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Crisis Aftermath: The Spectre & The Spectre: Tales of The Unexpected


By Will Pfeifer & Cliff Chiang, David Lapham, Eric Battle, Prentis Rollins, Tom Mandrake & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-577-X (TPB Aftermath): 978-1-84576-668-9 (TPB Unexpected)

The Spectre first appeared in More Fun Comics #52 (cover-dated February 1940), brainchild of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and artist Bernard (Hourman) Baily. Jim Corrigan, a murdered police detective, was ordained an open-ended mission by a glowing light and disembodied voice to fight crime and evil: swiftly becoming one of the most overwhelmingly powerful heroes of the Golden Age.

The astral avenger has been revamped and revived many times since. Latterly and powerfully (by John Ostrander &Tom Mandrake) revealed to be God’s Spirit of Vengeance bonded to a human conscience, Corrigan was finally laid to rest and Hal Jordan replaced him. Jordan was a Green Lantern who nearly destroyed the universe when possessed by antediluvian fear-parasite Parallax, before redeeming his soul and sacrificing his life to reignite our dying sun in the Final Night miniseries.

Bonded and bound to The Spectre force, Jordan became more a Spirit of Redemption than Retribution and, following a complex series of events in the wake of the Infinite Crisis was resurrected as a mortal superhero – leaving The Spectre without human guidance or scruple…

Collecting 3-part miniseries Crisis Aftermath: The Spectre and the lead stories from Tales of the Unexpected #1-3, this book follows the Ghostly Guardian’s search for a new host. This it finds in the reluctant, intangible form of by-the-book cop Crispus Allen, a black detective in Gotham City’s police force, and a just man callously murdered by fellow officer/ dirty cop Jim Corrigan (no relation to the original).

Will Pfeifer (Batman, Catwoman, Blood of the Demon) & Cliff Chiang (Human Target, Paper Girls, Wonder Woman) open the account in ‘Dead Again’ as The Spectre tries to convince what remains of angry atheist Allen to bond with him and jointly dispense Heavenly Justice. It then must prove the validity of the admittedly random and illogical way the Spirit of Retribution selects targets/victims from the billions of murderous sinners in sore need of the grim phantom’s personal, bloodily ironic attentions.

Subtle, compelling and challenging, the inescapable tragedy of the ending lends desperately needed depth to a timeless character far too powerful for traditional tale-telling. It is followed by the first quarter of an 8-part epic by David Lapham, Eric Battle &Prentis Rollins that featured in DC’s revival of the classic anthology title Tales of the Unexpected.

Slum-lord Leonard Krieger has been murdered in one of his own rat-traps. He was found chained and tortured (for two weeks) in the foul basement of a tenement filled with desperate people and outcasts on the edge of society. When he was very nearly dead Krieger was then stabbed repeatedly. There’s certainly no shortage of suspects…

Crispus Allen may be dead but he’s a still a detective and knows there’s a terrible secret buried in the wasteland of the Granville Towers. So do investigating officers Marcus Driver and Josh Azeveda. When The Spectre identifies and dispatches the killer it seems the case is over, but all the dark mysteries of the tenement are not yet revealed and all the horrors within keep calling out to both the harassed unsettled cops and Allen as well…

David Lapham (Shadowman, Stray Bullets, Silverfish) took The Spectre into uncharted waters with this raw and savage portmanteau saga. Rather than one baroque crime and one appropriately grisly punishment, he examines the nature of evil by focusing on all inhabitants of the slum and their degree of culpability in this murder as well as other sins. Can every door hide a secret worthy of God’s Punishment? Moreover, does Crispus have the power – and inclination – to temper the Spectre’s awful judgements?

‘The Cold Hand of Vengeance’ is engrossing and challenging stuff, well worth your attention, but to truncate the saga this way (the remaining issues 4-8 are collected in sequel volume The Spectre: Tales of the Unexpected) is annoying and unnecessary. Even with a gallery of alternate covers by luminaries like Neal Adams & Moose Bauman, Michael Wm. Kaluta & David Baron, Michael Mignola, Matt Wagner & Dave Stewart, this brilliant tale screams “unfinished business”…

 

Spectre: Tales of the Unexpected

Completing the intense horror-suspense begun in Crisis Aftermath: The Spectre murdered detective Crispus Allen returns, newly-bonded to an all-powerful supernatural force and finds himself irresistibly drawn back to the tenement house where slum-lord Leonard Krieger was killed.

Eventually killed. Prior to that he was chained in the basement for weeks, starved, tortured, abused and generally made to regret the miseries he had inflicted on his many tenants. One man has already paid the Ghostly Guardian’s ghastly price for that, but somehow the sin remains unpunished and Allen, as well as GCPD grunts Marcus Driver and Josh Azeveda, are convinced there’s more to know and further horror to come from God’s Spirit of Vengeance.

Already the ameliorating human influence is being challenged and has little effect when the Spectre – unable to leave Gotham – goes on a rampage of grotesque and barbaric retribution in the murder capital of the world. As the police chip away at the mystery of Krieger’s death and the wall of silence from the other tenants of seemingly accursed Granville Towers, Crispus becomes ever more inured to the atrocities humanity perpetrates on a daily basis. Without intervention, he may become more ruthless and relentless than The Spectre itself.

With outstanding guest-appearances by Batman and The Phantom Stranger (the latter illustrated by veteran Spectre illustrator Tom Mandrake) this volume reprints #4-8 of the lead strip in anthological revival Tales of the Unexpected, including original covers by Bernie Wrightson, Mike Huddleston, Bill Sienkiewicz, Art Adams, Prentis Rollins, Eric Battle & Dave Stewart.

A harsh, uncompromising exploration of justice, provocation and guilt, this is not a story for the young or squeamish and the mystery, engrossing though it be, is secondary to the exploration of the events that produced it. Can the modern world still use an Old-Testament solution to sin, or is every crime now too complex for prescribed punishments?

It’s rare for superhero comics to be this challenging but Tales of the Unexpected manages that and still delivers a visceral, evocative thriller that is a joy to read. These are lost gems crying out for a fresh chance to shine in the darkness… and at 128 pages for the first one and 144 for the follow-up, would it be so hard to make them one volume?
© 2006, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Billie Holiday


By José Muñoz & Carlos Sampayo, translated by Katy MacRae, Robert Boyd & Kim Thompson (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-093-5 (HB/Digital Edition)

Argentinian José Antonio Muñoz was born on July 10th 1942 in Buenos Aires and studied at the prestigious Escuela Panamericana de Arte de Buenos Aires, under comics geniuses Hugo Pratt and Alberto Breccia. Aged 18, he joined the prolific and prestigious Francisco Solano Lopez studio and soon his work was appearing in Hora Cero and Frontera Extra all whilst ghosting episodes of legendary serial Ernie Pike for his old tutor Pratt.

Through the Argentine-based Solano Lopez outfit, he found work on strips for UK publishing giant Amalgamated Press/IPC, but had no real feeling for the material he was producing. Moreover, like so many others, he was increasingly uncomfortable living in his homeland. Eventually (in December 1972) he was compelled to leave Argentina as the military junta tightened its totalitarian grip on the country, clamping down on free expression and the arts, as well as all forms of overt or covert dissent.

Moving to England, Spain and later Italy, in 1974 Muñoz met again fellow émigré and creative soul-mate Carlos Sampayo in Barcelona and convinced the poet, music critic, copywriter and author to try his hand at comics. The result was a stunning expressionistic noir Private Detective masterpiece of loss and regret called Alack Sinner.

Born in 1943, Sampayo grew up with all the same formative experiences as his artistic comrade and, after a similar dispiriting start (he’d tried writing and being a literary editor before resigning himself to work in advertising), moved to Spain in 1972. The pair were first introduced in 1971 when mutual friend Oscar Zarate left Argentina at the forefront of the creative exodus sparked by the rise of “the Colonels”…

Urgently urged by mentor Hugo Pratt to “do something of your own”, Muñoz & Sampayo started producing grimly gritty adventures of an ex-New York cop-turned-shamus haunting the shadows of the world’s greatest, darkest city, encountering the bleak underbelly of the metropolis and all the outcasts, exiles and scum thrown together at its margins. Alack Sinner debuted in experimental Italian anthology Alter Linus, was picked up by Belgian giant Casterman for A Suivre and latterly compiled in albums across the continent. The feature was set solidly in history, confronting issues of prejudice, bigotry and corruption head-on through shocking words and imagery. In one of their stories Sinner played merely a bit part as the pages examined the life, times and fate of one of the most ill-starred women in the history of Jazz and modern America.

And that’s where this powerfully moving biography finds us…

Originally translated and published by Fantagraphics in the early 1990s, NBM’s Billie Holiday takes us into the heart and soul of the doomed and self-destructive nightingale whose incredible voice was all-but-lost to the world for decades before kinder, more evolved ears of all colours rescued her works from oblivion. This epic tome dissects her life and influence through the eyes of distant observers, opening with Francis Marmande’s essay ‘Billie Holiday: Don’t Explain’ providing a fact- and photo-packed biographical appreciation of the singer in her heyday.

Eleanora Holiday – also known as Billie and “Lady Day” – was born April 7th 1915, and died July 17th 1959. In between those dates she won many fans and earned tons of money, but it never bought her acceptance in a world where black skin provoked revulsion, cruelty and smug superiority. It didn’t even buy her protection from New York cops who considered her a prostitute made good, and an uppity subhuman who never knew her proper place…

Billie lost money as quickly – or even faster – as she earned it: to unscrupulous friends and management, or corrupt officials, although most of it was frittered away by the succession of cheating, brutal men she was hopelessly drawn to and whom she could never resist.

A short, stark story of graphic flair offering many powerful full-page images, the tale begins in 1989 as a journalist is assigned to write a feature commemorating the 30th anniversary of a Jazz singer. He’s never heard of Billie Holiday but is good at his job and starts digging…

He reads about a poor black girl raped as a child and forced into child prostitution who (almost) escaped a commonplace fate by singing. She became successful, but never dodged the traps and pitfalls of her life: booze, drugs, sleazy men, manipulative bosses and her own seeming hunger for conflict. Even so, the way she sang was uniquely hers and changed lives forever. She called herself Billie and always performed with a flower in her hair…

For a while the great and good came to watch and hear, and jazz greats like Louis Armstrong and Lester Young came too. Their gifts also gave them limited entry to the privileged life – but never enough acceptance – but they seemed to understand. Never enough, though, to save Billie from herself.

