Category: Science Fiction

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The All-New Atom volume 2: Future/Past


By Gail Simone, Mike Norton, Eddy Barrows & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1568-2 (TPB)

Gail Simone (Wonder Woman; Batgirl; Secret Six; Red Sonja) is one of the best scripters of superhero stories in the business. She handles High Concept attention grabbers, gripping fight scenes and compelling pathos with elegant ease, but where she is truly unsurpassed is in the rounded depth of her characterisations. Combined with solid plotting, bravura whimsy and the sharpest, funniest dialogue money can buy, everything she touches becomes a thoroughly delightful “must-read” item.

That was never more ably demonstrated than in her run on the All-New Atom (most volumes of which remain stubbornly out of print and inexplicably unavailable in digital collections). In second volume Future/Past she continued deftly  detailing the trials and tribulations of a new incarnation of one of the Silver Age’s most enduring heroic brands, in the further adventures of neophyte college professor and scientific adventurer Ryan Choi.

After the tragic, horrific events of crossover epic Identity Crisis size-shifting physics professor Ray Palmer disappeared, leaving this world behind him. However, life – and academia – goes on, and his teaching chair at Ivy University was offered to a young prodigy who just happened to be Palmer’s pen-friend and close confidante: privy to his predecessor’s secrets ever since he was a child in Hong Kong.

Ivy Town has seen better days, however, and continues to go downhill. This collection – reprinting from March-July 2007 issues #7-11 of the much-missed comic book – returns to Ivy Town: a place that has seen better days. Everything continues to go downhill, and the college paradise is no longer the sedate place Palmer always made it sound. Neophyte hero Choi continues to expose a city plagued by temporal anomalies, warring tribes and supernatural freaks and to make matters even worse, the new Dean is an unctuous toad (and possibly a criminal), whilst Choi’s fellow science professors are a bizarre and unconventional band of truly brilliant loons…

The teeny-weenie thrills and chills resume here with a 2-parter illustrated by Mike Norton and Andy Owens. ‘The Man who Swallowed Eternity – The Energy of the Universe is Constant’ and concluding chapter ‘The Entropy of the Universe Tends to a Maximum’ reveal how the recurring time-hiccups that pepper Ivy Town go into overdrive, necessitating an unwelcome intervention from the Temporal police known as Linear Men. Choi’s reluctant attempts to solve the problem soon uncover a tragic secret that draws him uncomfortably closer to his missing mentor.

What’s follows is a gratifying change of pace and tone as the young professor returns to Hong Kong to rescue his sometime true love in ‘Jia.’ Limned by Eddy Barrows & Trevor Scott, the saga kicks off with ‘Her Name Meant Beauty’ as we learn some unpleasant truths about Ryan’s childhood…

‘Unwanted Advances’ show Choi that being a superhero can’t compensate for the girl he loves marrying the bully who made his life hell, and it’s even worse when said brute becomes a vengeful ghost trying to kill them both. Mercifully in ‘The Border Between’, ancient wisdom and unwelcome truths assist the hero in overcoming the supernatural odds…

The utterly enchanting (pre-The New 52) career of Ryan Choi was simultaneously funny, charming, stirring and incredibly addictive: moreover, his gently beguiling, so-skilfully orchestrated hero’s journey to the West was riddled with cunningly planted clues and hints which only made sense once the final volume ended – and Simone had the nerve and confidence to treat the entire venture as a fair-play mystery. The fun just never let up…

Even at this late stage, it is worth whatever effort it takes to follow the All-New Atom, matching wits with the writer and having huge amounts of fun along the way. What are you waiting for?
© 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Mega Robo Bros: Meltdown


By Neill Cameron with Abby Bulmer & Lisa Murphy (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-281-6 (TPB)

Just in time to keep the kids occupied for the summer break, here’s another sterling all-ages outing for Neill (Tamsin of the Deep, How to Make Awesome Comics, Pirates of Pangea) Cameron’s marvellous purpose-built paladins. This time the rambunctious Mega Robo Bros share more of their awesome adventures and growing pains – and even some Secret Origins – in a far darker and more violent tale than their previous fun fare…

It’s the Future!

In a London far cooler than ours, Alex and his younger brother Freddie are (sort of) typical kids: boisterous, fractious, eternally argumentative yet devoted to each other, and not too bothered that they’re adopted. It’s really no big deal for them that they were constructed by the mysterious Dr. Roboticus before he vanished, and are considered by those in the know as the most powerful – and only SENTIENT – robots on Earth.

Dad may be just your average old guy who makes lunch and does a bit of writing, but it’s recently become apparent that when not being a housewife Mum is a also a bit extraordinary. As surprisingly famous and renowned robotics boffin, Dr. Nita Sharma harbours some surprising secrets of her own…

All the same, life in the Sharma household is pretty normal. Freddie is insufferably exuberant and over-confident whilst Alex is at the age when self-doubt and anxiety begin to manifest. Of course, their parents’ other robot rescues can also be a bit of a trial. Programmed as a dog, baby triceratops Trikey is ok, but French-speaking deranged ape Monsieur Gorilla can be mighty confusing, whilst gloomily annoying, existentialist aquatic fowl Stupid Philosophy Penguin constantly quotes dead philosophers and makes most people rapidly consider self-harm or manic mayhem.

The boys have part-time jobs as super-secret agents, but aren’t very good at the clandestine part and now almost the entire world knows of them. Generally, however, it’s enough for the digital duo that their parents love them, even though they are a bit more of a handful than most kids. They live as normal a life as possible: going to human school, playing with human friends and hating homework. It’s all part of their “Mega Robo Routine”, combining dull lessons, actual fun, games-playing, watching TV and training in the covert combat caverns under R.A.I.D. HQ.

Usually, when a situation demands, the lads carry out missions for bossy Baroness Farooq: head of government agency Robotics Analysis Intelligence and Defence. They still believe it’s because they are infinitely smarter and more powerful than the Destroyer Mechs and other man-made minions she usually utilises. Of course, they’re on suspension from R.A.I.D. at the moment, due to the fallout and collateral damage of their last case…

Originally published in UK weekly comic The Phoenix, this revised, retooled and remastered saga opens as the bored, curfewed boys sneak into Mum’s workshop. Whilst defeating a reject robot rebellion sparked by artificial life activist the Caretaker, the Bros met monstrous, cruelly damaged droid Wolfram and learned that he might be their older brother…

Now they’re trying to break into Mum’s locked datafiles to learn the truth, and her part in their creation, as this saga opens with ‘Part 1: Fifteen Years Ago’. When Dr. Sharma catches the little perishers in the act, instead of punishment, she gives them full access.

What unfolds is a shocking story of when their mother was a young, pretty and brilliant roboticist who landed her dream job working beside incomparable (but weird) pioneering genius Dr. Leon Robertus. His astounding advances had earned him the unwelcome nickname Dr. Roboticus. Maybe that was what started pushing him away from humanity…

Over months, Nita grew into her job and eventually convinced Robertus to let her repurpose his individually superpowered prototypes into a rapid-response team for global emergencies. Mum used to be a superhero, leading manmade Rapid Response team the Super Robo Six! While saving lives with them she first met future husband Michael Mokeme who proudly took her name when they eventually wed…

So Dad was also present at the moment everything changed!

Robertus was astoundingly devoid of human empathy but – intrigued by the team’s acclaim and global acceptance – was inspired to create a new kind of autonomous robot. Wolfram was more powerful than any other construct, and also possessed certain foundational directives that allowed him to make choices and develop his own systems. He could think, like Alex and Freddy! Only, as it transpired, not quite…

When Robertus demoted Nita and made his new “child” leader of new Super Robo Seven, the result was an even more effective unit, until the day Wolfram’s three Directives clashed during a time-critical mission. Millions of humans paid the price for his confusion and hesitation…

In the aftermath, RAID was formed and sought to shut down Robertus and decommission Wolfram. When the superbot rejected their judgement, the agency deployed jets and missiles. Following a terrific struggle, they believed him destroyed. They were wrong…

…And while RAID was occupied, Roboticus vanished…

Story told, the amazed Robo Bros realise why Mum called the recently-returned Wolfram their brother. They are all unaware that the damaged, deranged droid is observing and has made a decision that will affect all humanity…

‘Part 2: Meltdown’ opens with an increase in casual human-on-robot abuse. Perhaps this triggers Wolfram’s final solution as Dad heads to the North Pole to interview chief scientist Professor Mahfouz spearheading an attempt to restore the polar ice cap with a colossal freezing machine.

