently revisited and re-examined, and in 2005 Joe Casey and artist Scott Kolins (with colourists Morry Hollowell & Will Quintana) took the occasional exercises in creativity a little further: offering an 8-issue modernising miniseries adding devious – some would say cynically calculating – back-writing to the original stories. The epic was packed with post-modern in-filling for a more mature readership, exposing secrets and revealing how the team actually came to hold its prominent and predominant position in the Marvel Universe…

Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes #1-8 ran fortnightly from January to April 2005 and was successful enough to warrant a second season. Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes II #1-8 repeated the gambit from January to May 2007, and with both epics gathered in this splendid, no-nonsense compilation.

Chronologically set between Avengers #1 and 2, the drama begins as industrialist Tony Stark reviews media coverage of the coalition of mystery men currently residing in his family’s townhouse. He ponders how best to keep such diverse and headstrong personalities as Ant Man, The Wasp, Thor and the Hulk together. Across town in a seedy bar, young troublemaker and pool-hustler Clint Barton can’t understand why folks are so nervous about the “masked freaks”…

Two weeks later, the team has fallen apart and the Avengers are actually hunting their gamma-fuelled former colleague. In the course of calamitous events they unexpectedly recover a legendary form from a coffin of ice floating in sea…

The gradually assimilation of partially amnesiac WWII legend Captain America into a terrifying and seemingly mad new era is not without problems, and the iconic, grimly experienced warrior is soon keenly aware of seething tensions besetting the team he has joined.

Iron Man still fervently pursues an exalted Federal status for the Avengers, but the Army are baulking: clearly set on putting the wilfully independent powerhouses under military jurisdiction. After a ferocious clash with Lava Men from Earth’s deep interior, word finally comes. The powers that be have created an all-encompassing “Avengers Priority Security Status” – but only for as long as the fickle public’s new darling and National Treasure Captain America stays with them…

Self-made scientific genius Hank Pym created the roles of Ant Man and the Wasp (AKA debutante girlfriend Janet Van Dyne) but his inherent and growing mental instability has caused him to push further and harder ever since he joined the ranks of a group that includes a patriotic living legend, an infallible metal juggernaut and an apparent god.

Now operating as Giant Man he is letting feelings of inadequacy drive a wedge between him and his lover, even as the Army ups the pressure to take over the team. Meanwhile, modern-day Rip Van Winkle Steve Rogers increasingly sinks into survivor’s guilt over the comrades he failed to save in the war. That internalised torment kicks into overdrive when Nazi war criminal and archfoe Baron Zemo comes out of hiding to attack the Avenger through his Masters of Evil…

When an invader out of time strikes, the Avengers finally and very publicly prove their worth to the nation and its government, and with Kang the Conqueror sent packing, the team at last secures favoured-but-fully-independent security clearance.

…And in the streets, a wanted vigilante dubbed Hawkeye saves Avengers butler Edwin Jarvis from muggers and they strike up a most irregular friendship…

Missions come thick and fast but the internal tensions never seem to dissipate. In far distant Balkan Transia fugitive mutants Wanda and Pietro desperately search for a place where they can feel safe, whilst in America Cap is increasingly fixated on tracking down Zemo.

After a battle with crime syndicate leader Count Nefaria leaves the Wasp near death, Giant Man also edges closer to a complete breakdown. With a surgeon battling to save her, Pym swears he’s going to quit and take her away from all the madness. Before that can happen, Zemo returns, abducting the Sentinel of Liberty’s teenaged friend Rick Jones…

In response, the team acrimoniously divides, with Cap trailing the monomaniac to Bolivia whilst the majority of Avengers remain for a final battle against the Masters of Evil. Meanwhile below stairs, Jarvis and Clint are concocting a sneaky scheme of their own…

As the death-duel in Bolivia concludes, in Germany two restless young mutants orchestrate their return to America and – with some collusion from Jarvis – Hawkeye “auditions” for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes…