This intensely personal interpretation is less biography and more a heartfelt paean of appreciation, channelling and exploring the hard, harsh tone of those troubled times where talented, dogged souls fought for recognition and survival at the fringes of a world determined to exploit and consume them. In that respect, no one was more exploited than Lady Day…

Also included here, ‘Jazz Sessions’ offers a stunning gallery of a dozen stark, chiaroscuric, powerfully evocative images based on scenes from Holiday’s short, sad life and dedication to the freedom of the musical form of Blues and Jazz that she graced and transformed through her vocalisations.

Moving, justifiably angry and pitifully sad, this tale holds the singer up to the light and must be read. Just remember, there’s no Happy Ever After here.
© 1991 Casterman. All rights reserved. © 2017 NBM for the English version.

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Super Boxers – A Marvel Graphic Novel


By Ron Wilson, with John Byrne, Armando Gil & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-939766772 (album PB)

It’s been a long while since Marvel regularly published an all-original graphic novel as opposed to a reprint collections, but once upon a time long ago they were market leader in the field with an entire range of “big stories” told on larger than normal pages (285 x 220mm rather than the customary 258 x 168mm) featuring not only proprietary characters but also licensed assets like Conan and creator-owned properties. They also took chances on unusual and cross-genre tales such as this little oddity which falls squarely into the category of a guilty pleasure and lost treasure…

In the near future, Corporations have assumed control of Earth, with the result that the rich have gotten richer – and more bored whilst an underclass excluded from all rights and privileges scuttles to survive in the dirt beneath their lavish skyscrapers. Gosh, where do they get such outlandish ideas?

As the poor daily trade freedoms and dignity for another meal, in the world of the mega-rich and their wholly-owned economically active contributing citizens, survival is just as harsh and all-pervasive. Businesses survive and grow by consuming each other and everything is produced to facilitate that overweening drive: product, entertainment, people.

Corporations are in a perpetual state of Cold War, ostensibly working together but always looking for an edge to ensure another hostile takeover. Delcos is one such business: CEO Marilyn Hart has never been one of the boys, and now her colleagues, sensing weakness, are closing in for the kill…

In the world below, Max Turner is a star. A scrapper to his core, he works as a prize-fighter: an old fashioned palooka using his fists (augmented by cybernetic gloves, boots and body armour) to get by in a brutal arena of social Darwinism: delivering dangerous entertainment for his daily bread. The Corporations also have Super Boxers: pampered, gussied up, genetic thoroughbreds with their entire lives geared to those explosive moments when they unleash their pedigreed savagery in high-tech arenas for the pleasure and profit of their owners. The greatest of these sporting warriors is the godlike Roman Alexis.

Of course, every society has its malcontents and gadflies: when a slumming talent scout for Marilyn Hart “discovers” Max, the dumb but honest gladiator becomes a pawn in a power play that threatens to tear the corporate world to tatters – but would that really be such a bad thing?

None of that matters to Max or Roman. For them it’s about personal honour. Tech doesn’t matter, rewards don’t matter, freedom doesn’t matter. It all about being the best…

Ron Wilson (Luke Cage, Marvel Two-in-One, The Thing, Arion the Immortal, Fantastic Four) is probably nobody’s favourite artist, but he is a skilled, workmanlike illustrator with a great line in brooding brutes and street cred, whilst Armando Gil’s fluid inks do much to sharpen the static, lumpen scenarios, as do the varied tones of colourists Bob Sharen, Steve Oliff, John Tartaglione, Joe D’Esposito and Mark Bright. The letters are provided by Mike Higgens.

Scripted by John Byrne from Wilson’s plot, this is a harsh, nasty, working-class fable reminiscent of boxing movies like Michael Curtiz’s epic 1937 classic Kid Galahad by way of the Rocky movies, with socio-political undertones on a par with European comics like Métal Hurlant or 2000AD.

Ugly, uncompromising, brutal, this is the kind of book to show anybody who thinks comics are for sissies and is long overdue for revival.
© 1983 Ronald Wilson. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents the Legion of Super-Heroes volume 5


By Cary Bates, Jim Shooter, Paul Levitz, Dave Cockrum, Mike Grell, Bill Draut, Bob Wiacek, Ric Estrada & Joe Staton & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4297-8 9 (TPB)

Once upon a time, a thousand years from now, super-powered kids from many worlds took inspiration from the greatest legend of all time and formed a club of heroes. One day those Children of Tomorrow came back in time and invited their inspiration to join them…

Thus began the vast and epic saga of the Legion of Super-Heroes, as first envisioned by writer Otto Binder & artist Al Plastino when the many-handed mob of juvenile universe-savers debuted in Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958), just as the revived superhero genre was gathering an inexorable head of steam in America. Since that time the fortunes and popularity of the Legion have perpetually waxed and waned, with their future history tweaked and overwritten, retconned and rebooted over and over again to comply with editorial diktat and popular fashion.

This sturdy, cosmically-captivating fifth massive monochrome compendium gathers the chronological parade of futuristic delights from Superboy #193, 195, and Superboy Starring the Legion of Super-Heroes #197-220, covering February 1973 to October 1976, as well as the debut issue of opportunistic spin-off Karate Kid #1 (March 1976) at a time when the superhero genre had again waned but which was slowly recovering to gain its current, seemingly unassailable ascendancy. That plunge in costumed character popularity had seen the team lose their long-held lead spot in Adventure Comics, be relegated to a back-up in Action Comics and even vanish completely for a time. Legion fans, however, are the most passionate of an already fanatical breed…

No sooner had the LSH faded than agitation to revive them began. Following a few tentative forays as an alternating back-up feature in Superboy, the game-changing and sleekly futuristic artwork of newcomer Dave Cockrum inspired a fresh influx of fans and the back-up soon took over the book – exactly as they had done in the 1960s when the Tomorrow Teens took Adventure from The Boy of Steel and made it uniquely their own…

The resurgent dramas begin here with the back-up by Cary Bates & Cockrum from Superboy #193 wherein a select team consisting of Chameleon Boy, Duo Damsel, Chemical King and Karate Kid went undercover on a distant world to prevent atomic Armageddon in ‘War Between the Nights and the Days!’ That’s followed by #195’s ‘The One-Shot Hero!’ which told the story of ERG-1 – a human converted to sentient energy in an antimatter accident. The character had been mentioned in a 1960’s tale of the Adult Legion but here Bates & Cockrum at last fleshed out his only mission and heroic sacrifice with passion and overwhelming style.

The really big change came with the July issue as the long-lived title (which had premiered in 1949 just as the Golden Age was ending) morphed into Superboy Starring the Legion of Super-Heroes with #197.

The relaunch kicked off with a full-length extravaganza. ‘Timber Wolf: Dead Hero, Live Executioner!’ saw the Boy of Steel summoned to the future to be greeted by a hero he believed had died in the line of duty. Somehow Timber Wolf had survived and triumphantly greets his old comrade, but astute Legion leader Mon-El fears some kind of trick in play. He is proved right when the miraculous survivor goes berserk at an awards ceremony, attempting to assassinate the President of Earth.

Wolf is restrained before any harm can be done and a thorough deprogramming soon gives him a clean bill of mental health. Unfortunately that’s exactly what the team’s hidden enemy had planned and when a deeper layer of brainwashing kicks in the helpless mind-slave turns off the security systems allowing militaristic alien warlord Tyr to invade Legion HQ. Happily telepathic Saturn Girl is on hand to free the mental vassal and scupper the assault, but in the scuffle Tyr’s computerised gun hand escapes, swearing vengeance…

The organisation’s greatest foes resurface with a seemingly infallible plan in #198’s ‘The Fatal Five Who Twisted Time!’ – travelling back to 1950s Smallville to plant a device to edit the next thousand years and prevent the Legion ever forming. Second chapter ‘Prisoners of the Time Lock’ reveals how a squad comprising Brainiac 5, Element Lad, Chameleon Boy, Karate Kid, Princess Projectra and Mon-El has already slipped into the relative safety of the time stream, resolved to restore history or die with a resultant clash concluding in ‘Countdown to Catastrophe’…

With an entire issue to play with but short stories still popular with readers, the format settled on alternating epics with a double-dose of vignettes. Thus issue #199 opened with ‘The Gun That Mastered Men!’ as Tyr’s computerised wonder weapon sought to liberate its creator, only to rebel at the last moment and try to take over Superboy instead. With that threat comprehensively crushed, Bouncing Boy took centre stage to relate his solo battle against Orion the Hunter in ‘The Impossible Target’ It was mere prelude to anniversary issue #200 wherein he lost his power to hyper-inflate and had to resign. However, it did allow the Bounding Bravo to propose to girlfriend Duo Damsel, unaware that she had been targeted to become ‘The Legionnaire Bride of Starfinger’. The marriage was an event tinged with grandeur and tragedy as the supervillain kidnapped her in ‘This Wife is Condemned’, attempting to emulate her powers and make an army of doppelgangers, but ‘The Secret of the Starfinger Split!’ was never revealed after Superboy enacted a cunning counter-ploy…

SsLSH #201 featured the resurrection of ERG-1 as the energy-being reconstituted himself to save the team from treachery in ‘The Betrayer From Beyond’ whilst ‘The Silent Death’ saw precognitive Dream Girl infallibly predict a comrade’s imminent demise – even though no hero anywhere appeared to be endangered. The next issue was a 100-Page Giant but only two tales were new. They were also Cockrum’s final forays in the 30th century and saw the debut of his equally impressive successor Mike Grell as inker on ‘Lost a Million Miles from Home!’ Here Colossal Boy and Shrinking Violet face a perplexing mystery in deep space: an inexplicable loss of ship’s power which compels them to abandon ship in the worst possible place imaginable. ‘Wrath of the Devil-Fish’ by Bates & Cockrum was the artist’s swan song, featuring the debut of the re-designated ERG-1 as Wildfire as an eerie amphibian creature attacked a pollution-cleansing automated Sea-Station. Of course the monster was not what he seemed and the Legion hoped they might have found a unique new recruit…

Having utterly transformed the look, feel and fortunes of the Legion, Cockrum moved to Marvel where he would perform the same service for another defunct and almost forgotten series called the X-Men…

With Grell now handling full art, the youthful Club of Champions were still on the meteoric rise, depicted as a dedicated, driven, combat force in constant, cosmos-threatening peril. However the super-science stalwarts still struggled against a real-world resurgence in spiritual soul-searching and supernatural dramas, with most of the comics industry churning out a myriad of monster and magic tales. The dominant genre even invaded the bastions of graphic futurism in #203’s ‘Massacre by Remote Control’ (Bates & Grell) when increasing indifference and neglect caused veteran legionnaire Invisible Kid to sacrifice his life to save his comrades. Sadness was tinged with arcane joy, however, as this was a twist on gothic ghost stories with the fallen hero united with a lover from the far side of the Veil of Tears…