Jötunn Base covers many miles and is carefully rebalancing the world’s climate, but has no defence when Wolfram arrives to reverse the chilling process to burn the Earth and drown humanity…

Alex and Freddy are making the best of their house arrest, playing a game with classmates Mira and Taia when news comes of the attack. Ordered again by Baroness Farooq to stay put and not help, they enlist the girls in an escape plan that takes them through the secret basement lab and far below London, using the abandoned transport tunnels beneath the city.

By the time the Bros reach Jötunn Base, Wolfram has already ruthlessly crushed the RAID force led by their friend Agent Susie Nichols and all that’s possible is to stop their determined and utterly unreasonable brother by any means necessary…

That grim task falls to “older” bro Alex, whilst Freddy works with Dad and Professor Mahfouz to repair and reprogram the giant freezer machine and stop the planet becoming a water world…

With humanity safe again the boys are well rewarded by Farooq, but completely unaware that an old enemy has ensured that the threat of Wolfram is not ended…

Crafted by Cameron and colouring assistant Alice Leclert, this rather more grim adventure still offers exceedingly engaging excitement and hearty hilarity, roaring along like an anti-gravity rollercoaster, offering thrills, chills, warmth, wit and incredible verve. Alex and Freddy are utterly authentic kids, irrespective of their artificial origins, and their antics strike exactly the right balance of future shock, family fun and bombastic superhero action to capture readers’ hearts and minds. What movies these tales would make!
Text and illustrations © Neill Cameron 2022. All rights reserved.

Mega Robo Bros Meltdown will be released on August 4th 2022 and is available for pre-order now.

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The Archangels of Vinea: Yoko Tsuno volume 14


By Roger Leloup, coloured by Studio Leonardo, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-438-0 (Album PB)

In 1970, indomitable intellectual adventurer and “electronics engineer” Yoko Tsuno began her career in Le Journal de Spirou. She is still delighting readers and making new fans to this day in astounding, all-action, excessively accessible adventures which are amongst the most intoxicating, absorbing and broad-ranging comics thrillers ever created.

The globe-girdling, space-&-time-spanning episodic epics starring the Japanese investigator were devised by monumentally multi-talented Belgian maestro Roger Leloup, who began his own solo career after working as a studio assistant and technical artist on Herge’s timeless Adventures of Tintin.

Compellingly told, superbly imaginative and – no matter how implausible the premise of any individual yarn may appear – always firmly grounded in hyper-realistic settings underpinned by authentic, unshakably believable technology and scientific principles, Leloup’s illustrated escapades were at the vanguard of a wave of strips revolutionising European comics.

That long-overdue sea-change heralded the rise of competent, clever, brave and formidably capable female protagonists taking their rightful places as heroic ideals; elevating Continental comics in the process. Unsurprisingly, these endeavours are as engaging and empowering now as they ever were, and none more so than the trials and tribulations of Miss Tsuno.

Her very first outings (the still unavailable Hold-up en hi-fi, La belle et la bête and Cap 351) were mere introductory vignettes before the superbly competent wanderer and her valiant but less able male comrades Pol Paris and Vic Van Steen properly hit their stride with premier full-length saga Le trio de l’étrange in 1971 with Le Journal de Spirou’s May 13th edition…

Yoko’s journeys include explosive exploits in exotic corners of our world, time-travelling jaunts and sinister deep-space sagas – like this one – where our terrestrial trouble-shooters toil beside the disaster-prone alien colonists of planet Vinea. Their chief contact and most trusted ally is Khany: a competent, commanding single mother who combines parenting her toddler Poky with saving worlds, leading her people and averting continual cosmic catastrophe…

There are 29 European albums to date (with #30 due for release in September) but only 16 translated into English thus far. Today’s tale debuted in 1983 as Les archanges de Vinéa, chronologically Tsuno’s thirteenth exploit and sixth co-starring the Vineans: a thrilling tale of discovery and ancient undying tyranny and evil…

In their first outing, Yoko, Vic and frivolous Pol discovered a pocket of long-dormant aliens hibernating for eons in the depths of the Earth. After freeing them from robotic subjugation, the valiant humans occasionally helped the alien refugees (who had fled their own planet two million years previously) rebuild their lost sciences. Ultimately, the humans accompanied the Vineans as they returned to their own star system and presumed-dead homeworld. As the migrants gradually rebuilt their decadent and much-debased former civilisation and culture, the trio became regular guests…

On this excursion, the humans are again exploring another reclaimed region of the recovering planet. In the millions of years the Vineans slept in the depths of Earth, their primary civilisation collapsed, and the planet they have reclaimed is much-changed with isolated pockets of the former changed beyond recognition… and usually lethally hostile to their returned descendents…

We open as Yoko and little Poky accompany Khany to a desolate island and interview a strange old hermit who has been sheltering a child from the past. Khany’s cautious efforts reveal a young boy in a hibernation pod for countless ages, and that the entre rig has been until very recently, underwater…

As they further question the crazed old woman who lives in constant dread of The God’s wrath, an atmospheric disturbance occurs, leading them to a fantastic machine thunderously drawing air down into the depths of the sea. When they fly over to investigate further, Kany is lost…

By the time Yoko and Poky land, primitive raiders have boarded the edifice as it starts to sink. From nowhere, a serene and calmly confidant Vinean Adonis appears, saving Yoko from being blasted by the barbaric raiders. As he and Poky are arrested he joins the group but does not interfere.

The newcomers are equipped with makeshift breathing gear and share it with the captives, dropping into the depths just as the edifice was. The sea-dwellers also use huge turtle-like sea-beasts and her enigmatic saviour – easily keeping pace with the raiders – appears to be equally amphibious…

Unwelcome but unmolested, the stranger keeps pace as the war party passes a shattered sunken city, and encounters fierce marine monsters that have been tamed by electronic devices clamped to their heads. It is a technology clearly far beyond the understanding of Yoko’s captors, and gradually she learns of a bizarre truth: these sea-Vineans are low caste workers in a lost subterranean city of evil that has survived submerged for millennia, ruled by a capricious, cruel immortal Queen. Hegora has the powers of a god and is just as implacable…

However, her diffident saviour and guardian is one of twenty undying supermen: “Archangels” set apart from and uncaring of the plight of ordinary beings. As Yoko soon discovers, her acquaintance has a ruthless, timeless agenda of his own…

Her life constantly imperilled as she seeks hostage Khany, Yoko learns the horrific secret of the subsea City of the Abyss, and why the Archangels have battled Hegora for so long: possession and control of thousands of hibernating children. The endless struggle ends as Yoko tips a delicate balance, uncovering the incredible secrets of the City’s past and before long, a cold war resolves into a battle of wills and vastly opposing moralities. In the end it’s Yoko who triumphs to impose a new regime on the sunken citadel…

Gripping and visually spectacular, The Archangels of Vinea combines hard science with tense drama and a soupcon of social criticism: delivering another terse, action-packed, sci fi thriller, once again magnified into magnificence by the astonishingly compelling and staggeringly detailed draughtsmanship and storytelling of Leloup and the indomitable integrity of Yoko Tsuno.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1983 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation 2019 © Cinebook Ltd.

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DC’s Greatest Detective Stories Ever Told


By Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, Gardner F. Fox, Mindy Newell, Mike W. Barr, Denny O’Neil, Andy Helfer, Rusty Wells, Creig Flessell, Carmine Infantino, Alan Davis, Paul Neary, Terry Beatty & Dick Giordano, Al Vey, E.R. Cruz, Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar, Mark Badger, Jim Aparo & Mike DeCarlo & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0594-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

Fundamental and definitive aspects of “detective stories” have been attributed to the Bible, ancient Greek dramas, One Thousand and One Nights and similarly compelling classical texts from China, India and other places, but the true genre of crime and mystery fiction really began with cheap printing and the rise of mass entertainment culture.