As Cap and Rick wearily and so slowly make their way back to civilisation, Iron Man deals with Government fallout after learning that their Red, White and Blue poster boy is missing. Soon news leaks out that the rest of the team are quitting and that Stark has lined up a wanted vigilante and two outlaw mutants to replace them…

The initial secret history lesson concludes with astounded Captain America’s re-emergence and reluctant accession to leadership: riding herd on a team of obnoxious, arrogant young felons he is expected to mould into true champions…

The rest is history…

The second bite of the cherry (by Casey, Will Rosado, Tom Palmer & Quintana) focuses on a later time when the Avengers are in resurgent form. The Founders have all returned at a time when Pym (now calling himself Goliath), The Wasp and Hawkeye are joined by enigmatic African monarch The Black Panther. The action commences immediately following the expanded team’s being attacked by an android called The Vision – whom they promptly signed up (in Avengers #58, if you’re keeping count). Apparently the density-shifting “synthezoid” was created by robotic nemesis Ultron – a murderous AI created by Pym whilst suffering one of his frequent psychotic breaks – before switching allegiances…

We open as the highly-suspect new Avenger is impounded by S.H.I.E.L.D. for investigation and clearance. Their ostensible reason is that another autonomous murder mechanism – Super-Adaptoid – has escaped from custody and humanity can’t be too careful…

In the Philippines, the real cause of all the anti-technology tension and overweening suspicion are busy. Science terrorists Advanced Idea Mechanics have secretly stolen the Adaptoid and are seeing how they can improve an already ultimate killing machine…

At a clandestine S.H.I.E.L.D. base, interrogator Jasper Sitwell has met his match in The Vision, but perseveres in trying to dig out dirt on the android and its “master” Ultron. The Panther meanwhile has foregone his status as a VIP dignitary to teach at an inner city school under the alias Luke Charles. What he finds there is a true education…

Hawkeye too is under pressure as his lover The Black Widow reveals she’s going back into the spy-game. With Pym close to apoplexy at the government’s quasi-legal rendition of the Vision, nobody is in a particularly good mood when S.H.I.E.L.D.  supremo Nick Fury (the white one who fought in WWII) demands the team head to the Philippines to investigate A.I.M.’s latest enterprise.

With Fury’s carrot-&-stick pep talk ringing in their ears the heroes – rejoined by the just released Vision – jet away, unaware that in Manhattan an assassination plot against King T’Challa/Mr. Charles has brought one of Panther’s greatest enemies to America…

The heroes are challenged over the Pacific skies by a mass-produced army of Super-Adaptoids and are soon engaged in the fight of their lives…

Overwhelmed, they are in danger of being swamped before Goliath valiantly turns himself into as colossal human rampart to stem the tide and save the endangered island population whilst his comrades rush to destroy A.I.M.’s superbase…

Left all alone, Pym fights in maddened frenzy and becomes increasingly obsessed with how human the things he is incessantly slaughtering seem to be. By the time the triumphant team get Goliath home, he is a deeply traumatised shell of a man…

Luke Charles returns to school in time to be deeply embroiled in a bullying case that will inevitably end in gunplay and tragedy. And then the apparently recuperating Hank Pym goes missing…

Soon after, a new, excessively brutal hero named Yellowjacket is making news even as Agent Sitwell again targets the Vision for further debriefing: specifically, Pym’s “massacre” of mechanical lifeforms on A.I.M. Island. This time he’s brought in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s top psychologist Agent Carver to try and get under the subject’s artificial skin…

The spies are in heated argument with Hawkeye when Yellowjacket breaks in, claiming to have murdered the Man of Many Sizes and demanding to take Goliath’s place on the team…

Nobody is fooled. Everyone recognises the abrasive stranger as Pym gone far off the deep end, but Carver prevents them from saying anything. She advises that he is clearly inches from being utterly incurable and devises a treatment to cure him which basically comprises “play along and don’t do anything to upset the crazy man”…

That even includes allowing Yellowjacket to kidnap the Wasp and agreeing to let him marry his hostage…