It was back to sensibly rationalist ground for SsLSH #204 and ‘The Legionnaire Nobody Remembered’, wherein the heroes explored secrets of time traveller Anti-Lad. His accidental meddling altered history, demanding a hands-on response to fix everything, after which Bates & Grell exposed ‘Brainiac 5’s Secret Weakness!’ by reigniting his millennium-spanning romance with Supergirl. Issue #205 was another primarily-reprint 100-Page Giant which included one novel-length saga as 20th century Lana Lang saves the heroes from becoming ‘The Legion of Super-Executioners’, after the entire roster is overwhelmed by a psionic immortal patiently planning to abduct them all and breed a super-army of conquest…

‘The Legionnaires who Haunted Superboy’ led in #206 with Superboy visited by dead friends Invisible Kid and Ferro Lad. This time, the underlying theme was nascent cloning science not eldritch unrest and the outcome was mostly upbeat, after which ‘Welcome Home Daughter… Now Die!’ highlights Princess Projectra’s dilemma as both Royal champion with a commoner boyfriend and untouchable sacrosanct heir to a feudal kingdom after a dutiful family visit results in an attack by a marauding monster…

SsLSH #207 led with ‘The Rookie who Betrayed the Legion!’ as Science Police liaison Dvron seemingly colludes with mesmeric villain Universo, whilst ‘Lightning Lad’s Day of Dread!’ sees the founding hero join his wicked brother Mekt to share a moment of personal grief. It’s just a prelude to the next issue (another 100-Pager) where a 2-pronged scheme maroons Mon-El and Superboy in the 1950s whilst their comrades suffer the ‘Vengeance of the Super-Villains’ in the 30th Century. However, the cunning murder-plot of Lightning Lord’s Legion of Super-Villains is not enough to fool Brainiac 5 or wily LSH espionage chief Chameleon Boy…

In the 1960s the main architect of the Legion’s shift from quasi-comedic adventurers to gritty super-battalion was teen sensation Jim Shooter, whose scripts and layouts (generally finished and pencilled by the astoundingly talented Curt Swan) made the series irresistible to a generation of fans growing up with their heads in the Future and tension-drenched drama on their minds. Now, after time away getting a college education and working in advertising, Shooter returned in Superboy Starring the Legion of Super-Heroes #209 as ‘Who Can Save the Princess?’ tersely details how Projectra succumbs to the lethal “Pain Plague” leading her lover Karate Kid to make an ultimate sacrifice. Bates & Grell wrap up the issue with heartwarming mystery as young fan Flynt Brojj becomes a ‘Hero for a Day’; saving the Legion from an insidious assassination attempt…

SsLSH #210 was an all Shooter/Grell affair, opening with darker fare as ‘Soljer’s Private War’ reveals how a tragic victim of World War VI was transformed by horrific circumstances and resurrected to rampage unstoppably through 30th century Metropolis after which ‘The Lair of the Black Dragon’ at last unearths the incredible origin of Karate Kid. When a pack of martial artists ambush him, their defeat leads to a further attack on the aged Sensei who trained Val Armorr from infancy, and painful revelations that the Legionnaire’s birth-father was Japan’s greatest villain…

‘The Ultimate Revenge’ (scripted by Shooter in #211) sees Element Lad risk career and honour to exact vengeance on space pirate Roxxas who exterminated the hero’s entire race, whilst Bates detailed how the Legion of Substitute Heroes takes over ‘The Legion’s Lost Home’, incidentally solving one of the most infamous cold cases in the history of theft…

Shooter was now main writer and SsLSH #212 began with ‘Last Fight for a Legionnaire’ wherein a sextet of ambitious, disgruntled teens challenge Matter-Eater Lad, Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, Phantom Girl, Shrinking Violet and Chameleon Boy for their positions on the team – resulting in the replacement of one of veteran heroes – whilst ‘A Death Stroke at Dawn’ finds apparently ineffectual Substitute Legionnaire Night Girl regaining confidence by triumphantly saving boyfriend Cosmic Boy and herself from murderous ambushers…

In #213 Ultra Boy only realises he has a crippling psychological handicap when the hunt for infallible super-thief Benn Pares takes the team into ‘The Jaws of Fear’, after which Timber Wolf overcomes a far more physical threat with his rarely exercised wits when attacked by mega-thug Black Mace in ‘Trapped to Live – Free to Die!’ (art by Grell and inker Bill Draut).

The heroes find ‘No Price Too High’ (#214) to save a trillionaire’s obnoxious son from himself and a deranged, disaffected employee who had taken over one of his dad’s automated manufacturing worlds before Bates, Grell & Draut reveal deep-seated trauma cancelling out Shrinking Violet’s powers in ‘Stay Small – Or Die!’ Luckily for Brainiac 5, his drastic plan to shock her back to normal works in time for her to save him from the fallout of his callous actions…

Bates & Grell also observed ‘The Final Eclipse of Sun Boy’ in SsLSH #215, as an intangible assassin trails Phantom Girl to Earth and is in turn followed by an unlikely and unsuspected ally, before Shooter, Grell & Draut reveal Cosmic Boy as ‘The Hero Who Wouldn’t Fight’: honouring a sacred day of penance and superpower abstinence … even at the cost of his life.

Despite the comics world being in the grip of martial arts madness since 1973, DC were slow in making an obvious move and giving one of the oldest comic book Kung Fu fighters his own title. Karate Kid #1 (by Paul Levitz, Ric Estrada & Joe Staton) launched with a March-April 1976 cover-date, plunging valiant Val Armorr back a thousand years to contemporary New York City in ‘My World Begins in Yesterday’. The self-made warrior crashed the time barrier to recapture arch enemy Nemesis Kid, and, after rejecting friendly advice and stern orders to return to Tomorrow, tracked and trashed his enemy with the astounded assistance of schoolteacher Iris Jacobs.

Finding the primitive milieu far more amenable than his origin era, Karate Kid unexpectedly then elected to stick around in the 20th century. That same month SsLSH #216 saw Bates & Grell tackle a thorny issue in ‘The Hero who Hated the Legion’ as the team tries to recruit its first black member. Isolationist Tyroc and his entire long-sequestered race nursed a big (and perfectly understandable) grudge against modern Earth and it took determined diplomacy and a crisis threatening their entire island homeland of Marzal to confront and challenge the prejudice of centuries…

Back then, the simple fact that an African-American hero was considered sales-worthy was the biggest leap imaginable. Excluding jungle comics of the 1940s & 1950s, War comics first opened the door to black characters in the early 1960s, when Robert Kanigher & Joe Kubert created negro boxer Jackie Johnson for Sgt. Rock’s Easy Company (Our Army at War #113, cover-dated December 1961) and Marvel followed suit with a black soldier in Sgt. Fury’s Howling Commandos (Gabe Jones, debuting in #1, May 1963).

After Dell’s western gunfighter Lobo (#1-2, December 1965 & September 1966) the House of Ideas pulled far ahead in the diversity stakes by introducing America’s first negro superheroes. The Black Panther premiered in Fantastic Four #52, (July 1966) and The Falcon first fought in Captain America #117 (September 1969). Luke Cage didn’t become became the Hero for Hire until the spring of 1972, (#1, June cover-date), by which time DC had introduced August Durant/Mockingbird in Secret Six #1 (1968) and Mal Duncan in Teen Titans #26 (1970). Jack Kirby introduced Flipper-Dipper in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #133 (October 1970), New God Vykin the Black in Forever People #1 (March 1971) and many more super-characters of colour for his Fourth World Saga. He later created enterprising “ghetto kid” Shilo Norman as a hero’s apprentice and eventual successor in Mister Miracle ##15 (August, 1973): the same year Bates & Don Heck launched Nubia in Wonder Woman #206.

With more ethnic lead characters appearing, DC finally launched a black-skinned hero – John Stewart (Green Lantern #87, December 1971/January 1972) – although his designation as a “replacement” GL could be construed as more conciliatory and insulting than revolutionary. Black Lightning – DC’s first superhero in his own solo title – didn’t debut until 1977, but before that and all but forgotten now, the Legion had entered the Race race in their future chronicles…

Bates & Grell then took a peek into ‘The Private Lives of Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel’, revealing how even retired Legionnaires still have to fight on occasion. Shooter & Grell monopolised issue #217, beginning with ‘The Charge of the Doomed Legionnaires’ wherein rapacious Khund warlord Field Marshal Lorca pits his strategic genius against Brainiac 5 but underestimates the sheer guts of his foes, whilst ‘Future Shock for Superboy’ sees the Teen of Steel beguiled by 30th century girl Laurel Kent, blithely unaware he is expressing possibly amorous interest in his own distant descendant…

Courtesy of Bates & Grell, Superboy starring the Legion of Super-Heroes #218 reveals how Tyroc’s induction into the team is shanghaied by ‘The Secret Villain the World Never Knew’ although the neophyte soon turns the tables on the interloper Zoraz, after which Shooter (with story inspiration from Ken Klaczac) discloses ‘The Plunder Ploy of the Fatal Five’ in #219 as the terrifying Fatal Five go on an implausible but ruthless spree of cosmic crimes. The Galaxy’s Most Wanted are seemingly gathering items which can only be used for the creation of an all-conquering army, but when the Legion capably counterattack, they realise they have jumped to a woefully wrong conclusion…

The comprehensive cavalcade of chronal capers concludes with #220 as inker Bob Wiacek joins Shooter & Grell for one final brace of bombastic blockbusters beginning with ‘The Super Soldiers of the Slave-Maker’. As the Legion attempts to liberate conquered planet Murgador, resistance comes from the terrified inhabitants, and the astounded saviours learn that a huge bomb at the world’s core makes them all helpless hostages to their alien overlord. The only answer is an application of subterfuge and misdirection to rectify the impossible situation before everything wraps up with ‘Dream Girl’s Living Nightmare’ as Chameleon Boy tries to cheat fate and save a cosmic benefactor from death despite infallible predictions from his precognitive comrade…

The Legion of Super-Heroes is one of the most beloved but bewildering creations in funnybook history: primarily responsible for the rapid growth of a groundswell movement that became American Comics Fandom. Moreover, these scintillating, seductively addictive stories – as much as Julie Schwartz’s Justice League or Marvel’s Fantastic Four – fuelled the interest and imaginations of generations and created the industry we know today. If you love comics and haven’t read this stuff yet, you are the poorer for it and need to feed your future dreams as soon as possible.
© 1973-1976, 2014 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Luke Cage Omnibus (Hero For Hire)


By Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Tony Isabella, Len Wein, Gerry Conway, Billy Graham, Bill Mantlo, George Pérez, Marv Wolfman, Ed Hannigan, Roger Slifer, Chris Claremont, George Tuska, Ron Wilson, Lee Elias, Rich Buckler, Arvell Jones, Sal Buscema, Frank Robbins, Marie Severin, Bob Brown & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4496-4 (HB/Digital edition)

In 1968 the consciousness-raising sporting demonstration of “Black Power” at the Olympic Games galvanised and politicised a generation of youngsters. By this time most comics companies had already made tentative efforts to address what were national socio-political iniquities, but issues of race and ethnicity took a long time to filter through to impressionable young minds avidly absorbing knowledge and attitudes via four-colour pages that couldn’t even approximate the skin tones of African Americans.