Detective stories are a subgenre wherein an investigation – by amateur or professional (active or retired) – into a legal felony or moral/social injustice. Like exploration/adventuring, fantasy, horror and science fiction, Detective Stories blossomed in white western societies in the mid-19th century: spreading from prose books and magazines to other entertainment media like plays and films, with early stars including C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Jules Maigret, Father Brown, Lord Peter Wimsey, Sexton Blake and Hercule Poirot. Tales aimed at youngsters generated their own sleuthing stars: Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and more

As comic strips developed, they also spawned detective champions like Hawkshaw, Dick Tracy, Charlie Chan, Kerry Drake ad infinitum: all contributing to a tidal wave of pulp fiction crimebusters that inspired true literary legends – Philip Marlow, Sam Spade, Simon Templar, Mike Hammer and so on…

Detective Comics #1 had a March 1937 cover-date and was the third and final anthology title devised by luckless pioneer Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. In 1935, the entrepreneur had seen the potential in Max Gaines’ new invention – the comic book – and reacted quickly, conceiving and releasing packages of all-new strips in New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine and its follow-up New Fun/New Adventure (which ultimately became Adventure Comics) under the banner of National Allied Publications.

These publications differed from similar prototype comics magazines which simply reprinted edited collations of established newspaper strips. However, these vanguard titles were as varied and undirected in content as any newspaper funnies page.

Detective Comics was different. Specialising solely in tales of crime and crimebusters, the initial roster included (amongst others) adventurer Speed Saunders, Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise, Gumshoe Gus and two series by a couple of kids from Cleveland named Siegel & Shuster: espionage agent Bart Regan and two-fisted shamus Slam Bradley…

Within two years the commercially unseasoned Wheeler-Nicholson had been forced out by his more adept business partners, and eventually his company grew into monolithic DC (for Detective Comics) Comics. Surviving a myriad of changes and temporary shifts of identity and aims, it’s still with us – albeit primarily as a vehicle for the breakthrough character who debuted in #27 (May 1939)…

Celebrating that quintessential connection and affiliation to the form, this slim tome gathers an unconventional array of sleuths and problem solvers, many not native to the parent title, but all offering a heady taste of what made the title great. Re-presenting material from Adventure Comics #51; Batman #441; Detective Comics #2, 329 & 572; Lois Lane #1-2; Secret Origins #40 and The Question #8 it spans August 1937 to November 1989: an epic package chronologically sampling the company’s connection and debt to the genre that truly started their ball rolling…’’

Sans preamble, we dive straight into action with early star Slam Bradley in his second ever case. ‘Skyscrapers of Death’ originated in the April 1937 cover-dated Detective Comics #2, (by Jerry – back when he still called himself “Jerome” – Siegel & Joe Shuster). It reveals how the abrasive, two-fisted gumshoe is framed for murder by a crooked Union boss. Slam and his assistant Shorty were a big draw in those early days: revelling in all the raw action and spectacle that would fire up his younger cousin Superman. The Bradley strip ran until October 1949, finally closing shop in Detective Comics #152.

Next up is quintessential pulp sleuth The Sandman who premiered in either Adventure Comics #40 July 1939 (two months after Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27) or two weeks earlier than that in New York World’s Fair Comics 1939, depending on which distribution records you choose to believe.

He was created and originally illustrated and scripted by multi-talented all-rounder Bert Christman, with assistance from Gardner F. Fox. Head utterly obscured by a gas-mask and slouch hat; caped, business-suited millionaire adventurer Wesley Dodds is a rugged playboy scientist cut from the radio drama/prose periodical mystery-men mould of The Shadow, Phantom Detective, Green Hornet, Lone Ranger, Spider, Avenger and so many more: all household names of early mass-entertainment.

Wielding a sleeping-gas gun and haunting the night hunting killers, thieves and spies, he was soon joined by plucky paramour Dian Belmont, before gradually losing readers’ interest and slipping from cover-spot to last feature in Adventure, just as the shadowy, morally ambiguous avengers he emulated also slipped from popularity in favour of gaudily clad glory-boys…

Alternately titled ‘The Pawn Broker’ in previous reprints, ‘The Van Leew Emeralds’ comes from Adventure Comics #51 (June 1940 by Fox & Creig Flessel): a fascinating mystery romp for the romantically-inclined crimebusters to solve in fine style and double-quick time…

In 1963 Julius Schwartz took editorial control of Batman and Detective Comics and finally found a home for a character who had been lying mostly fallow ever since his debut as a walk-on in The Flash #112 (April/May 1960). The Elongated Man was Ralph Dibny: a circus-performer who discovered an additive in soft drink Gingold which granted certain people increased muscular flexibility. Intrigued, he refined the chemical until he had a serum bestowing ability to stretch, bend and compress his body to an incredible degree. Then Ralph had to decide how to use his new powers…

Designed as a modern take on Jack Cole’s immensely popular Golden Age star Plastic Man, Dibny became a regular guest star/colleague for the Scarlet Speedster. He married vivacious debutante Sue Dibny and joined Flash’s battles against aliens and supervillains, but when the back-up spot opened in Detective Comics (previously held by Martian Manhunter since 1955 and only vacated because J’onn J’onzz was promoted to lead position in House of Mystery) Schwartz had Dibny slightly reconfigured as a flamboyant, fame-hungry, attention-seeking, brilliantly canny globe-trotting private eye solving mysteries for the sheer fun of it.

Aided by his equally smart but thoroughly grounded wife, the short tales were patterned on classic Thin Man filmic adventures of Nick and Norah Charles: blending clever, apparently impossible crimes and events with slick sleuthing, all garnished with the outré permutations and frantic physical antics first perfected by Cole…

Drenched in fanciful charm and sly dry wit, the complex yet uncomplicated sorties began in Detective #327 (May 1964) running until #371 (cover-dated January 1968). Crafted by Fox & Infantino – who inked himself in early episodes – this third outing has them heading for cowboy country to unravel the ‘Puzzle of the Purple Pony!’ (Detective Comics #329) by inadvertently playing cupid for a young couple hunting a gold mine before capturing a gang of murderous bandits with money and murder in mind.

Next up is a rare, completely serious outing for the oldest female lead in superhero comics. Although her role varied from patsy to comedy stooge, from jester to romantic ideal to eye-candy as the situation warranted, Lois Lane was always an investigative whirlwind.

Here in the dying moments of the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity, scripter Mindy Newell & artist Gray Morrow found their 4-issue miniseries scrunched into two double-length issues (August-September 1986,with that notorious “Superman’s Girl Friend…” strap line thankfully dropped) as Lois Lane #1-2, scrupulously, meticulously, obsessively, and ultimately unsuccessfully tried to bring a national crisis in missing children to the public’s attention in ‘When it Rains, God is Crying’.

Devoid of superhero involvement, the regular Superman cast are drawn into a polemical story exposing the extent of child abduction, the repercussions of recovering victims – dead or otherwise – and official responses in ‘Ignorance Was Bliss’, ‘Dark Realities’, ‘Quicksand’ and ‘Bless the Child’ after Lois becomes increasingly driven to solve the mystery of an unidentified child found dead in Metropolis. Refusing to accept the horrific toll of disappearances she uncovers, the traumatised reporter puts her life and career on the line to find answers nobody seems willing to hear…

From painful reality we fold back into fantastic fantasy as anniversary issue Detective Comics #572 (March 1987) unites Batman, second Robin Jason Todd, Elongated Man, Slam Bradley and Sherlock Holmes in a hunt for ‘The Doomsday Book’, courtesy of scripter by Mike W, Barr, Alan Davis & Paul Neary, Terry Beatty & Dick Giordano, Infantino & Al Vey & ER Cruz.

The story begins with the descendent of infamous Professor Moriarty enacting a century old scheme, countered by each hero in a solo turn before all leads connect them to a certain British castle and a manic climactic confrontation…

In the gritty post-Crisis reality, Denny O’Neil, Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar retooled Steve Ditko’s ultimate lone agent of justice into a philosophical force of nature, relentless in his pursuit of answers.