The wedding is held at Avengers Mansion and includes a Who’s Who of heroes along for the ride (The Fantastic Four, X-Men, Spider-Man, The Black Knight and Doctor Strange) but the scheme spirals out of control when The Circus of Crime – not privy to the details of the service – use the gathering as an opportunity to kill all America’s costumed champions in one go…

With Hawkeye and the blushing bride hostages and the first to be despatched, the deadly dilemma shocks Pym back to his rightest senses, but in the aftermath many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are butchered as Wakandan assassin Death Tiger gets ever closer to fulfilling his own mission of murder…

To cap off all the chaos, the still-at-large Super-Adaptoid also attacks, determined to expunge “race-traitor” The Vision who has perpetrated the ultimate betrayal by siding with inferior humanity and denying the innate superiority and inevitable ascension of mechanical and artificial lifeforms…

Politically savvy, wryly trenchant and compellingly action-packed, this extremely impressive Fights ‘n’ Tights chronicle is a superb addition/codicil to the annals of The Avengers and would serve as perfect comics vehicle for movie fans in search of a print-fix for their costumed crusader cravings…
© 2021 MARVEL.

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Shazam! The Golden Age of the World’s Mightiest Mortal


By Bill Parker & C.C. Beck, Roscoe Fawcett, Marcus Swayze, Pete Costanza, Otto Binder, Jack Binder, Mac Raboy, Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, Chad Grothkopf, Kurt Schaffenberger, and many & various: compiled & written by Chip Kidd and photographed by Geoff Spear (Abrams ComicArts/Harry N. Abrams, Inc.)
ISBN: 978-0-8109-9596-3 (2010 HB) 978-1-4197-3747-3 (2019 PB)

One of the most venerated and beloved characters in American comics was devised by Bill Parker & Charles Clarence Beck as part of a wave of opportunistic creativity following Superman’s debut in 1938. Although there were many similarities in the early years, the Fawcett Comics character moved swiftly and solidly into the realm of light entertainment -and even broad comedy – whilst, as the 1940s progressed the Man of Steel increasingly put whimsy aside in favour of action and drama.

Homeless orphan and thoroughly good kid Billy Batson was selected by an ancient wizard to battle injustice: granted the powers of six gods and mythical heroes. By speaking aloud the mage’s name – an acronym for the patrons Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury – Billy transformed from scrawny boy to brawny adult Captain Marvel.

At the height of his popularity, “the Big Red Cheese” significantly outsold The Man of Steel – published twice monthly and topping 14 million copies per month. Before eventually evolving his own affable personality the full-grown hero was a serious, bluff and rather characterless powerhouse, whilst alter ego Billy was the true star: a Horatio Alger archetype of impoverished, resourceful, boldly self-reliant youth overcoming impossible odds through gumption, grit and sheer determination…

However, as the decade moved on, tastes changed and sales slowed. A court case begun in 1941 by National Comics contesting copyright infringement was settled. Like many other superheroes, Cap disappeared, reduced to a fond memory for older fans. A big syndication success, he was missed all over the world…

In Britain, a reprint line had run for many years, so creator/publisher Mick Anglo had an avid audience and no product. His solution was to reimagine the franchise with atomic age hero Marvelman and Co. continuing to thrill readers well into the 1960s.

As America experienced another superhero boom-&-bust, the 1970s dawned with a shrinking industry and wide variety of comics genres servicing a base increasingly dependent on collectors and fans rather than casual or impulse buyers. DC needed sales and were prepared to look for them in unlikely places. Following a 1953 court settlement with Fawcett, DC ultimately secured the rights to Captain Marvel, his spun-off extended Family and attendant strips and characters.

Despite the actual name having been taken by Marvel Comics (via a circuitous route and quirky robotic hero published by Carl Burgos and M.F. Publications in 1967), the home of Superman opted for tapping into that discriminating, if aging, fanbase. In 1971, they licensed the dormant rights to the character stable (only fully buying them out in 1991) and two years later, riding a wave of national nostalgia on TV and in movies, DC resurrected and relaunched the entire beloved cast in their own kinder, weirder, completely segregated and separate universe.