As with television, breakthroughs were small, incremental and too often reduced to a cold-war of daringly liberal “firsts”. Excluding a few characters in jungle comic books of the 1940s and 1950, Marvel clearly led the field with a black soldier in Sgt. Fury’s Howling Commandos team – the historically impossible Gabe Jones who debuted in #1, May 1963, and by my reckoning the first recurring African American in comic books. So unlikely a character was ol’ Gabe that he was as a matter of course re-coloured Caucasian at the printers who clearly didn’t realise his ethnicity, but knew he couldn’t be un-white. Jones was followed by actual negro superheroes Black Panther in Fantastic Four#52 (July 1966), and The Falcon in Captain America #117 (September 1969).

America’s first black hero to helm his own title had come (and gone largely unnoticed) in a little remembered or regarded title from Dell Comics. Created by artist Tony Tallarico and scripter D.J. Arneson and debuting in December 1965, Lobo was a gunslinger in the old wild west, battling injustice just like any cowboy hero would. Arguably a greater breakthrough was Marvel’s  Joe Robertson, City Editor of The Daily Bugle; an erudite, brave and proudly ordinary mortal distinguished by his sterling character, not costume or skin tone. He first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man # 51 (August 1967), proving in every panel that the world wouldn’t end if black folk and white folk occupied the same spaces…

This big change had grown slowly out of raised social awareness during a terrible time in American history but things today don’t seem all that different, except the bile and growing taste for violence is turned towards European accents, or health workers and shop staff as well as brown skins…

As the 1960s turned, more positive and inclusive incidences of ethnic characters appeared in the US, with DC finally getting an African America hero in John Stewart (Green Lantern #87, December 1971/January 1972) – although his designation as a replacement Emerald Peacekeeper might be construed as more conciliatory and insulting than revolutionary. DC’s first hero with his own title was Black Lightning, who didn’t debut until April 1977, although Jack Kirby had introduced Vykin in Forever People #1 and The Black Racer in New Gods #3 (March and July 1971) and Shilo Norman as Scott Free’s apprentice (and eventual successor) in Mister Miracle #15 (August 1973).

As usual, it took a bold man and changing economics to really promote change. With declining comics sales intersecting a time of rising Black Consciousness, cash – if not cashing in – was probably the trigger for “the Next Step”. Contemporary “Blaxsploitation” cinema and novels had invigorated commercial interests throughout America, and in that atmosphere of outlandish dialogue, daft outfits and barely concealed – but certainly justified – outrage, an angry black man with a shady past and apparently dubious morals must have felt like a sure-fire hit to Marvel’s bosses. Luke Cage, Hero for Hire launched in the summer of 1972. A year later, The Black Panther finally got his own series in Jungle Action #5 and Blade: Vampire Hunter debuted in Tomb of Dracula #10.

This stunning compendium collects Hero for Hire #1-16, Luke Cage Power Man #17-48 and Annual #1: a landmark breakthrough series cumulatively spanning June 1972 to October 1977 and begins with Lucas, a hard-case inmate at brutal Seagate Prison. Like all convicts, he says he was framed and his uncompromising attitude makes mortal enemies of savage, racist guards Rackham and Quirt, and doesn’t endear him to the rest of the prison population such as genuinely bad guys Shades and Comanche either…

‘Out of Hell… A Hero!’ was written by Archie Goodwin and illustrated by George Tuska & Billy Graham (with initial input from Roy Thomas and John Romita) and sees a new warden arrive promising to change the hell-hole into a properly administered correctional facility. Having heard the desperate con’s tale of woe, prison doctor Noah Burstein convinces Lucas to participate in a radical experiment in exchange for a parole hearing…

Lucas had grown up in Harlem, a tough kid who managed to stay honest even when his best friend Willis Stryker had not. They remained close even though walking different paths – until a woman came between them. To be rid of his romantic rival, Stryker planted drugs and had Lucas shipped off to jail. While he was there his girl Reva – who had never given up on him – was killed when she got in way of bullets meant for up-and-coming gangster Stryker…

With nothing to lose, Lucas undergoes Burstein’s process – experimental cell-regeneration – but Rackham sabotages the process, hoping to kill the con before he can expose their illegal treatment of convicts. The equipment goes haywire and something incredible occurs. Lucas – panicked and now somehow super-strong – punches his way out of the lab and through prison walls, only to face a hail of gunfire. His body plunges over a cliff and is never found.

Months later, a vagrant prowls the streets of New York City and stumbles into a robbery. Almost casually he downs the felon, accepts a reward from the grateful victim and has a bright idea. Strong, bullet-proof, street-wise and honest, Lucas will hide in plain sight while planning his revenge on Stryker. Since his only skill is fighting, he becomes a private paladin – a Hero for Hire…

Making allowances for the colourful, often ludicrous dialogue necessitated by the Comics Code’s sanitising of “street-talking Jive”, this is probably the grittiest origin tale of the classic Marvel years, with the tense action continuing in ‘Vengeance is Mine!’ as the man calling himself Luke Cage stalks his target. Stryker has risen quickly, now controlling a vast portion of the drug trade as the deadly Diamondback, and Cage has a big surprise in store when beautiful physician Claire Temple comes to his aid after a calamitous struggle. Thinking him fatally shot, her surprise is dwarfed by his own when Cage meets her boss. Seeking to expiate his sins, Noah Burstein runs a rehab clinic on the sordid streets of Times Square, but his efforts have drawn the attention of Diamondback, who doesn’t like someone trying to fix his paying customers…

Burstein apparently does not recognise Cage, so even though faced with eventual exposure and return to prison, the Hero for Hire offers to help the hard-pressed medics. Setting up an office above a movie house on 42nd Street, Cage meets a young man who will be his greatest friend – D.W. Griffith: nerd, film freak and plucky white sidekick. However, before Cage can settle in, Diamondback strikes and the age-old game of blood and honour plays out the way it always does…

HFH #3 introduces Cage’s first returning villain in ‘Mark of the Mace!’ as Burstein – for his own undisclosed reasons – keeps Cage’s secret, whilst disgraced soldier Gideon Mace launches a terror attack on Manhattan. With his dying breath, one of the mad Colonel’s troops hires Cage to stop the attack, which he does in explosive fashion. Inker Billy Graham graduated to full art chores for ‘Cry Fear… Cry Phantom!’ in #4, wherein a deranged, deformed maniac carries out random assaults in Times Square. Or is there perhaps another motive behind the vicious attacks?

Steve Englehart took over as scripter and Tuska returned to pencil ‘Don’t Mess with Black Mariah!’ in the next issue: a tale of organised scavengers which also introduced unscrupulous reporter Phil Fox: an unsavoury sneak with greedy pockets and a nose for scandal. In ‘Knights and White Satin’ (Englehart, Gerry Conway, Graham & Paul Reinman) the swanky, ultra-rich Forsythe sisters hire Cage to bodyguard their dying father from a would-be murderer too impatient to wait the week it will take for the old man to die from a terminal illness.

This more-or less straight mystery yarn (if you discount a madman and killer robots) is followed by ‘Jingle Bombs’ – a strikingly different Christmas tale from Englehart, Tuska & Graham, before Cage properly enters the Marvel Universe in ‘Crescendo!’ Here he is hired by Doctor Doom to retrieve rogue androids that have absconded from Latveria. They are hiding as black men among the shifting masses of Harlem and the Iron Dictator needs someone who knows that unfamiliar environment. Naturally, Cage accomplishes his mission, only to have Doom stiff him for the fee. Big mistake…

‘Where Angels Fear to Tread!’ (#9) finds the enraged Hero for Hire borrowing a vehicle from the Fantastic Four to play Repo Man in Doom’s own castle, just in time to get caught in the middle of a grudge match between the tyrant and alien invader the Faceless One. It’s then back to street-level basics in ‘The Lucky… and the Dead!’ as Cage takes on a gambling syndicate led by schizophrenic Señor Suerte, who doubles his fortunes as murderous Señor Muerte (that’s Mr. Luck and Mr. Death to you): a 2-part thriller with rigged games and deathtraps climaxing in ‘Where There’s Life…!’ as Phil Fox finally uncovers Cage’s secret…

HFH #12 featured the first of many clashes with alchemical villain ‘Chemistro!’, after which Graham handled full art duties with ‘The Claws of Lionfang’ – a killer using big cats to destroy his enemies prior to Cage tackling hyperthyroid lawyer Big Ben Donovan in ‘Retribution!’ as the tangled threads of the fugitive’s murky past slowly become a noose around his neck. ‘Retribution: Part II!’ sees Graham and Tony Isabella sharing the writer’s role as many disparate elements converge to expose Cage. The crisis builds as Quirt kidnaps Luke’s girlfriend, and Seagate escapees Comanche and Shades stalking him whilst New York cops hunt him. The last thing the Hero for Hire needs is a new super-foe, but that’s just what he gets in #16’s ‘Shake Hands with Stiletto!’ (Isabella, Graham & Frank McLaughlin): a dramatic finale that literally brings the house down and clears up most of the old business.

Luke Cage, Hero For Hire was probably Marvel’s edgiest series, but after a few years tense action and peripheral interactions with the greater Marvel Universe led to a minor rethink and the title was altered, if not the basic premise. The private detective motif proved a brilliant stratagem in generating stories for a character perceived as a reluctant champion at best and outright antihero by nature. His job allowed Cage to maintain an outsider’s edginess but also meant adventure literally walked through his shabby door every issue. However, following the calamitous clash with his oldest enemies, most old business was settled and a partial re-branding of America’s premier black crusader began in issue #17. The mercenary aspect was downplayed (at least on covers) as Len Wein, Tuska & Graham gave Luke Cage, Power Man a fresh start during tumultuous team-up ‘Rich Man: Iron Man… Power Man: Thief!’