An ordinary man pushed to the edge by his obsessions, Vic Sage used his fists and a mask that makes him look faceless to secure truth and justice whenever normal journalistic methods failed. Here the remorseless Question prowls Hub City hunting the ‘Mikado’ (The Question #8, September 1987): a good man driven by the daily horrors of the city to take action, against villains and hypocrites, making his punishments fit the crime…

In the years when superheroes were in retreat and considered too foolish for readers. DC launched Rex the Wonder Dog, who solved crimes, fought dinosaurs and saved the world. In issue 4 (July/August 1952), a back-up feature launched. Written by John Broome, Bobo was Detective Chimp: a Florida-based stalwart who was assistant and deputy to the local sheriff. He cracked many cases and was extremely popular among certain types of fan. He remains so and in Secret Origins #40 (May 1989) finally enjoyed ‘The Origin of Detective Chimp’ thanks to Mark Badger Andy Helfer & Rusty Wells. Madcap and hilarious, it’s a wild ride but has been superseded in later years by other, more quasi rational tales. Nevertheless, an ape solving crimes is a sure-fire winner as many other hirsute DC gumshoes could attest…

This eclectic selection closes with the middle chapter of a landmark crossover tale. Crafted by Marv Wolfman, Jim Aparo & Mike DeCarlo, ‘Parallel Line’ comes from Batman #441 (November 1989) the third chapter of the Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying arc introducing third Robin Tim Drake.

After original Robin Dick Grayson’s departure, the Dark Knight worked solo until he caught a streetwise urchin stealing the Batmobile’s tires. This lost boy was Jason Todd, whose short but stellar career as the Boy Wonder was fatally tainted by his impetuosity, tragic links to one of the hero’s most unpredictable foes and shocking death. The trauma of losing his comrade forced Batman to re-examine his own origins and methods, becoming darker still..

After a period of increasingly undisciplined encounters Batman was on the edge of losing not just his focus but also his ethics and life: seemingly suicidal on frequent forays into the night. Interventions from his few friends and associates had proved ineffectual. Something drastic had to happen if the Dark Knight was to be salvaged.

Luckily there was an opening for a sidekick…

The crossover tale originally appeared in Batman #440-442 and New Teen Titans #60-61 (all plotted by Wolfman & George Pérez) and a new character entered the lives of the extended Batman Family; a remarkable child who would reshape the DC Universe.

‘Parallel Lines’ unravels the enigma of Tim Drake, who as a toddler was in the audience the night the Flying Graysons were murdered. Tim was an infant prodigy, and when, some months later he saw new hero Robin perform the same acrobatic stunts as Dick Grayson, he instantly deduced who the Boy Wonder was – and by extrapolation, the identity of Batman.

A passionate fan, Drake followed the Dynamic Duo’s exploits for a decade: noting every case and detail. He knew when Jason became Robin and was moved to act when his death triggered Batman’s increasing instability. Taking it upon himself to fix his broken heroes, Tim tried to convince the “retired” Grayson to became Robin once more – but fate had other plans…

Eccentrically engaging, these tales are the merest hint of the wonders locked in DC’s vaults of fun and wonder. Hopefully, it’s also simply the start of a long and vibrant caseload of recovered mysteries
© 1937, 1940, 1964, 1986, 1987, 1989, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Vimanarama


By Grant Morrison & Philip Bond (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0496-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

South Asian Heritage Month (SAHM) starts today, running, as it does every year, from 18th July to 17th August. We’ll be dropping the occasional new and old review that might be of added significance over that period and probably beyond if I can find enough books that qualify through content or creators. Let’s start with a certifiable classic…

Superbly aided and abetted by the brilliant art of Philip Bond, Grant Morrison’s classic modern theological soap opera fantasy Vimanarama is set in and around an “open all hours” corner shop in Bradford.

Here second son Ali is fretting because his arranged bride is due to arrive any moment. His future happiness and life’s success or failure is tied to a girl he has never even met but fears that he is utterly unsuited for and will inevitably disappoint. Therefore, he really hasn’t got time to worry about the massive hole that has opened up under the shop, or brother Omar’s severe injuries from falling down it, or even that the baby has wandered into it and found a lost outpost of Atlantis.

Forced to explore the incredible ancient and remarkably well-preserved under-Earth mega-metropolis, Ali is, however, pretty impressed by the very capable and newly-arrived Sophia. His intended bride has made her own way to the shop, and also sought to find the toddler… She’s beside Ali when the savage techno-demons – who had slumbered there for millennia – awake and escape, intent on undoing creation. She helps him awaken the godly Ultrahadeen. …And she’s beautiful.

The problem is that the leader of these lordly heroes instantly loves Sophia too, which could drastically impinge on the whole saving humanity thing, as well as interfering with Ali’s now eagerly anticipated nuptials. The god-like Ben Rama is really tall, really beautiful, and, let’s not forget, a god.

How the world is saved and Ali gets what he deserves is a gloriously exuberant romp, bright, colourful and very, very funny. I haven’t heard a cool media term to pigeon-hole this sort of cross culture comic with, and I’m not going to use any form of “Bollywood” derivative. You should just read this and make one up yourself. Or, if not that, you should just read this.

This very Vedic epic was originally seen as a 3-issue miniseries in 2005 and first collected as book a year later. The story is also available as half of a graphic double bill with Morrison & Bond’s anarchically surreal social comedy Kill Your Boyfriend. When I review that soon , you can either reread the above review again or just ignore it. As ever in this Cycle of Existence, the choice is yours (although our assorted destinies are already written)…
© 2005 Grant Morrison & Philip Bond. All Rights Reserved.

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Cyclops volume 1: Starstruck


By Greg Rucka, Russell Dauterman, Carmen Carnero, Terry Pallot & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9075-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

When mutant genius Henry McCoy learned he was dying, he used time-travel tech in a last-ditch attempt to give his life meaning. Seeking to prevent an inter-species war, he brought the young, naive X-Men of his own youth into the future to reason with his radicalised former comrade Scott Summers, praying the still idealistic and hopeful teens could divert Mutant Enemy Terrorist No. 1 from his path of doctrinaire madness…

The gamble paid off in all the wrong ways. Rather than shocking modern day Cyclops back to his senses, the confrontation hardened the renegade’s heart and strengthened his resolve. Moreover, after McCoy the younger somehow cured his older self, he and the rest of the X-Kids were trapped in their own future and began gradually defecting to the fundamentalist team…

Eventually, the temporally misplaced First Class all ended up living with the elder Cyclops’ crew, but everything changed after Gladiator of the Shi’ar realised that Jean Grey AKA Marvel Girl – and future host of the cosmic force known as the Phoenix – was back. The alien overlord rashly attempted to abduct and execute her for the crimes of her older self…

The insane pre-emptive punishment plan was foiled by an assembly of X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy and intergalactic buccaneers Hepzibah, Ch’od,  Raza Longknife and insectoid medical wizard Sikorsky – collectively known as The Starjammers.

During that cosmic conflict, 16-year-old Scott met his believed-dead dad Christopher Summers, now called Corsair and undisputed leader of the cosmic privateers. When the mutant heroes returned to Earth, Scott chose to remain in space with the father he had spent most of his brief life assuming killed in a plane crash…

Scripted by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Russell Dauterman, Carmen Carnero & Terry Pallot, stellar saga Starstruck collects issues #1-5 of Cyclops: (July-November 2014), following the chronal castaway to the ends of the universe and even further into uncharted emotional territory…

The story begins as the still shell-shocked teen spends some time in hard vacuum with his dad’s exotic paramour Hepzibah. Together they are testing his new spacesuit, which allows him to fire his fearsome optic blasts safely through his helmet. That and reminiscing about how he got here and revelling in the sheer majesty of the intergalactic firmament, of course…

For most of his career Scott Summers has been capable and competent but also dour, grim, despondent and simply no fun at all. Here, however, we get to see the true hero he always was, whilst also following a nervous, unsure kid hungry for affirmation and still capable of ingenuous wide-eyed wonder.