To circumvent intellectual property clashes, they named the new/old title Shazam! (‘With One Magic Word…’): the unforgettable trigger phrase used by the majority of Marvels to transform to and from mortal form and a word that had entered the American language thanks to the success of the franchise (especially an excellent movie serial) the first time around.

Issue #1 carried a February 1973 cover-date and generated mixed reviews and unconvincing sales, but was pushed hard by DC. It even briefly scored the big prize in the publisher’s eyes. Adapted as live action Saturday morning TV series Shazam!, it ran three season (28 episodes) from 7th September 1974 to October 1976…

The comics are universally welcoming and wonderful and you should read them all, but we’re looking at a different aspect of the phenomenon here. Like any multi-media property, the Marvel Family franchise spawned tons of merchandise and this compendium sublimely showcases those tantalising collectables and examples of ephemera from the first 14 years – 1940-1953.

Most gems reproduced here come from the truly enviable personal collection of Harry Matesky as photographed by Geoff Spear (Batman Collected, The Peanuts Poster Collection, Mythology: The DC Art of Alex Ross). The multi-media melange is compiled, arranged and curated by frequent collaborator and acme and everyman of design fascinations and armchair indolences Chip Kidd (Cheese Monkeys, Batman: Death by Design, Only What’s Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts, Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design, Batmanga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan, Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits).

This celebration of comics’ true magic was first released in 2010 as an epic oversized (235 x 310mm) hardback jam-packed with 3D cutaways, gatefolds and other print technology “bells & whistles”, and re-released in paperback (260 x 190mm) to tie-in with the first modern Shazam movie in 2019.

It’s a virtual wonderland for anyone who’s still a kid inside (AKA all men), overflowing with letters from the Captain Marvel Club, dynamic blow-ups of key characters such as Dr Thaddeus Bodog Sivana, classic covers, early toys, models, games, action figures and even candid shots of happy kids in their Captain and Mary Marvel costumes.

In its heyday, the Captain Marvel Club boasted a membership topping 400,000, serviced by a steady stream of priceless – and exclusive – tat to acquire: buttons, watches, key chains, paper rockets, tin toys, figurines, clothing, patches, transfers and more. Its inclusive and commercially canny model was repeated by later stars like Mary Marvel and others.

These feature amidst a wealth of mouth-watering displays of old comics, covers, original art, movie posters, apparel, toys, games and far rarer items – like Fawcett’s outreach material for potential manufacturers and merchandising partners and in-house writing guidelines.

Publishing house Fawcett first gained prominence through an immensely well-received light entertainment magazine for WWI veterans. From Captain Billy’s Whiz-Bang they branched out into books and general interest magazines. Most successful publication – at least until Batson hit his stride – was ubiquitous boy’s building/activity bible Mechanix Illustrated. As the 1940s unfolded, scientific and engineering discipline and can-do demeanour underpinning MI suffused and informed both art and plots of Marvel Family titles.

On show here are long-lost treats like the Captain Marvel Magic Whistle (complete with packaging), secret codes and decoders, the Captain Marvel Magic Membership Card, gewgaws and gimcracks, house ads, prize competitions and editorials, interspersed with a terse but informative history of the company, the creators, characters and entire beguiling phenomenon,

The star and his spin-offs sparked a huge campaign of coordinated ancillary merchandising, especially once the Big Red Cheese made a spectacular leap to the silver screen in 12-part chapter play The Adventures of Captain Marvel. That luminous landmark provides some rousing stills featuring star Tom Tyler as the Good Captain…

As detailed in ‘Hey Kids! See Capt. Marvel in the Movies’, in 1940 Republic Pictures reached out to Detective Comics Incorporated with the notion of turning Superman into a movie serial. No deal was struck and a year later Republic catapulted Fawcett’s big gun onto screens and into history. This essay is augmented by biographies, lobby cards, posters from many countries, contemporary ads and write-ups from magazines and comics of the period.