Here the still “For Hire” hero is commissioned to test Tony Stark’s security… by stealing his latest invention. Sadly, neither Stark nor his alter ego Iron Man know anything about it and the result is another classic hero-on-hero duel. Vince Colletta signed on as inker with #18’s ‘Havoc on the High Iron!’, and Cage battles high-tech killer Steeplejack whilst the next two issues offered the wanted man a tantalising chance to clear his name. ‘Call Him… Cottonmouth!’ debuted a crime lord with inside information of the frame-up perpetrated by Willis Stryker. Tragically, hope of a new clean life is snatched away despite Cage’s explosive efforts in the Isabella scripted conclusion ‘How Like a Serpent’s Tooth…’

Isabella, Wein, Ron Wilson & Colletta crafted ‘The Killer With My Name!’ as Cage is ambushed by Avengers villain Power Man, who understandably wants his nom de guerre back. He changes his mind upon waking up from the resultant bombastic battle that ensues, after which psychotic archfoe Stiletto returns beside his equally high-tech balmy brother Discus in ‘The Broadway Mayhem of 1974’ (Isabella, Wilson & Colletta), subsequently revealing a startling connection to Cage’s origins.

All this constant carnage and non-stop tension sent sometime-romantic interest Claire Temple scurrying for points distant, and in LCPM #23, Cage and D.W. go looking for her, promptly fetching up in a fascistic planned community run by old foe deranged military terrorist Mace in ‘Welcome to Security City’ (inked by Dave Hunt). This fed directly into a 2-part premier for another African American superhero as Cage and D.W. track Claire to the Ringmaster’s Circus of Crime in #24’s ‘Among Us Walks… a Black Goliath! (Isabella, Tuska & Hunt)…

Bill Foster was a highly educated black supporting character: a biochemist who worked with Henry Pym (scientist-superhero known as Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath and Yellowjacket over decades of costumed capers). Foster first appeared in Avengers #32 (September 1966), before fading from view when Pym eventually regained his size-changing abilities. Carrying on his own size-shifting research, Foster was now trapped as a giant, unable to attain normal size, and Cage discovered he was also Claire’s former husband. When he became stuck at 15 feet tall, she had rushed back to Bill’s colossal side to help find a cure.

When Luke turned up, passions boiled over, resulting in another classic heroes-clash moment until the mesmeric Ringmaster hypnotised all combatants, intent on using their strength to feather his own three-ring nest. ‘Crime and Circuses’ (Isabella, Bill Mantlo, Wilson & Fred Kida) saw the good guys helpless until Claire came to the rescue, before making her choice and returning to New York with Luke. Foster soon thereafter won his own short-run series, becoming Marvel’s fourth African American costumed hero under the heavy-handed and rather obvious sobriquet Black Goliath…

Timely spoofing of a popular ‘70’s TV show inspired ‘The Night Shocker!’ (Englehart, Tuska & Colletta) as Cage stalks an apparent vampire attacking 42nd Street patrons, after which a touching human drama finds Cage forced to subdue a tragically simple-minded but super-powered wrestler in ‘Just a Guy Named “X”!’ (by Mantlo, George Pérez & Al McWilliams, and paying tribute to Steve Ditko’s classic yarn from Amazing Spider-Man #38).

A new level of sophistication, social commentary and bizarre villainy began in issue 28 as Don McGregor started his run of macabre crime sagas, opening when Cage meets ‘The Man Who Killed Jiminy Cricket!’ (illustrated by Tuska & Colletta).

Hired by a chemical company to stop industrial espionage, Luke fails to prevent the murder of his prime suspect and is somehow defeated by deadly weirdo Cockroach Hamilton (and his beloved shotgun “Josh”). Left for dead in one of the most outré cliffhanger situations ever seen, Cage took two issues to escape as the next issue featured a “deadline-doom” fill-in tale. Courtesy of Mantlo, Tuska & Colletta, Luke Cage, Power Man #29 revealed that ‘No One Laughs at Mr. Fish!’ (although the temptation is overwhelming) as Cage fights a fin-faced mutated mobster robbing shipping trucks for organised crime analogue The Maggia, after which the story already in progress resumes in #30 with ‘Look What They’ve Done to Our Lives, Ma!’ (by McGregor, Rich Buckler, Arvell Jones & Keith Pollard).

Escaping from a deadly deathtrap, Cage hunts down Hamilton, and confronts his erudite, sardonic, steel-fanged boss Piranha Jones just after they succeed in stealing a leaking canister of deadly nerve gas. The dread drama concludes in ‘Over the Years They Murdered the Stars!’ (Sal Buscema & the legion of deadline-busting Crusty Bunkers) as Cage saves his city at the risk of his life before serving just deserts to the eerie evildoers…

Having successfully rebranded himself, the urban privateer made ends meet whilst seeking a way to stay under police radar and clear his name. The new level of sophisticated, social commentary and bizarre villainy when McGregor took over writing led to Cage saving the entire city in true superhero style as #32 opens with the (unlicensed) PI in the leafy suburbs, hired to protect a black family from literally incendiary racist super-villain Wildfire in ‘The Fire This Time!’ (illustrated by Frank Robbins & Colletta). This self-appointed champion of moral outrage is determined to keep his affluent, decent neighbourhood white, and even Power Man is ultimately unable to prevent a ghastly atrocity from being perpetrated…

Back in the comfort zone of Times Square again, Cage is in the way when a costumed manic comes looking for Noah Burnstein, and painfully learns ‘Sticks and Stone Will Break Your Bones, But Spears Can Kill You!’ As shady reporters, sleazy lawyers and police detective Quentin Chase all circle, looking to uncover the Hero for Hire’s secret past in ‘Death, Taxes and Springtime Vendettas!’ (Frank Springer inks), Cage’s attention is distracted from Burstein’s stalker by deranged wrestler dubbed The Mangler, which leads to a savage showdown and near-fatal outcome in ‘Of Memories, Both Vicious and Haunting!’ (plotted by Marv Wolfman, dialogued by McGregor and illustrated by Marie Severin, Joe Giella & Frank Giacoia). Here at last, the reasons for the campaign of terror against the doctor are finally, shockingly exposed…

Power Man Annual #1 (1976) follows with ‘Earthshock!’ – by Chris Claremont, Lee Elias & Hunt – taking Cage to Japan as bodyguard to wealthy Samantha Sheridan. She’s being targeted by munitions magnate and tectonics-warping maniac Moses Magnum, intent on tapping Earth’s magma core, even though the very planet is at risk of destruction. Thankfully, not even his army of mercenaries is enough to stop Cage in full rage…

Next comes the cover for Power Man #36 (cover-dated October 1976) and another casualty of the “Dreaded Deadline Doom”, reprinting #12: the debut of the villain who follows in #37’s all-new ‘Chemistro is Back! Deadlier Than Ever!’ by Wolfman, Wilson & A Bradford. Here the apparently grudge-bearing recreant attacks Cage at the behest of a new mystery mastermind who clarifies his position in follow-up ‘…Big Brother Wants You… Dead!’ (Wolfman, Mantlo, Bob Brown & Jim Mooney). His minions Cheshire Cat and Checkpoint Charlie shadow the increasingly frustrated investigator, before repeated inconclusive and inexplicable clashes with Chemistro lead to a bombastic ‘Battle with the Baron!’ (inked by Klaus Janson) – a rival mastermind hoping to corner the market on crime in NYC. The convoluted clash concludes in ‘Rush Hour to Limbo!’ (Wolfman, Elias & Giacoia) as one final deathtrap for Cage turns into an explosive last hurrah for Big Brother and his crew…

Inked by Tom Palmer, #41 debuts a new vigilante in ‘Thunderbolt and Goldbug!’ as a super-swift masked hero makes a name for himself cleaning up low-level scum. Simultaneously, Cage is hired by a courier company to protect a bullion shipment, but when the truck is bombed and the guards die, dazed and furious Cage can’t tell villain from vigilante and takes on the wrong guy…

Answers if not conclusions are forthcoming in ‘Gold! Gold! Who’s Got the Gold?’ (with Alex Niño on inks) as Luke learns who his real friends and foes are, only to be suckered into a lethal trap barely escaped in #43’s ‘The Death of Luke Cage!’ In the aftermath, with legal authorities closing in on his fake life, Cage flees town and sheds his Power Man persona. However, even in the teeming masses of Chicago he can’t escape his past as an old enemy mistakenly assumes he’s been tracked down by the hero he hates most in all the world. Wolfman plots and Ed Hannigan scripts for Elias & Palmer as ‘Murder is the Man Called Mace!’ sees Luke dragged into the dishonoured soldier’s scheme to seize control of America and – despite his best and most violent efforts – beaten and strapped to a cobalt bomb on ‘The Day Chicago Died!’ (Wolfman & Elias). Sadly, after breaking free of the device, it’s lost in the sewers, prompting a frantic ‘Chicago Trackdown!’ before another savage showdown with Mace and his military madmen culminate in a chilling ‘Countdown to Catastrophe!’ (scripted by Roger Slifer) as a fame-hungry sniper starts shooting citizens whilst the authorities are preoccupied searching for the missing nuke…

With atomic armageddon averted at the last moment, this collection – and Cage’s old life – end on a well-conceived final charge. With issue #48, Cage’s comics title would be shared with mystic martial artist Danny Rand in the superbly enticing odd couple feature Power Man and Iron Fist, but before that there’s still a ‘Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight!’ courtesy of Claremont, Tuska & Bob Smith as Chicago is attacked by brain-sucking electrical parasite Zzzax! Thankfully, our steel-skinned stalwart is more than a match for the mind-stealing megawatt monstrosity…

With all covers – by Romita, Graham, Gil Kane, Wilson, Rich Buckler, Dave Cockrum, Marie Severin, Ernie Chan, Jim Starlin, Mike Esposito, Frank Giacoia, Klaus Janson, Dan Adkins, Tom Palmer, Joe Sinnott & Pablo Marcos – ; retrieved Introductions ‘An Optimistic Time’ by Englehart, ‘Always Forward’ by Isabella and ‘Luke Cage and the Big Bad City’ by McGregor and – from #3 onwards – letters pages ‘Comments to Cage’, the street level drama is augmented by a treasure trove of extra features. Adding value are the cover of reprint one-shot Giant-Size Power Man from 1975; Marvel Bulletins page promo from May 1972; House ads; original art pages and covers by Romita, Graham, Kane, Brown, pre-corrected production photostats, and Cockrum & Romita’s Cage entry from the 1975 Mighty Marvel Calendar (March, in case you were wondering) as well as the same by Sal Buscema from the Mighty Marvel Bicentennial Calendar (1976) and Wilson & Sinnott’s June 1977 Marvel Comics Memory Album Calendar before ending with the cover art for this collection by Phil Noto.