That’s never more ably demonstrated than when his attempts to write a letter to Jean (the girl everybody in the future tells him he will marry and lose) are interrupted by an attack on the ship. The Starjammers are wanted by almost every empire and ruling authority in the universe, but this ambush by the scurrilous Brotherhood of Badoon is easily repulsed and only results in the freebooters capturing their attackers’ vessel primarily intact…

Not so easily handled is the growing gulf between Scott and Corsair. The boy simply cannot accept why his father would allow him – and indeed his future self – to believe he was dead for decades…

The grizzled star-pirate thinks he has a solution. Giving Scott a sword liberated from the vessel (apparently a crucial piece of kit for any space-farer regularly indulging in close combat) Corsair suggests a father-and-son vacation: a few months tooling around the galaxies in their newest prize, just getting to know each other…

At first the grand tour is all mind-bending exploration and eye-popping alien encounters, but eventually Scott starts seeing a disturbing pattern to Corsair’s actions and arrives at a ghastly conclusion. His dad is a drug addict and their numerous stopovers in quirky cosmic bazaars and seamy sidereal marketplaces are just opportunities to restock his personal pharmacopoeia…

One such jaunt introduces the kid to unlikely barkeeper/crimelord Baroque and leads Scott into a potentially life-changing VR encounter with a svelte and sexy alien temptress named Vass. Sadly, anything he might have learned is promptly forgotten when a merciless multi-species band of bounty hunters corners the father-&-son team.

These wily thief-takers are utterly unprepared for Cyclops’ optic blasts, however, and the humans get away relatively unscathed… except for Corsair’s latest “stash”…

The next crisis occurs soon after as the Badoon ship catastrophically malfunctions, stranding them on an isolated planetoid. Painfully scouring through crash wreckage later, Scott discovers a tracking device – now destroyed – and finally confronts his father about his addiction.

He is doubly appalled when Corsair shamefully reveals that rather than buying narcotics, he’s been visiting every criminal dive in creation to score universally-proscribed nanite tech: the only thing currently keeping him alive…

Stranded on a primitive mudball filled with predators becoming increasingly less cautious and more hungrily curious, Scott at last learns of his unsuspected brother Vulcan: a mutant who seized control of the Shi’ar Empire, sparked intergalactic wars and killed their father…

Of course, his devoted comrades refused to leave Corsair dead, and petitioned enigmatic cult the Shrouded to restore him. The cloaked wonders succeeded, but their cure required constant and illicit maintenance…

Days pass and the last dregs of the contraband chemicals are used, whilst fading father and estranged son grow closer: to the point where they unite to deal with the voracious bird-things stalking them. As Corsair impatiently strives to teach his son everything he’ll need to survive the decades he might be alone on the planetoid, the boy enacts a desperate scheme to save them both. The first step is repairing that fractured tracking device and luring the bounty hunters to their current location…

Everything goes according to plan and the hunters become the hunted, but at a critical moment Scott, seemingly swayed by the blandishments of the mercenaries’ female slave, sells his own dad out.

What happens next proves the boy hero’s astonishing tactical genius and saves everyone’s lives – if not necessarily their honour…

Heart-warming, thrilling, funny and astoundingly action-packed, Cyclops: Starstruck combines cosmic intrigue and dashing derring-do with solid characterisation and wild blue yonder wonderment, and will delight any fan of cosmically light-hearted Marvel Movies like Guardians of the Galaxy or Thor: Ragnarok.

What more could any wide-eyed, entertainment-starved child of the wondering stars want?
© 2014 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Lost Cat


By Jason, translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-009-6 (HB/Digital)

A global star among comics cognoscenti, coining numerous major awards from all over the planet, Jason is secretly John Arne Saeterrøy. Born in Molde, Norway in 1965, he’s been an international cartoon superstar since 1995 when his first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won that year’s Sproing Award (Norway’s biggest comics prize). He won another Sproing in 2001 for his series Mjau Mjau and in 2002 turned almost exclusively to producing graphic novels.

The stylised artwork is delivered in formalised page layouts rendered in a minimalist take on Hergé’s Claire Ligne style: solid blacks, thick outlines and settings of seductive simplicity – augmented here by mesmerising hints in earth-tones enhancing the hard, moody, suspenseful and utterly engrossing appreciation of the ambience of France’s Cinema Verité movement.

Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, using beastly and unnatural repertory players to gently pose eternal questions about basic human needs in a soft but relentless quest for answers.

That you don’t ever notice the deep stuff because of clever gags and safe, familiar “funny-animal” characters should indicate just how good a cartoonist/storyteller he is. This would be a terrific yarn even without Jason’s understated art, but in combination with his dead-on, deadpan pastiche of The Big Sleep and other movies, the result is outrageous narrative dynamite.

This gem sees the artist’s return to full length tales (160 pages) after some years producing shorter album-style pieces, and in Lost Cat he lends his uniquely laconic anthropomorphic art-stylings to a surprisingly edgy, delicious tale of lost loves, scurrilous misdeeds and uncanny sinister secrets.

This a scarily evocative romantic puzzle with its roots in Raymond Chandler mysteries, tipping a slouched hat to Hollywood Noir, B-Movie sci-fi and psychologically underpinned melodramas, with Jason’s traditionally wordless primal art supplemented by sparse and spartan “Private Eye” dialogue, enhanced to a macabre degree by solid cartooning and skilled use of silence and moment.

This sly and beguiling detective story opens as seedy shamus Dan Delon – a specialist in tawdry divorce cases – sees a poster about a lost cat and, upon accidentally encountering the missing moggy, returns it to solitary, sombre yet oddly alluring bookshop proprietor Charlotte.

The two lonely people enjoy a coffee and stilted conversation before Dan departs, but in his head his calm, pleasant night with the quiet lady continues to unfold…

Life goes on, but even after taking on a big case – tracking the lost nude painting of a rich man’s long-gone inamorata – Delon just cannot get Charlotte out of his mind. Despite knowing better, he inserts himself into the woman’s staid, sedate life and slowly realises that their pleasant evening together was a complete tissue of lies.

Moreover, his grail-like quest for the truth leads the dowdy gumshoe into deadly danger and shocking revelations of Earth-shaking consequences…

Utilising with devastating effect that self-same quality of cold, bleak yet perfectly harnessed stillness which makes Scandinavian crime dramas such compelling, addictive fare, Lost Cat resonates with the artist’s favourite themes and shines with his visual dexterity, disclosing a decidedly different slant on secrets and obsessions, in a tale strictly for adults which nonetheless allows us to look at the world through wide-open young eyes.
All characters, stories and artwork © 2013 Jason. All rights reserved.

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Orbital volume 3 & 4: Nomads & Ravages


By Serge Pellé & Sylvain Runberg, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-080-1 & 978-1-84918-088-7 (Album PBs/Digital Editions)

French science fiction always delivers amazing style and panache even when the underlying premise might be less than original. In Serge Pellé & Sylvain Runberg’s beautiful Orbital sequence, an initially-mismatched pair of Diplomatic Peacekeeper agents are deployed to quell incipient brushfire wars and mediate internal pressures within a vast pan-species intergalactic alliance, but the hoary “buddy-movie” format is a mere skeleton for eye-popping missions, star-spanning intrigue and intense personal interactions. These are always handled with deft wit and great imagination, never failing to carry the reader along in a blaze of fantastic fun…

What you need to know: after decades of pariah-status and intergalactic exclusion, Earth in the 23rd century has finally been allowed to join a vast Confederation of interstellar civilisations, despite grave and abiding concerns about humanity’s aggressive nature and xenophobic tendencies.

A militant “Isolationist” faction on Earth had moved from politics to horrific terrorism in the immediate run-up to humanity’s formal induction: committing atrocities both on Earth and far distant worlds where mankind had developed colonies and mining bases thanks to misused Confederation technology. Ultimately, the “Isos” failed to prevent our species’ inclusion in the pan-galactic union.