The only complete comics yarn included here is a corker. In the formative years as the feature rocketed to the first rank of superhero superstars, there was a scramble to fill pages. Following his Whiz Comics residency and epic one-shot Special Edition Comics, the indomitable innocent was promoted to his own solo title, but with Beck and his studio overstretched, Captain Marvel Adventures #1 (cover-dated March 1941, and on sale from January 17th) was farmed out to up-and-coming whiz-kids Joe Simon & Jack Kirby. With inker Dick Briefer they produced the entire issue in a hurry from Beck and Parker’s guides. Apparently they did it in two weeks whilst finalising the launch of Captain America…

‘Captain Marvel versus Z’ remains a visually impressive action-drama with the irrepressible Sivana creating a hulking android brute designed to be the Captain’s equal. Despite numerous clashes and subsequent upgrades, after one last brutal knock-down, drag-out, Kirby-co-ordinated dust-up, it is apparent that Z isn’t…

The hero soon spawned sidekicks and assistants aplenty. The two most successful were Captain Marvel Junior and Mary Marvel who each have their own sections, replete with merch and memorabilia – both American made and from syndicating publishers who reprinted them around the world. There are also short sections devoted to other Fawcett stars Spy Smasher (who also had a Republic movie serial and club – the “Victory Battalion”) and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny.

Toys, stationary, puzzles and games include Captain Marvel Lightning Racing Cars (glorious tin toys!), Captain and Mary Marvel Wristwatches (plus ads and packaging), keychains, a Captain Marvel Fun Kit, Helicopter and Power Siren (“world’s mightiest whistle!”). There are images of Captain Marvel’s Radar Racer, Rocket Raider and Magic Eyes (all with some assembly required); a compass-ring, Shazam board game, 3-D Magic Picture, a jigsaw, paper “punch-out book, and ceramic figurines ready to illuminate in the Captain Marvel Adventures in Paint set.

Throwable toy Hoppy the FLYING Marvel Bunny also needs assembling before launch, as does his Musical Evening Miracle Toy of Today, and there are examples of ultra-rare velveteen stuffed dolls of both the rabbit and his human inspiration…

As well as painting and colouring books, pencils, plastic statuettes, buzz bomb paper planes and Christmas tree decorations, are projects and covers from all across the globe, like lead figures and assorted Pre-Mick Anglo comics from Britain, plus a (gloriously painted) trading card set from Spain. There’s even a bootleg trading card album set from Havana, Cuba, based on the 1941 Republic serial.

Ready to wear items include novelty shirts, braces, neckties and a cape; bean bags, tie-clips, beanie-hats, vinyl saddlebag, bike/wall pennants, “overseas style” hats and caps, skin tattoo and iron-on tee-shirt transfers, illustrated soap (!?), numerous Premium postcards, patches and badges with even Billy and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny proudly included amongst the regular costumed heroes…

Leasing his fame, the Captain appears in strip ads for Coola Cola and other salient sales points (illustrated by Costanza) and proudly confirms his patriotic zeal via many inspirational war-time covers and with the Comics Canteen! packs (comics distributed gratis by Fawcett to US servicemen in 1942).

The titanic tome terminates with an examination of the end as ‘Twilight of the Golden Age’ reveals details of the court settlement, and reviews extracts from trial transcripts.

All items cited here are merely the tip of an iceberg of fabulous stuff no fan could resist, and an evocation to the simple pleasure of youth, making this book an unparalleled package of pure weaponised nostalgia impossible to resist. So don’t…
© 2010, 2019 DC Comics. All rights reserved.

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The Phantom: The Complete Sundays Archive Volume Three 1945-1949


By Lee Falk, Ray Moore & Wilson McCoy: introduction by Daniel Herman (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-100-7 (HB/Digital edition)

Born Leon Harrison Gross, Lee Falk created the Ghost Who Walks at the request of his King Features Syndicate employers who were already making history, public headway and loads of money with his first strip sensation Mandrake the Magician. Although technically not the first ever costumed champion in comics, The Phantom became the prototype paladin to wear a skin-tight body-stocking and the first to have a mask with opaque eye-slits…

The generational champion debuted on February 17th 1936, in an extended sequence pitting him against an ancient global confederation of pirates. Falk wrote and drew the daily strip for the first two weeks before handing over illustration to artist Ray Moore. The spectacular and hugely influential Sunday feature began in May 1939.