Arguably a little dated now (us in the know prefer the term “retro”), these tales were crucial in breaking down many social barriers across the complacent, intolerant, WASP-flavoured US comics landscape, and their power – if not their initial impact – remains undiminished to this day. These are tales well worth your time and attention.
© 2022 MARVEL.

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Tamba, Child Soldier


By Marion Achard & Yann Dégruel & various; translated by Montana Kane (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-236-6 (album HB/Digital edition)

It may be a wonderful world but modern Earth is far too often a terrible place, especially if you’re weak and powerless. The global scandal and shame of children forcibly co-opted into paramilitary and terrorist groups is not a new phenomenon. Throughout our history boys and girls have fought in adult wars. Comic books are full of them, but there’s two big differences: they all “volunteer” without being groomed by cruel, power-obsessed scum and THEY’RE NOT REAL.

So prevalent and pernicious was the practise of African and Asian militias, religious groups and other factions (even governments), that in 2000 the civilised world agreed to an Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in Armed Conflict. The OPAC accord restricts armed forces recruitment to adults of 18 years or over and has become known as the Straight 18 standard. It was a good start but hasn’t stopped ambitious war-criminals and monsters raiding villages for kids, who they drug, beat, starve and program; enslaving and constantly brutalising them to use as cannon fodder and shock troops in hope of securing their own evil ends.

Rather than concentrate on any specific case or example (there are so damned many) this stunning oversized full-colour hardback (216 x 279mm and also in digital format) synthesises many verified incidents into the dramatised testimony of Tamba Cisso: taken aged eight from his African village along with all of his young friends – and forced into a scavenging band of killers.

The specifics of the tragically documented events he participated in – and the unhappier fates of his fellow abductees – are revealed through his later testimony to an initially hostile crowd at a Commission for Truth and Reconciliation. Tamba’s account of everyday life as an indentured warrior for a jumped-up rebel warlord is no less harrowing for being one step removed from our own world’s actual atrocities…

Astutely examining the overall effect of mass kidnappings on generations of citizens, Young Adults author Marion Achard (Je veux un chat et des parents normaux, Pourquoi je suis devenu une fille) brings bitterness, barely harnessed anger, righteous indignation and potent empathy to an appalling subject. Tamba, l’enfant soldat is her first graphic novel – rendered with vivid virtuosity and great subtlety by artist/animator Yann Dégruel (Saba, Genz Gys Khan, Sans Famille).

Augmenting their visual narrative is Achard’s text essay Child Soldiers: describing what happens to these shunned victims of violence, resharing some extremely disturbing facts and figures, all augmented by features on Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and Professor Laure Borgomano’s (Department of Defense, NATO) breakdown of the purpose and functions of The UN High Commission for Refugees: UNHCR.

Compellingly engaging and boldly, beautifully illustrated, this is a chilling, sobering yet ultimately encouraging reading experience everyone with a stake in a less toxic future must seek out and share.
© 2018 Edition Delcourt. © 2019 NBM for the English translation.

For more information on other great and challenging comics see http://www.nbmpub.com/

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What We Don’t Talk About


By Charlot Kristensen (Avery Hill)
ISBN: 978-1-91039-555-4 (TPB/digital edition)

There’s plenty wrong with the world, but most of it could probably be sorted if people got together and discussed things rationally and honestly. Some individuals, however, don’t want to change positions or even agree that there even is a problem. This book isn’t for them, and we’ll have to find more drastic ways to deal with their nonsense…

Charlot Kristensen graduated from Middlesex University in 2015 with a degree in Illustration and thereafter pursued a career in the arts. Her visual and narrative gifts are prodigious and superbly highlighted in this vibrant examination of an interracial relationship in crisis. Kristensen is of Afro-Danish descent and clearly knows what she’s talking about and how best to depict it…

Painted in lavish and mood-setting colours, What We Don’t Talk About focuses on an idyllic modern romance as (demi-autobiographical?) artist Farai accompanies her white English boyfriend Adam to Lake Windemere to finally meet his parents. The young couple have been lovers for two years now, ever since University, but her beautiful gentle musician soulmate is uncharacteristically nervous – even short-tempered – as the journey begins. Farai almost regrets the trip, even though she’s been pushing for it from the start. Her nerves and his tension dissipate on the trip north, but are all revived when she meets Charles and Martha. The look on their faces and the tone of the greeting tell Farai an old story…

In frosty diffidence, the social amenities are followed but it’s not just a barely suppressed attitude of polite condescension Farai experiences. Martha’s blunt opinions extend to all aspects of her son’s life. Although she clearly opposes Adam’s choice of career, after meeting the girlfriend, Mother now has a new problem to gnaw at…

As the weekend progresses Martha’s sneering, passive aggressive comments go from dismissive to openly hostile: mocking Farai’s clothes and denigrating the achievements of her Zimbabwean parents (a doctor and engineer respectively). It soon becomes clear that it’s not just her who’s a problem: people with funny names or difficult accents and all Muslims also fail Martha’s tests of decency and acceptable standards. The matriarch also thinks the world should be grateful for British colonialism…

And Adam? He’s loving and conciliatory but ultimately weak and keen to avoid the issue. He knows what his mum says is objectionable, offensive and just plain wrong, but can’t or won’t bring himself to say anything or rebuke his parents. He seeks to divert conversations rather than defend Farai, even employing the “just a joke” defence at a most distressing family dinner. He doesn’t seem to believe their attitudes are unacceptable or that it even matters. Farai’s seen it all before. This is a love story that cannot possibly end well…

Like a contemporary Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, this powerful graphic drama forensically picks open the sores underlying so much of modern society’s attempts to integrate and assimilate long-entrenched attitudes: revealing not just how far we’ve all come, but how far we still have to go.

Comics have always had an admirable record in addressing issues of bigotry and racial injustice, and this tale takes that to the next level with potent moving empathy displayed and seen through the eyes of someone who’s clearly “been there, done that” all too often…

That ignorance and intolerance still daily endured by so many today is perpetually ignored, diminished and dismissed by those in charge has never been more effectively shown as in this unforgettable tale. Luxuriant colours and a welcomingly accessible cartoon style subversively act to devastatingly prove that prejudice doesn’t just lurk in dark corners any more but instead proudly rears its head everywhere it can. But that just means we must slap it down more forcefully and decisively.
© 2020 Charlot Kristensen.

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Krazy & Ignatz 1919-1921: The George Herriman Library volume 2


By George Herriman (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-367-7 (HB/Digital edition)

In a field positively brimming with magnificent, eternally evergreen achievements, Krazy Kat is – for most cartoon cognoscenti – the pinnacle of pictorial narrative innovation. The canon comprises a singular and hugely influential body of work which shaped the early days of the comics industry whilst elevating itself to the level of a treasure of world literature, adored by the literary and entertainment elite whilst simultaneously bewildering and annoying millions who didn’t “get it”…

Krazy & Ignatz is a creation which must always be approached and appreciated on its own terms. Over decades the strip developed a unique language – simultaneously visual and verbal – to allegorically delineate the immeasurable variety of human experience, foibles and peccadilloes with unfaltering warmth and understanding… and without ever offending anybody. Baffled millions, certainly, but offended… Nope, nehvah.

It certainly went over the heads and around the hearts of many, but Krazy Kat was never a strip for dull, slow or unimaginative people: those who can’t or won’t accept complex, multilayered verbal and visual whimsy, absurdist philosophy or seamless blending of sardonic slapstick with arcane joshing. It is still the closest thing to pure poesy narrative art has ever produced. Think of Dylan Thomas and Edward Lear playing “I Spy” with James Joyce amongst beautifully harsh, barren cactus fields as Gabriel García Márquez types up shorthand notes and keeps score…

George Joseph Herriman (August 22, 1880-April 25, 1944) was already successful as a cartoonist and journalist in 1913 when a cat and mouse who’d been noodling about at the edges of his domestic comedy strip The Family Upstairs graduated to their own feature on October 28th 1913. As covered here in heavily illustrated introductory article ‘A Mouse by Any Other Name: Krazy & Ignatz’s Early Life Under the Boards’ Krazy Kat – instantly mildly intoxicating and gently scene-stealing – had first popped up on July 26th 1910 in that strip’s precursor The Dingbat Family: a 5-day-a-week monochrome comedy strip in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Evening Journal.

By sheer dint of that overbearing publishing magnate’s enrapt adoration and direct influence and interference, the cat ‘n’ mouse capers gradually and inexorably spread throughout his vast stable of papers. Although Hearst and contemporary artistic and literary intelligentsia (such as Frank Capra, e.e. Cummings, Willem de Kooning, H.L. Mencken and more) adored the strip, many local and regional editors did not: taking every potentially career-ending opportunity to drop it from those circulation-crucial comics sections designed to entice Joe Public and the general populace.

The feature eventually found its true home and sanctuary in the Arts and Drama section of Hearst’s papers, protected there by Hearst’s unshakable patronage. At last enhanced (in 1935) with the cachet of enticing colour, the Ket & Ko. flourished, freed from editorial interference or fleeting fashion. It ran mostly unmolested until Herriman’s death on April 25th 1944 from cirrhosis caused by Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Eschewing standard industry policy and finding a substitute creator, Hearst decreed Krazy Kat would die with its originator.

The premise is simple: Krazy is what we would call gender-fluid; an effeminate, dreamy, sensitive, romantic feline, hopelessly smitten with venal, toxically masculine Ignatz Mouse. A married, spouse-abusing delinquent father, he is rude, crude, brutal, mendacious and thoroughly scurrilous. Ignatz is a proudly unreconstructed male and early forerunner of the men’s rights movement: drinking, stealing, fighting, conniving, constantly neglecting his wife and many children and always responding to Krazy’s genteel advances of friendship (or more) by clobbering the Kat with a well-aimed brick. These he obtains singly or in bulk from local brick-maker Kolin Kelly. The smitten kitten misidentifies these gritty gifts as tokens of equally recondite affection, showered upon him/her/they in the manner of Cupid’s arrows. It’s not a response, except perhaps a conditioned one: the mouse spends the majority of his time, energy and ingenuity (when not indulging in crime or philandering) launching missiles at the mild moggy’s mug. He can’t help himself, and Krazy waits for it to happen with the day bleakly unfulfilled if the adored, anticipated assault fails to happen.