One particular and abiding Confederation concern was the way humans had treated the ancient alien civilisation of the Sandjarrs, whose world was previously invaded in Earth’s all-consuming drive for territory and exploitable resources. Subsequent human atrocities almost exterminated the stoic, pacifistic desert creatures…

Interworld Diplomatic Office operatives are assigned in pairs to troubleshoot throughout the stars, defusing crises before they become flashpoints of violence. IDO’s first human recruit Caleb Swany had been controversially teamed with Sandjarr Mezoke Izzua: a situation clearly designed as a high-profile political stunt, as was their initial mission: convincing an Earth mining colony to surrender a profitable planetary mining industry back to the aliens who actually own the moon Senestem it was situated on…

Moreover, even though Earth is a now a Confederation member, with humans well-placed in all branches of interstellar service, the Isolationist cause is still deeply cherished by many, needing only the slightest spark to reignite…

Nomades was originally released continentally in 2009, and as third translated Cinebook album Orbital: Nomads (2011) picks up soon after Caleb and Mezoke’s hard-won, brutally pragmatic solution was implemented. The Galactic Great-and-Good have since voyaged to Earth to very publicly celebrate and affirm the end of Human/Sandjarr hostilities in a series of spectacular Reconciliation Ceremonies, but the political glad-handing looks to be upstaged by another interspecies crisis…

One of the greatest benefits of induction into The Confederation has been the infusion of alien technologies which have cleansed and reinvigorated the ecosystem of long-abused and much-polluted Earth. Now however, an incident occurs in the newly restocked, again-abundant seas and mangrove swamps around Malaysia. The inexplicable death of millions of cloned and released sea species leads to a bloody clash between local human fishermen and an previously-unsuspected enclave of nomadic space-gypsies: The Rapakhun…

In Kuala Lumpur, Caleb is reminiscing with his old mentor Hector Ulrich – instrumental in brokering Earth into the Confederation and Swany into the Interworld Diplomatic Office – when news arrives of the trouble.

This will be tricky: much of mankind is still passively anti-alien, and local economies are fragile, whilst the Rapakhun are apparently no innocent angels. Many stellar civilisations despise them as shiftless, flighty wanderers who go where they please, refusing to be represented in or on Confederation Councils. Worst of all, they practice cannibalism…

By the time Caleb and Mezoke arrive on scene, events have escalated and tensions heightened to fever pitch, with a committee of human fishermen facing off against Rapakhun spokeswoman Alkuun.

The unwanted ancient tries to explain that the problem was simply an escaped Elokarn. The wanderers’ gigantic domesticated aquatic beasts have all been excessively agitated since arriving on Earth…

With the Diplomatic Agents assuring all parties that tests are underway to ascertain not only why the Elokarn went crazy but also why fish are dying off again, the situation seems contained, but when Alkuun invites the human guests to join in their holy consumption of a still-living and eager Rapakhun male, all the attendant peacemakers are physically revolted. Once seen, no amount of explanation that the willing, deeply spiritual and hugely prestigious sacrifice is meant to strengthen and invigorate the life force of Earth can offset that grisly sight…

Returning to Kuala Lumpur, Mezoke and Caleb are anxious. Although the Malaysian Navy are policing the area, the IDO agents know full well the tenuous trust humans place in any alien species, but their attention is unfortunately diverted by the sudden arrival of Caleb’s old friend Lukas Vesely.

The scrawny teen of his youth has become a hulking, good-natured member of Ulrich’s security force who seems very keen to relive the good old days. Caleb’s memories, however, can’t get past what he, little sister Kristina and Lukas used to do as teen vigilantes in Prague, mercilessly wreaking misguided vengeance upon isolationists like the ones who assassinated the Swany’s parents. In Caleb’s head, it’s just like yesterday…

In the mangrove swamps, fish are still dying, and now so are plants. When another group of fisherman get too close to the agreed-upon neutral zone, Ulrich’s forces overreact and the intruders perish, an event twisted by certain members of the outraged Malaysian Navy observers…

Despite and because of the distracting presence of Confederate supremo Evona Toot, Caleb and Mezoke are fully occupied as the delegation of Sandjarr dignitaries arrive. With a hungry pack of journalists eager to build and detonate a media-storm, the DA’s must navigate and manage the aloof, stand-offish guests of honour even though they somehow provoke fellow Sandjarr Mezoke to surly silence…

Soon, grim reports from Senestem take the shine off the supposed triumphant solution, while test results from the swamps all prove inconclusive. No contamination of any sort killed the wildlife: the culprit is some unknown form of energy…

Over gender-opaque Mezoke’s objections, Caleb seeks to downplay and even suppress the concatenation of bad news to keep the Reconciliation Ceremonies alive, until she/he/it/they reveals a shocking truth about the Sandjarr’s status prior to joining IDO…

Reports of human deaths are leaked to the populace and a “patriotic” clique in the Navy colludes to look the other way if any fishermen feel like dealing with the nomads once and for all…

By the time the IDO agents react to another human incursion, appalling bloodshed has ceased and – wading through a site of unspeakable carnage – Caleb and Mezuke decide to split up. The rapidly destabilising situation on Earth must be carefully managed, but most important is urgently sending an investigation team to the Rapakhun’s stopover world to learn exactly what the wanderers are capable of…

To Be Continued…

Fast-paced, action-packed, gritty space-opera with delightfully complex sub-plots fuelled by political intrigue and infighting elevates this tale to lofty and exotic heights, confirming Orbital as a series well worth your time and attention…

 

Ravages (Orbital volume 4) sees mismatched Diplomatic Peacekeeper agents conclude the sinister saga begun in Orbital: Nomads: subtly tweaking and deftly twisting a cunning skein of far-flung, futuristic political intrigue as the situation devolves into a full-on horror story of relentless alien terror…

Released in France in 2010, Orbital: Ravages is the fourth translated Cinebook album, picking up as Caleb and Mezoke flounder whilst a simple but tedious state function rapidly becomes an interspecies crisis…

The Galactic glitterati are on Earth to confirm the end of Human/Sandjarr hostilities in spectacular Reconciliation Ceremonies, but the cosmic bigwigs are only really concerned with how their precious Reconciliation plays out on their own worlds. The  political glad-handing looked likely to implode after Kuala Lumpur’s human fisherman clashed with a hitherto unsuspected enclave of Rapakhun: cannibalistic space gypsies…

Confederation’s technologies had cleansed and reinvigorated Earth’s gravely wounded, ecosystem, but the restocked, seas and swamps around Malaysia are suddenly blighted by the mass extinction of millions of valuable fish. Humans blame the uninvited aliens, demanding the ODI Agents forcefully intervene. Swany and Mezoke swiftly comply, promising the truth will be found and shared.

This might be tricky: much of mankind remains staunchly anti-alien, local economies are fragile and the Rapakhun’s bad reputation across Confederation space might not be simple prejudice…

With the Agents occupied babysitting the Sandjarr delegation, fish and fisherman continue to die and the Malaysian Navy can no longer be trusted. As Caleb downplays – and even tries to suppress – bad news in hope of keeping the Ceremonies alive, the situation provokes a “patriotic” Navy clique to look the other way when locals try to deal with the nomads once and for all…

Riots and bloodshed erupt and the IDO operatives realise they must know more about the Rapakhun: someone has to visit their last port of call and see what they are really capable of…

The saga resumes in Kuala Lumpur’s grimily cosmopolitan Shah Alam district where human and alien scrap-merchants work side by side, salvaging materials and tech from junked starships. As tensions rise everywhere, one greedy toiler makes a grisly discovery and dies horribly in exactly the same manner as the fishermen in the distant swamps…

Caleb – over Mezoke’s protests – is in full-spin-control mode; weaving a pack of placatory lies to the journalists of uncounted watching worlds. Unable to leave Earth mid-crisis, the IDO agents recruited enigmatic human star-pilot Nina and her secretly-sentient Neuronome ship Angus to canvas distant world Dehadato, last refuge of the Rapakhun. Before they can report back a vast riot breaks out in Shah Alam…

The Fishermen’s Quarter is ablaze, a war-zone exploding with scared and angry humans and aliens, but when Caleb, Mezoke and Hector Ulrich overfly the scene of chaos and looting, they are brought down by rioters and must fight their way out…

Thanks to IDO intervention, canny bargaining, judicious bribery by city officials and an unlikely detente between the extraterrestrial scrap merchants and the ambitious new spokesman of the Fisherman’s Federation, the situation is soon damped down and all sides again tensely wait for answers…

On Dehadato, Nina and Angus explore the Rapakhun’s last campsite, uncovering scenes of horrific devastation, even as in Kuala Lumpur, Confederation leaders – terrified the situation is becoming politically untenable – consider cutting their losses and cancelling the Ceremonies…