For such a long-lived, influential series, in terms of compendia or graphic collections, The Phantom has been quite poorly served in the English language market (except for the Antipodes, where he has always been accorded the status of a pop culture god). Many companies have sought to collect strips from one of the longest continually running adventure serials in publishing history, but in no systematic or chronological order and never with any sustained success. That began to be rectified when archival specialists Hermes Press launched their curated collections…

This third edition is a lovely and large (229 x 330 mm) landscape hardback/digital tome, displaying a complete full colour Sunday per page. Released in March 2016, its 208 pages are stuffed with sumptuous visual goodies like panel and logo close-ups, comics covers and lots of original art and opens with publisher Daniel Herman’s ‘Introduction: The Sunday’s Continue…’ recapping all you need to know about the feature and disclosing how Wilson McCoy assumed the illustrator’s role from Ray Moore – and why nobody knows exactly when he did…

For those who came in late: 400 years previously, a British mariner survived an attack by pirates, and – after washing ashore on the African coast – swore on the skull of his father’s murderer to dedicate his life and that of his descendants to destroying all pirates and criminals. The Phantom fights evil and injustice from his fabulous lair deep in the jungles of Bengali. Throughout Africa and Asia he is known as the “Ghost Who Walks”…

His unchanging appearance and unswerving war against injustice led to his being considered an immortal avenger by the uneducated, credulous and wicked. Down the decades, one heroic son after another has inherited the task, fought and died in an unbroken family line, with the latest wearer of the mask indistinguishable from the first and proudly continuing the never-ending battle.

In his first published exploit the Phantom met and fell for wealthy American adventurer Diane Palmer and his passion for her was soon reciprocated and returned and she became a continuing presence in both iterations of the series as ally, partner, sounding board, a means of reader identification and naturally a plot pawn and perennial hostage to fortune.

Almost every saga featured powerful, capable and remarkably attractive women as both heroes and villains, and in opening tale ‘Queen Pera the Perfect’ (running from December 9th 1945 to March 17th 1946), Diana saw the tables turned…

The aforementioned ruler of remote but rich Karola was constrained to find a husband, and so sent her fanatical minions into the world to find a man worthy of her. They returned with a musical genius, celebrated fighter pilot, champion pugilist and cinema’s greatest lover, but wherever they went they heard legends of an incredible superman…

After The Phantom repeatedly refuses her men’s offer, and gives her stern lesson in manners, she responds by having him imprisoned in her dungeons until he sees sense, and this time it’s his true love who has to save the day…

Spanning March 24th to August 4th 1946, ‘King of Beasts’ sees the liberated champion retuned to Bengali in time for Diana to be unjustly imprisoned. A priceless pearl necklace has been stolen from a maharajah and nobody believes the story of who actually took it: not the police and certainly not American mobster Poison Ivy and his boys…

When The Phantom tries to engineer a jailbreak, he’s caught too and charged with being an accomplice, only for the true thief to free him and Diana by sending a pickpocketing monkey to unlock their cell. In the ensuing flight, Diana is snatched by the mobsters, who don’t believe a word about a hidden mastermind using trained beasts to burgle. That all changes when a trained troop of elephants bust into the bank and porcupines empty a packed casino for their masked master…

With chaos unleashed, The Phantom retrenches and calls in his own equine ally and canine corps. Mighty steed Hero and lupine assistant Devil soon track down the King of Beasts who is far from what anyone expected. However even after he’s handled, there’s still increasingly murderous Poison Ivy to deal with…

Another female fury debuts in ‘The Scarlet Sorceress’ (August 11th – December 22nd) as a royal visit to the Deep Woods of the Bandar People introduces little Princess Valerie and her grandfather the Rajah of Volara. The child will soon become a pawn in a wicked plot…