The final critical element completing an anthropomorphic emotional triangle is lawman Offissa Bull Pupp. He is utterly besotted with Krazy, professionally aware of the Mouse’s true nature, but hamstrung from permanently removing his devilish rival for the foolish feline’s affections by his own amorous timidity and sense of honour. Krazy is blithely oblivious to the perennially “Friend-Zoned” Pupp’s dolorous dilemma…

Peripherally populating the mutable stage are a large, ever-growing supporting cast of inspired bit players. These include new player and relentless deliverer of babies Joe Stork; Hispanic huckster Don Kiyoti, hobo Bum Bill Bee, self-aggrandizing Walter Cephus Austridge, inscrutable, barely intelligible (and outrageously unreconstructed by modern standards) Chinese mallard Mock Duck, portraitist Michael O’Kobalt, dozy Joe Turtil and snoopily sagacious fowl Mrs. Kwakk Wakk, augmented by a host of audacious animal crackers such as Krazy’s relations Katfish, Katbird and niece Katrina – all equally capable of stealing the limelight and supporting their own features…

The exotic, quixotic episodes occur mainly amidst the Painted Desert environs of Coconino (patterned on Herriman’s vacation retreat in Coconino County, Arizona) where surreal playfulness and the fluid ambiguity of flora and landscape are perhaps the most important member of the cast. The strips are a masterful mélange of unique experimental drawing, cunningly designed, wildly expressionistic (frequently referencing Navajo arts) whilst harnessing sheer unbridled imagination and delightfully evocative lettering and language. This last is most effective here: alliterative, phonetically, onomatopoeically joyous with a compellingly melodious musical force and delicious whimsy (“Ignatz Ainjil” or “I’m a heppy, heppy ket!”).

Yet for all our high-fallutin’ intellectualism, these comic adventures are poetic, satirical, timely, timeless, bittersweet, self-referential, fourth-wall bending, eerily idiosyncratic, outrageously hilarious escapades encompassing every aspect of humour from painfully punning shaggy dog stories to riotous, violent slapstick. Herriman was a master of action: indulging in dialogue-free escapades as captivating as any Keystone Kop or Charlie Chaplin 2-reeler. Kids of any age will delight in them as much as any pompous old oaf like me and you…

This cartoon wonderment is bulked up with a veritable treasure trove of unique artefacts: candid photos, correspondence, original strip art and examples of Herriman’s personalised gifts and commissions (gorgeous hand-coloured artworks featuring the cast and settings), supported by fascinating insights and crucial history. Bill Blackbeard’s essay ‘A Mouse by Any Other Name: Krazy & Ignatz’s Early Life Under the Boards’ continues detailing the circuitous path to Krazy in Coconino via Herriman’s earlier strips successes The Dingbat Family and The Family Upstairs.

This volume then reveals – mostly in monochrome – the strips from January 5th 1919 to December 25th 1921 in a reassuringly hefty atlas of another land and time, with the unending dramas playing out as before, but with some intriguing diversions. These include a wealth of snow and farming gags, recurring tributes to Kipling’s “Just So Stories” (such as learning how Kookoo Klocks work, why bananas are slippy and hang around in bunches and why Lightning Bugs light up). Early in the year occasional unwelcome guest Blind Pig (a sly salute to speakeasies in Prohibition days) debuts even as the regulars tirelessly test out their strange threesome relationship in a dazzling array of short painful trysts…

The peculiar proceedings are delivered – much like Joe Stork’s bundles of joy/responsibility – every seven days, with running gags on Ignatz being furless and Krazy philanthropically and clandestinely finding ways to buy or grow him a warm winter coat; odd vegetables taking root in the region’s unfeasibly fertile soil and plenty of scandal and gossip spawning mischief from the animal onlookers. A nod to an unstable post war world comes with strikes at Kelly’s brickworks and sundry other reasons why bricks suddenly become scarce, all forcing Ignatz to find replacement ammunition…

Even so, always our benighted star gets hit with something solid: many, variegated, heavy and forever evoking joyous, grateful raptures and transports of delight from the heartsore, hard-headed recipient, with Pupp helpless to thwart Ignatz or even understand why the Ket longs for his hate-filled assaults. Often Herriman simply let nature takes its odd course: draughting surreal slapstick chases, weird physics events and convoluted climate conditions to carry the action and confound the reader, but gradually an unshakeable character dynamic forms involving love and pain, crime and punishment and – always – forgiveness, redemption and another chance for all transgressors and malefactors…

Much time and effort is expended to have Joe deliver a longed-for heir to rich but dissatisfied tycoon Mr. T Vanwagg-Taylor even though each time fate intervenes and the anticipated offspring is left with other mothers. The Ket’s ancient Egyptian antecedents are exposed whilst in the present Krazy is put on trial for being crazy…

A Katnippery is opened and many strips concentrate on how the magic herb is kultivated and konsumed, whilst a fashion for hats and helmets leads to a period of brick imperviousness before the mouse adapts again. Krazy explores careers in music, dance, acting and pugilism as Herriman opens decades of subversive playing with line and shade carefully probing where black ink and white paper are metaphors for race and colour.

When not sleeping in the bath or giving shelter to migrant Mexican jumping beans and land-locked castaway clams, Krazy falls in love with motoring and racing, and also sets up an electrical power company based upon cat fur static, whilst malevolent Ignatz delves deep into the lore of bricks and dornicks, edging closer to having his own kiln and manufactory…

Sometimes there’s no logic in control, as when Krazy obtains the Pied Piper’s magical instrument and the result is not what you’d expect, or as assorted ailments afflict the town too, or it is assailed by reformers and bluestocking moralists…

And then it was Christmas and a new year and volume lay ahead…

Before closing, though, at the far end of the tome you can enjoy some full-colour archival illustration and another batch of erudite and instructional acclimation in ‘The Ignatz Mouse Debaffler’, with Blackbeard, Jeet Heer and Michael Tisserand providing pertinent facts, snippets of contextual history and necessary notes for the young and potentially perplexed.

Tisserand discusses language, race and (undisclosed creole “passing” as white) Herriman’s career as an artist via his character Musical Mose in ‘The Impussanations of Krazy Kat” before Blackbeard’s biographical essay ‘George Herriman: 1880-1944’.

Herriman’s epochal classic is a remarkable triumph: in all arenas of Art and Literature there has never been anything like these comic strips which shaped our industry and creators, inspired auteurs in fields as disparate as prose fiction, film, dance, animation and music whilst delivering delight and delectation to generations of wonder-starved fans with a story of cartoon romance gone awry. If, however, you are one of Them and not Us, or if you actually haven’t experienced the gleeful graphic assault on the sensorium, mental equilibrium and emotional lexicon carefully thrown together by George Herriman from the dawn of the 20th century until the dog days of World War II, this glorious compendium is the most accessible way to do so. Don’t waste the opportunity…

That was harsh. Not everybody gets it and some of them aren’t even stupid or soulless, just unfortunate. Still, for lovers of whimsy and whimsical lovers “There Is A Heppy Lend Furfur A-Waay” if only you accept where and how to look…

The George Herriman Library: Krazy & Ignatz 1919-1921 © 2020 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All contents © 2020 Fantagraphics Books, Inc., unless otherwise noted. “A Mouse by Any Other Name: Krazy & Ignatz’s Early Life Under the Boards”, “The Ignatz Mouse Debaffler Page”, and Herriman biography © 2020 Bill Blackbeard. “The Impussanations of Krazy Kat” © 2020 Michael Tisserand. All other images and text © 2020 their respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

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The Perishers Spectacolour


By Maurice Dodd & Dennis Collins (Mirror Books)
ISBN: 0-85939-169-8 (album PB)

I plug these little chaps – and the wonderful feature they starred in – every few years because the work is wonderful and quintessentially British. I so wish they were still around to take aim at today’s governments, autocrats, too-common people and general discommodiousness as well as helping us accommodate the impending end of the world with a smile…

Although written almost entirely by Maurice Dodd throughout its 48-year history, the buried National Treasure that is The Perishers almost began life in 1957 when artist Dennis Collins and writer Bill Witham (who went on to huge success with uniquely innocent everyman Useless Eustace) batted around an idea with cartoon editor Bill Herbert. Some daily exploits tribulations, ruminations and misadventures of a bunch of typical kids (circa the latter half of the 20th century at least) were first published in the Manchester edition of The Daily Mirror in February 1958. However, after only a few frankly mediocre months the wacky adventures of Maisie & Marlon were withdrawn and retooled.

Jack-of-all-trades, budding artist and advertising whiz-kid Maurice Dodd was then taken aside by his service comrade and drinking buddy Herbert (they had been paratroopers together) and offered a go at revising the strip. The freelance designer jumped at the chance to reinvent the characters for what would become a meandering but beautifully illustrated, all-ages feature simply stuffed with untapped potential.

Drawing on his own life (he would describe it as “shamelessly pilfering”), Dodd improvised a plethora of new characters – animal and human (although with this strip distinctions are loose and hard to defend). He also rescued and rehabilitated an early 1958 casualty of the original set-up in the unkempt and ill-maintained person of laconic orphan/philosophical dilettante Wellington. This bewildered and bemused overly-anxious symbol of the post-war era was a street urchin living on his wits but still attending school and enduring all the daily trials and indignities of British youth…

Relaunched in October 1959 (Happy 65th, lads, lasses, loons and assorted mildlife!) in London and national editions, revamped strip The Perishers quickly caught on, becoming a morning mainstay for generations of Brits (and assorted colonies), by blending slapstick and surreal comedy with naive charm. At its best it was a miniaturised modern romance melodrama liberally laced with sardonic cultural commentary – apparently and retroactively – set in the South London Borough of Croynge (an amalgam of Croydon and Penge) but still looking like any post-industrial northern city familiar to generations of kids…

Here Maisie loves Marlon, Marlon loves fashion and “inventing”, Wellington loves sausages and Boot, Boot loves sausages and more sausages but is caught in an autocratic duty of care for the little kid who cooks and cleans for him.

Particularly rewarding was a continuing and wonderfully twisted faux misperception of contemporary politics and the burgeoning influence of advertising and commercial media. From the start The Perishers was superbly illustrated, conjuring in a few judicious lines and cannily applied grey tones a communal urban wonderland we all knew as kids: a familiar if not ubiquitous post-war melange of shops and streets, building sites and overpasses, alleys and parks and fields where we could get on with our adventures and no adults could interfere or spoil the fun. The unsavoury old git in me still hungers in absentia on behalf of the youth of today who will never experience such freedom without being labelled “neglected”, “at risk” or possibly just “feral”…

The primary protagonists are Wellington and his old English Sheepdog Boot (actually the mutt is only “sort of a dog…” since the wily, chancer/shaggy raconteur considers himself a Manorial Milord “sufferin’ under the curse of a Gypsy Wench”). They are ably unsupported by the formidable Maisie, a thoroughly modern miss torn between the fashionable self-delusion that the boy of her dreams feels likewise… and sweets. This frail flower has an unsurpassed capacity for greed and inspirational violence, but it vies with a tremendous unslaked passion for the aforementioned Marlon, whom she thinks is what she wants. And sweets. But really the Romance. With sweets.