It takes all Caleb’s strident persuasiveness to convince them – and Mezoke – to continue the itinerary of events. However, he gets a first inkling that they might be right when he’s informed a body has been found in the city, killed in the same extreme and inexplicable manner as the various swamp casualties…

On Dehadato, Nina and Angus rescue a poacher from the folly of his actions in pursuing monstrous, colossal and officially-protected Nargovals. As the Sülfir recovers, he imparts snippets of information about the Rapakhun and an incredible beast which infested the planet before the stellar nomads left. The doughty hunter only tried for the unstoppable leviathans which killed his entire poaching team after first ensuring there were no more Varosash on Dehadato, so the primordial predator must have departed with the gypsy cannibals…

Caleb has already concluded the Rapakhun are behind his problems, but as he stalks them through the swamps, word comes from Nina that he’s wrong, and it’s probably already be too late for the planet…

At Kuala Lumpur’s biggest sports arena, thousands of avid Speedball fans – human and otherwise – are packed together; reaching a fever pitch of excitement and unaware a hideous invisible killer – the very essence of all mankind’s fear of alien monsters – is ready to consume them all. Can disunited Caleb and Mezoke and their pitifully few allies destroy the invisible rapacious threat before it ends humanity? Or maybe there’s is hope as Nina and the Sülfir think they have a plan. Risky and probably fatal, but a plan nonetheless…

Fast-paced, action-packed, gritty and spectacular, Ravages offers pure high-octane space-opera, with deliciously complex sub-plots fuelled by political intrigue and a vast unexplored canvas tantalising readers at very moment.

One of the most beguiling sci fi strips of all time, Orbital is a delight every fan of the future should indulge in…
Original editions © Dupuis 2009, 2010 by Runberg & Pellé. All rights reserved. These editions published 2011 by Cinebook Ltd.

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OMAC – One Man Army Corps by Jack Kirby


By Jack Kirby with D. Bruce Berry, Mike Royer & various (DC)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-1026-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

There’s a magnificent abundance of Jack Kirby collections around these days – but still not everything, so I reserve my right carrying on whining…

This slim trade paperback/digital collection re-presents possibly his boldest, most bombastic and most heartfelt creation after the comics landmark that was his Fourth World Cycle.

Famed for larger than life characters and gigantic, cosmic imaginings, “King” Kirby was an astute, spiritual man who had lived through poverty, gangsterism, the Depression and World War II. He experienced Pre-War privation, Post-War optimism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and the birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures, but always looked to the future while understanding human nature intimately. In OMAC: One Man Army Corps, he gave his darkest assumptions and prognostications free rein, and his “World That’s Coming” has proved far too close to the World we’re frantically trying to escape now…

In 1974, with his newest creations inexplicably tanking at DC, Kirby tentatively considered a return to Marvel, but – ever the consummate professional – he scrupulously carried out every detail of an increasingly onerous and emotionally unrewarding DC contract. When The Demon was cancelled, the King needed another title to maintain his Herculean commitments (Jack was legally obliged to deliver 15 completed pages of art and story per week!) and returned to an idea he had shelved in 1968.

That was to re-interpret Captain America for a possible future where all Kirby’s direst suspicions and fears could be made manifest. In 1974 he revisited those anxieties: producing a nightmare scenario that demanded not a hero but a warrior.

Dubbing his Day-After-Tomorrow dystopia “The World That’s Coming”, Kirby let his mind run free – and scared – to birth a frighteningly close appreciation of our “Now”, where science and wealth have outstripped compassion and reason, and humanity teeters on the brink of self-inflicted global destruction. His thoughts then are represented here in the editorial that accompanied the premier issue…

OMAC #1 launched in September-October 1974, introducing the Global Peace Agency, a world-wide Doomwatch-style police force who manufactured a super-soldier to course-correct mankind and crisis-manage the constant threats to a species with hair-trigger fingers on nuclear stockpiles, chemical weapons of mass destruction and made-to-measure biological horrors.

Base human nature was the true threat behind this series, and that was first demonstrated by decent young man Buddy Blank who – whilst working at Pseudo-People Inc. – discovers that the euphemistically entitled Build-A-Friend division hides a far darker secret than merely pliant girls that come in kit-form. (I believe we even have those now, too…)

Luckily Buddy has been singled out by the GPA’s resident genius Professor Myron Forest for eternal linkage to sentient satellite Brother Eye. His atoms shifted and reconstructed, Buddy is rebuilt to become a living God of War, and the new-born human weapon easily destroys his ruthless employers before their murderous plans can be fully realised. ‘Buddy Blank and Brother Eye’ was followed by a truly prophetic tale, wherein impossibly wealthy criminal Mister Big purchases an entire city simply to assassinate Professor Forest in ‘The Era of the Super-Rich!’

Kirby’s tried and trusted approach was always to pepper high concepts throughout blazing action, and #3 was the most spectacular thus far. OMAC fought ‘One Hundred Thousand Foes!’ to get to murderous Marshal Kafka; terrorist leader of a Rogue State with a private army, WMDs and a solid belief that the United Nations can’t touch him. Sound familiar…? That incredible clash carries on and concludes in #4’s ‘Busting of a Conqueror!’

With #5, Kirby moved on to other new crimes for a new world. The definition of a criminal tends to blur when you can buy anything – even law and justice – but rich old people cherry-picking young men and women for brain-implantation is (hopefully) always going to be a no-no. Still, you can sell or plunder specific organs even now…

Busting the ‘New Bodies for Old!!’ racket took two issues, and after the One-Man-Army-Corps smashed ‘The Body Bank!’ he embarked on his final adventure. Ecological disaster and water shortage was the theme of the last tale, but as our hero trudges across a dry, desolate lake bottom amidst the dead and dying marine life he is horrified to discover the disaster is the work of one man. ‘The Ocean Stealers!’ (#7) introduced scientific madman Doctor Skuba, who mastered atomic manipulation techniques that had turned feeble Buddy Blank into an unstoppable war machine.

Joe Kubert drew the cover to final outing OMAC #8. ‘Human Genius Vs Thinking Machine’; was an epic episode seeing Brother Eye apparently destroyed as Skuba and Buddy Blank died together in an incredible explosion.

But that final panel was a hasty, last-minute addition by unknown editorial hands, for the saga never actually finished. Kirby, his contract completed, had promptly returned to Marvel and new challenges like Black Panther, Captain America, 2001, Devil Dinosaur, Machine Man and especially The Eternals.

Hormone treatments, Virtual Reality, medical computers, satellite surveillance, genetic tampering and all the other hard-science predictions in OMAC pale into insignificance against Kirby’s terrifyingly accurate social observations in this bombastic and tragically incomplete masterpiece.

OMAC is Jack Kirby’s Edwin Drood: an unfinished symphony of such power and prophecy that it informs not just the entire modern DC universe and inspires ever more incisive and intriguing tales from the King’s artistic inheritors but still presages more truly scary developments in our own mundane and inescapable reality…

As always in these wondrously economical collections it should be noted that the book includes Kirby pencilled pages.

Jack Kirby is unique and uncompromising. If you’re not a fan or simply not prepared to see for yourself what all the fuss has been about then no words of mine will change your mind. That doesn’t alter the fact that Kirby’s work from 1937 to his death in 1994 shaped the entire American comics scene, affected the lives of billions of readers and thousands of creators in all areas of artistic endeavour around the world for generations and still wins new fans and apostles every day, from the young and naive to the most cerebral of intellectuals. His work is instantly accessible, irresistibly visceral, deceptively deep whilst being simultaneously mythic and human: and just plain Great.

© 1974, 1975, 2021 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Jaimie Smart’s Bunny Vs Monkey: Rise of the Maniacal Badger


By Jaimie Smart, with Sammy Borras (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-280-9 (TPB) 978-1-78845-118-5 (Waterstones Exclusive Edition)

Bunny vs. Monkey has been a staple of comics phenomenon The Phoenix since the very first issue in 2012: recounting a madcap vendetta gripping animal arch-enemies set amidst an idyllic arcadia masquerading as more-or-less mundane but critically endangered English woodlands.