When the princess of neighbouring kingdom Wogu falls ill, a devious manipulator “prophesies ” that only golden-haired Valerie’s blood can save the ailing waif, prompting a kidnapping and a frantically fast response from the Ghost Who Walks. Not all the monstrous forces set against him can slow the Phantom, but after exposing the witch as a charlatan, the hero discovers that he’s fighting not a villain but another victim. Soon, however, his efforts save all involved and pacify two kingdoms…

December 29th 1946 to June 29th 1947 finds The Phantom once more battling to save Diana after the filthy rich and spoiled Potentate of Ptjar Prince Pepe abducts her to be his very best bride. Law and reason mean nothing to the repulsive despot and by the time the hero reaches the distant kingdom, she is beyond even the Ghost’s reach. His only recourse is to play Pepe’s game and in a dozen days complete ‘The 12 Tasks’ conceived to frustrate and humiliate the hero. However, wit and ingenuity married to his mighty physicality make short work of the impossible – such as capturing an invulnerable giant bandit, emptying a river of carnivorous fish, banishing every shark in the bay or stopping all crime for 24 hours – and despite Pepe’s cheating equivocations the final task changes the nation forever and for the better…

A return to jungle warfare and tribal feuding underpins ‘The Dragon God’ (July 26th to November 16th) as Diana’s interest in an ancient Wambesi idol presages the fire-breathing saurian coming to life and demanding its worshippers kill and plunder their neighbours the Ulangi. With “The Phantom’s Peace” broken, the Ghost Walks amongst them to re-establish order and quickly discovers white instigators and recovered wartime weaponry behind the uprising, but once begun war has its own momentum and tribal grudges run deep and burn forever…

With bloodshed ended, a change of pace and tone heralds the return of an appalling duo who had previously made life miserable for The Phantom. Spanning November 23rd 1947 to May16th 1948, ‘The Marshall Sisters’ sees over-privileged brats Lana and Greta return to Africa in a ruthless no-holds barred competition to seduce and wed the mighty jungle avenger. This is after their last attempt to land the ultimate trophy husband was foiled by Diana Palmer…

When allure, deception and blackmail all fail, the hellions even try shanghaiing and blunt force trauma to achieve their aims, but lose all control when the various thugs they hire hijack the caper…

A relatively short story running from May 23rd through September 5th follows, revealing how a long-running annual sporting contest devised by the original ancestral Phantom has served to ameliorate tribal tensions for four centuries. Although its dollar value is meaningless to the competitors who strive for pride and bragging rights alone, the gem-stuffed urn that acts as ‘The Phantom Trophy’ is an irresistible prize for cop-killing fugitives Spike and Grunt.

When they rope in more scallywags to swipe the prize from the previous holders/custodians, before it can be handed over to the new champions tribal war erupts. Although The Phantom hunts the thieves he might be too late as naked greed turns the rogues against each other…

The final sequence in this volume visits ‘The Haunted Castle’ (September 12th 1948 – February 13th 1949) as Diana goes exploring alone and is propelled into wild unexplored country. As The Phantom and Devil search for her, she wanders a lost valley whose people are enslaved by sinister wizard Great Moogoo who shrinks anyone who opposes him to the size of a plaster gnome and adds them to his terrifying garden…

As the lascivious sorcerer captures her, Diana’s man has tracked her to the stone citadel and begun a one-man siege that exposes his nefarious trickery and wrecks his powerbase…

Taken from America’s immediate post-war period, these brief encounters are bold, brash, uncomplicated fare, full of despicable rogues, lost kingdoms, savage tribes, dangerous but still redeemable dames and very bad guys, but thrillingly reassuring entertainment for all that. Just remember, different times have different values. If the kind of fare you’d encounter in a 1940s Tarzan movie or cop thriller might offend, you should consider carefully before starting this…

Finally rediscovered, these lost treasures are especially rewarding as the material is still fresh, entertaining and addictively compelling. However, even if it were only of historical value (or just printed for Australians – manic devotees of the implacable champion from the get-go) surely the Ghost Who Walks is worthy of a little of your time?
The Phantom® © 1945-1949 and 2016 King Features Syndicate, Inc. ® Hearst Holdings, Inc. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.