Cool, suave and debonair are just three of the many, many words Marlon doesn’t know the meaning of, but lots of girls at school fancy him anyway. If he grows up, he wants to be a brain surgeon or a bloke wot goes down sewers in great big gumboots…

Being on his own and fiercely independent, Wellington capitalises on every opportunity to support himself with sordid scavenging and shoddy schemes – usually involving selling poorly constructed carts and buggies to Marlon who has far more money than sense. To be honest, Marlon has more noses than sense…

Maisie is a shy beautiful maiden waiting for her true beloved to sweep her off her feet – and if he doesn’t, she gives him a thorough bashing up and nicks his sweets. Other unreasonable regulars include Baby Grumplin’ – Maisie’s toddler brother and a diabolical force of nature; Plain Jane – a girl who asks too many questions; and dapper Fiscal Yere: smugly complacent go-getting son of a millionaire and another occasional sucker for Wellington’s automotive in-expertise. Kids like him are what made today’s world what it is…

On the equally esoteric anthropomorphic animal front, extremely erudite Boot often contends with stroppy ducks, militant squirrels, socialist revolutionaries Fred the Beetle and his long-suffering wife Ethel, South Asian bloodhound/journalist B.H. Calcutta (Failed) and over-the-hill canine lady of leisure Tatty Oldbit (The Sailor’s Friend), militant teutonic tortoise Adolf Kilroy and a nicotine-addicted caterpillar who stunted his growth through old dog-ends and became Fred’s inseparable comrade/doctrinal competitor in the struggle against capitalistic and canine oppression. This little Trot is also an implacable rival for any food or other societal detritus the Bolshevistic bug might find…

Utterly English, fabulously fantastical and resoundingly working-class, the strip generated 30 collections between 1963-1990, 4 Big Little Books, 5 novels and 2 annuals as well as an audio record and – in 1979 – an immensely successful animated TV series. That last was the spark for this carefully curated album released in the same year to tie-in with the toned-down-for-TV frolics reprinting colourized strip and extended running gag sequences bunched into chapters for your delectation.

We start off gently with ‘Boot Rules – OK’ as Wellington struggles to keep them whilst the dog contributes nothing other than sardonic criticism, acts as straight man to the other bestial extroverts at large in the streets and plans his eventual takeover of the planet… once he overcomes that cursed lack of thumbs…

‘Car Sales’ delivers 16 strips on the eternal war between Wellington and Maise as the former seeks to foist off a succession of shoddy homemade soapbox vehicles on a lad whose real purpose in life is buying sweets for his ladylove. If only Marlon could be made to remember that…

The well-heeled simpleton has needs and desires of his own, primarily becoming a ‘Brain Surgeon’ – even though this section proves why that will never be so – and is followed by a sampling of bargain basement Antichrist Baby Grumplin’ turning the streets and houses upside down hunting for his latest appalling pet ‘The Tigerworm’ and encompassing asides with his young sibling “the New Baby” because ‘It’s Spring Again’, before back in the Wild Kingdoms ‘Tatty Makes Trouble’ for Boot and B.H. Calcutta (Failed).

Wellington’s best pal then faces ‘The Nazi Invasion’ as Adolf Kilroy acts like his totalitarian preincarnation and annexes Boot’s bowl and despatches an Axis of insects to occupy all the best food sources…

Total war is averted by the advent of protracted human manoeuvres intended to accomplish ‘Boot’s Bath’ and rapidly escalating to riots in the streets exacerbated by Maisie’s latest campaign to become ‘May Queen’: again deploying hulking harridan Beryl Bogey (the class “black belt, cross country netball champion”) to canvass votes with extreme menace…

For sheer carnage and chaos only one thing beats Baby Grumplin’ on his ‘Space Hopper’ and that’s what happens here when attempts by the infernal infant’s elders to confiscate said bouncing balloon lead to Boot being trapped on it and boinging about like a blockbuster blobby bomb. Largely unharmed, he soon retreats to a place of canine recuperation only to find his doggy brethren all seeking to pinch his objet d’amour in ‘A Bone to Pick’…

Because it was the past and we just didn’t value juvenile life as much as now, nobody thought anything amiss at a dog and four kids under ten going on an annual camping trip to the seaside: free for a fortnight from all adult supervision (oh, such innocent times!). Here ‘On Holiday’ sees the queasy quartet and Boot romping in the surf at their regular beach resort: playing tricks, scoring points indulging in mockery and even trying a ‘Swimming Lesson’ (for Boot), as well as indulging in the yearly habit of terrorising the denizens of a rockpool.

Every summer, the kids would encounter and endure sun, surf and the crabs who worship the uncannily canine ‘The Eyeballs in the Sky’ which perennially manifested in their isolated “Pooliverse”, auguring mayhem, madness and an unceasing procession of prophets, pundits and pestilential conmen crabs, before the real world would intrude again.

After reluctantly and hilariously ‘Striking Camp’, more time is happily wasted mucking about with an ‘I Speak Your Weight’ machine before finally staggering back to ‘Home, Sweet Home’, only to find the current campaign to remember a day of national importance has kicked off in ‘Happy Birthday, Wellington’ with the usual lukewarm loot results accounted for until ‘But on Monday…’ proves both boy and dog should be careful what they wish for, if what they wish for is a skateboard. Apparently there’s no brakes or steering wheel and they are magnetic if you’re riding a spacehopper coming the other way…

The manic buffoonery then concludes with short bursts of lunacy and largesse in strips all embracing a spirit of ‘Merry Christmas’…

Dennis Collins magnificently and hilariously illustrated the strip until his retirement in 1983, after which Dodd himself took up the pens and brushes. Eventually artist Bill Melvin took over the art chores whilst Dodd scripted until his death in 2006. Once the backlog of material was exhausted The Perishers finished on June 10th of that year. Soon after, The Mirror began reprinting classic sequences to the general approval of everyone, so perhaps it’s not too much to hope that eventually all those classic collections will be available to all…

Quite frankly, it’s what we need and what I deserve…
© 1973 Daily Mirror Newspapers Limited/Film Fair. © Mirror Books Ltd 1979.

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Degas & Cassatt: A Solitary Dance


By EFA & Rubio, translated by Edward Gauvin (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-324-0 (Album HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-325-7

NBM’s line of graphic biographies never fails to delight, and this oversized luxury hardcover (also available digitally) is one of the most fascinating thus far: exploring one of painting’s greatest yet least understood masters and – deducing by inference – one of the most occluded, protracted and certainly frustrated romances in history…

Degas & Cassatt: A Solitary Dance reunites award-winning screenwriter, historian and novelist Salva Rubio (Max, The Photographer of Mauthausen) with animator/illustrator Ricard Fenandez AKA “Efa” (Les Icariades, Rodriguez, Le Soldat, L’Ãme du Vin: L’ail et l’huile). Their previous collaborations are also beautiful biographies – Monet: Itinerant of Light and Django, Hand on Fire: The Great Django Reinhardt.

First released in France, the translated Degas: La danse de la solitude is preceded by mood-setting quotes from Baudelaire and Shakespeare and closes with a detailed Bibliography of suggestions for further study and appreciation. Between those points is a compelling exploration of one of the most turbulent periods in European and Art history, as impacted upon and partially shaped by a controversial, conflicted, contradictory and misunderstood master of line, colour and form…

This pictorial conjecture gently deconstructs enigmatic Edgar Degas is rendered by EFA in the manner of the pastel crayon drawings so beloved and powerfully utilised by Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas (July 19th 1834 – September 27th 1917). It affords a mistily miasmic uncertainty which never obscures detail whilst shaping a mystery to confound and unsettle readers. The stunning confection of painterly images traces – via flashback and supposition – the life of a troubled artistic genius raised almost completely by male relatives to covet success, scorn women and criticise himself mercilessly.

In Paris during the 1870s, a graciously-barbed, polite war of wills and conception began. The creative world was formalised and controlled by a hidebound elite – “The Salon” – dictating what could and could not be ART. The convention-constricted organisation even dictated form, method and content until that stultifying impasse was challenged by a haphazard band of free thinkers who would become derisively dubbed “The Impressionists”.

Among their most outspoken and headstrong proponents were Manet, Monet, Cezanne, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Sisley, Bazille and others, but they only really started making waves once staid, bellicose and unfathomable Degas began associating with them. He bemused and bewildered his fellow outriders and the Bohemian set they congregated with, but never felt himself part of the group… or any human affiliation.

His story is seen from its conclusion as ‘1: Solitude’ opens on Saturday, 29th September 1917 with an elderly lady staring at a crypt in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris. She is American painter Mary Cassatt who probably knew Degas better than any other person. On visiting his empty studio, sentiment swallows her as she opens his abandoned notebooks, thinks back and wonders…

In ‘2: Monsieur Degas’ the odd bourgeois’ formative days are selectively reviewed and his misanthropic, misogynistic, chauvinistic and racist stances are quizzed through his problems with his own output. Degas’ work does not and has never satisfied him and he can only find inspiration in places no decent person belongs. It seems the austere bookish elitist cannot open up to his peers but is addicted to being an anonymous, masked and untouchable patron of brothels, bawdy houses and ballet… where only the most degraded – or poverty stricken – go.

As his renown grows a meeting with an art dealer from the USA leads to a possibility of a different life in ‘3: Miss Cassatt’, but the voluntary hermit’s true genius appears to be self-sabotage. Even as the impressionists gradually destroy the influence of The Salon, Degas finally starts generating work worthy of his talent whilst sinking deeper into isolation and pushing away all those who could be friends… or perhaps more…

The story ends with ‘4: The Dance’, allowing some fanciful elaboration on the biographers’ part as the elderly artist confronts his muse and inhibitions in a kind of Happy Ever After that concludes with Rubio’s prose rumination ‘Did Monsieur Degas ever find peace?’

Enchanting, thought-provoking and supremely enthralling, Degas & Cassatt: A Solitary Dance is a soft-focus voyage of illicit discovery no lover of unforgettable pictures can be without.
© EFA/RUBIO/ ÉDITIONS DU LOMBARD (DARGAUD- LOMBARD S.A.) 2021. All rights reserved.

Degas & Cassatt: A Solitary Dance will be published on March 12th 2024 and is available for pre-order. For more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/