Concocted with gleefully gentle mania by cartoonist, comics artist and novelist Jamie Smart (Fish Head Steve!; Looshkin; Flember), the trendsetting, mindbending yarns have been wisely retooled as graphic albums available in remastered, double-length digest editions such as this one.

All the tail-biting tension and animal argy-bargy began yonks ago after an obnoxious little beast popped up in the wake of a disastrous British space shot. After crashlanding in Crinkle Woods – scant miles from his launch site – lab animal Monkey believed himself the rightful owner of a strange new world, despite all efforts from reasonable, sensible, genteel, contemplative forest resident Bunny to dissuade him. For all his patience, propriety and good breeding, the laid-back lepine just could not contain the incorrigible idiot ape, who was – and is – a rude, noise-loving, chaos-creating loutish troublemaker…

Problems are exacerbated by the other unconventional Crinkle creatures, particularly a skunk called Skunky who has a mad scientist’s attitude to life and a propensity to build extremely dangerous robots and super-weapons…

Here – with artistic assistance from Sammy Borras – the war of nerves and mega-ordnances resumes and intensifies. The unruly assortment of odd critters loitering around and cluttering up the bucolic paradise have finally picked sides: shifting and twisting into bipartisan factionalism. They all seem to have forgotten that rapidly encroaching Hyoomanz as they respond to another personal crisis and the rise to power of an unsuspected third force in woodland politics…

As ever divided into seasonal outbursts, the saga starts slowly with a chilly teaser tale as Winter ends in the ‘Thaw of the Snow-Bots’…

The assorted animals have been in stasis in a giant freezer, and once fire-breathing snowmen attack, they decide it’s best to have a little more kip… or do they?

The story actually resumes in Spring and the far future where time-traveller Ai – a superfast Ai-Ai not naturally indigenous to our sylvan glades and endangered shores – learns of a disaster that’s history here but her tomorrow. A good person, she undertakes ‘The Journey Home’ but arrives too late as ‘A Rather Maniacal Badger’ details how the woods have been conquered at last…

Previously, a catastrophic rivalry erupted when rival evil genius Maniacal Badger vied with Skunky for the title of “The Most Brilliant Animal in the Woods”. Now, while everyone was hibernating, the black-&-white bounder has occupied the region and established a base in a 50-foot (15-24 meters) high statue of himself as the first step in building his dream of Badgertopia.

The shock of defeat particularly affects Skunky, who descends into a spiral of depression and lowering esteem…

Universal innocents Weenie squirrel and Pig have their own way of de-stressing and not even roving robot drones can upset ‘A Quiet, Uneventful Day’ on the lake. Old animosities are paused and enemies become temporary allies planning to resist through ‘Distraction’ and strategic deployment of brain-battered, bewildered suicide bomber/former stuntman Action Beaver, but when that scheme flops we instead focus on ‘A Sad Skunk’ as the original mad scientist undergoes an existential crisis and needs Bunny to share it with…

The relative inactivity soon triggers his robot back-up to mischief mode, but even ‘Mecha Skunky!’ is not immune to the doldrums and there’s nothing ‘Action Beaver!’ can do to rectify the situation, especially after the badger activates a gross flying terror who swallows everybody in ‘The Whale!’

Having retreated to the tunnels built by long-gone but not forgotten local legend Fantastic Le Fox, the uneasy animal animals hide from the tyrant’s tantrums in ‘Too Noisy!’: unexpectedly discovering a hidden, weapon-stocked lair that will be the base for their fight back… once they have safely reassembled ‘All the Toys in the Toyshop!’

Although initial giant robot ‘Battle Bat!’ spectacularly fails, resistance efforts continue, but Monkey is easily distracted and soon moves to make his own empire in ‘Monkeyopia Rises!’ and as Summer begins ‘Divisions!’ proliferate. Before long the war with Bunny flares up again and instantly moves into the province of war crimes as the simian unleashes his flatulence-powered ‘Rofl-Copter!’

Weenie and Pig go on a ‘Treasure Hunt!’ in the mouldering pile of toxic rubbish kindly left by the Hyoomanz, but find no shield from the badger’s latest infamy: mind controlling everyone and turning the Woods into his digital plaything in ‘Game Over!’

A brief diversion follows in an exclusive Bunny vs Monkey Detective Story, but ‘The Curious Case of the Pig in the Night-Time’ is less baffling than Bunny’s failure to join mystic brotherhood ‘The Order of the Moose’…

When young Hyoomanz find themselves ‘(Not) Alone in the Woods’ during a class trip one little girl renews her old acquaintance with Metal Steve after he saves them from Maniac Badger attacks, whilst elsewhere ‘Monst-Ughs!’ run wild after improper use of Skunky’s old monster ray, leading to a glimpse at the tyrant’s origins and family issues in ‘The Making of a Maniacal Badger!’

Incorrigible Monkey then loses control of marauding robot ‘Doom Fists!’ after he is attacked by his wicked doppelganger Evil Monkey and partner in crimes Evil Monkey Wife, whilst elsewhere Skunky recovers some of life’s zest after helping Weenie and Pig repair one of the badger’s ‘Evil Drones!’

Three part saga ‘The Saving of Skunky!’ sees order restored after the badger’s plan to kidnap Skunky and steal what’s left of his evil genius goes awry. Trapped together in the Dark Woods, the skunk experiences a ghastly visitation and by the time the Maniacal one gets back to his conquered kingdom, there’s a restored archenemy waiting to deliver ‘A Sharp Shock’ with electrified clouds and a Zeus costume…

Badger’s retaliation is ancient thought monster ‘Ragnaggtrix!’ but there’s an inherent flaw in something dependent on belief that the evil genius didn’t consider. Thankfully, Skunky is preoccupied ‘Distracting the Monkey!’ from cadging more superweapons to misuse…

Bunny becomes guinea pig when Skunky and Monkey test emotion-warping Mind Mines in ‘Highly Strung!’ and as ‘Autumn begins The Rise of an Empire!’ finds expansionist Monkeytopia devasted by its ruler’s idiocy, even as the badger traps the woodland creatures inside his new phone app in ‘Game On!’ It’s a huge, costly mistake…

‘Balloonacy!’ breaks out when Weenie and Pig try to attend Ai’s birthday party, before a new character debuts. ‘Lucky!’ is a red panda who escaped a lab doing weird experiments. It might not have been in time though, since the three-way war for supremacy in the woods triggers an odd reaction…

The action and drama ramp up for a big finish as Badger is made to clean his room and employs the ‘Doomsday Device!’ that opens portals to Hell. Shame about his mum and dad…

Skunky makes a silly mistake and gives the wrong animal some atomic powered ‘Explosive Sweets!’ which makes Halloween’s ‘Fright Night!’ Scare-Off pretty anticlimactic war, before another peek at the future reveals the legend of ‘Jetpack Beaver!’

A distant relative tries to make one woodland weirdo ‘Pigging Rich!’ with little success, after which a bad tooth and unwise consultation with Skunky results in Monkey taking a big bite out of everything in ‘Chomp!’

The cataclysmic end begins when the Maniacal one pressgangs ‘The Badger Army’ to do his bidding but forgets the species’ tendency to unionise even as Skunky creates a ‘Terraforming Orb!!’ to purpose-build a new world. It’s a shame Monkey dropped it on his own head while it was switched on…

Winter begins with 3-chapter epic ‘A Very Badger Christmas’ that delivers shocking big reveals, pulls all the plot threads of the past year together, ends the world and still leaves rueful survivors wondering what comes next in ‘Aftermath’. Whatever you think happened you’re wrong, so you just have to buy this book to see how…

The animal anarchy might end for now there’s one more secret to share with detailed instructions on ‘How to Draw Maniacal Badger’ so, as well as beguiling your young ‘uns with stories, you can use this book to teach them a trade…

The zany zenith of absurdist adventure, Bunny vs Monkey is weird wit, brilliant invention, potent sentiment and superb cartooning crammed into one eccentrically excellent package: never failing to deliver jubilant joy for grown-ups of every vintage, even those who claim they only get it for their kids. This is the kind of comic parents beg kids to read to them. Is that you yet?

Text and illustrations © Jamie Smart 2022. All rights reserved.
Bunny vs Monkey: Rise of the Maniacal Badger is published on July 7th 2022 and is available for pre-order now.