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X-Men: Worlds Apart


By Christopher Yost, Diogenes Neves & Ed Tadeo; Priest, Sal Velluto & Bob Almond; Chris Claremont & John Byrne, & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4030-6 (HB) 978-0-7851-3533-3 (TPB)

In 1963 The X-Men #1 introduced Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl and the Beast: very special students of Professor Charles Xavier, a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and integration between the masses of humanity and the emergent off-shoot race of mutants – Homo Superior.

After years of eccentric and spectacular adventures the mutant misfits disappeared at the beginning of 1970 as mystery and all things supernatural once more gripped the world’s entertainment fields and triggered a sustained downturn in costumed hero comics.

Although their title was revived at the end of the year as a cheap reprint vehicle, the missing mutants were reduced to guest-stars and bit-players throughout the Marvel universe and the Beast was transformed into a monster to cash in on the horror boom, until Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas green-lighted a bold one-shot in 1975 as part of the company’s line of Giant-Sized specials.

Giant Size X-Men #1 detailed how the classic team had been lost in action, leaving Xavier to scour the Earth for a replacement team. Recruiting old foes-turned-friends Banshee and Sunfire and throwaway Hulk villain Wolverine, most of the savant’s time and attention was invested in newcomers. These comprised Kurt Wagner, a demonic German teleporter who would be codenamed Nightcrawler, Russian farmboy Peter Rasputin, who could transform into a living steel Colossus, embittered, disillusioned Apache superman John Proudstar who was cajoled into joining the makeshift squad as Thunderbird and a young woman who was regarded as an African weather goddess.

Ororo Munroe AKA Storm was actually the lost daughter of Kenyan royalty and an American journalist. On joining Xavier’s team, she spent years fighting the world’s most deadly threats as part – and eventually leader – of the outlaw, unloved, distrusted mutant hero horde, before eventually leaving her second home to marry a boy she had met whilst trekking across the Dark Continent decades previously.

In Fantastic Four #52 (August 1966) an incredible individual calling himself the Black Panther tested himself against the Cosmic Quartet and disclosed in the following issue how, as a child, he had lost his father to a ruthless scientist’s mercenary army when they invaded his hidden African homeland Wakanda.

Young Prince T’Challa had single-handedly avenged the murder of his father T’Chaka and driven off the raiders, inheriting the role of king and spiritual leader of his people. Eventually, he became a member of the Mighty Avengersand introduced his country to the world, with technologically-advanced Wakanda swiftly advancing to the forefront of nations by trading its scientific secrets and greatest natural resource – incredible alien mineral Vibranium.

Whilst a boy wandering the plains of Africa, he had encountered a beautiful young girl with incredible powers trekking from Egypt to West Africa. Years later he found her again as one the X-Men. Slowly rediscovering old feelings, the pair married and Storm became the First Lady of Wakanda…

This compilation collects 4-issue miniseries X-Men: Worlds Apart from 2008-2009, Black Panther volume 3, #26 (January 2001) and material from Marvel Team-Up #100 (December 1980), and follows the African Queen through her darkest hours even as it affords a little space to examine key moments in her tempestuous relationship with the earthly agent of the very-real, very paws-on Panther God.

The romance commences with the eponymous ‘Worlds Apart’ crafted by Christopher Yost, Diogenes Neves, Ed Tadeo & Raul Treviño, with the action opening in New York’s sewers where Storm and some-time comrade Cyclops seek to convince hidden Morlock refugees to join the West Coast mutant enclave and safe-haven known as Utopia. When she is suddenly called back to Africa, Ororo’s erstwhile friend contentiously questions her loyalties…

Even as august and elevated co-ruler of a fabulous kingdom, Ororo iq adi T’Challa is still painfully aware of humanity’s – and more specifically her own subjects’ – bigotry regarding the genetic offshoot politely dubbed Homo Superior. When one of her protégés – young Wakandan mutant Nezhno Abidemi – is accused of murder she rushes to defend him.

…But the evidence is overwhelming, incontrovertible and damning…

Nevertheless, she knows something is amiss and when she arbitrarily frees him, the entire country turns against her. Even her adoring husband wants her blood…

The cause soon smugly reveals himself as Amahl Farouk: a sinister, soul-corrupting telepath she and Charles Xavier killed years ago, when she was merely an orphan child-thief in Cairo. Sadly, the dying monster evolved into a malign body-stealing psychic force; an untouchable Shadow King feeding on hatred and polluting everything it touches…

Biding its time, Shadow King insinuated itself into Wakanda, stoking ill-feeling throughout. Now wearing her beloved T’Challa, it plans on extracting a much-postponed final vengeance…

As the poisonous presence gloats, Ororo realises it is not just her at risk: the Shadow King has simultaneously taken Cyclops in America and is using her fellow X-Man as a weapon to kill the only earthly threat to Farouk’s power – supreme telepath Emma Frost, who is also Scott Summers’ lover…

With an entire nation and the precious body of her beloved mercilessly hunting her and Nezhno, the wondrous weather-warrior must first direct her powers half a world away to stop Cyclops whatever the cost, before somehow destroying a foe no power on Earth can touch.

Happily, the Spiritual co-ruler of Wakanda has her own direct line to the country’s cat god – or is that goddess?

Short, sharp, spectacularly action-packed and wickedly satisfying – especially the climactic battles with the assembled X-Men and friendly rival Cyclops – this bombastic Fights ‘n’ Tights adventure is rather bafflingly complemented with ‘Echoes’ from Black Panther #26. Created by Priest, Sal Velluto & Bob Almond, it’s the opening part of a longer epic entitled ‘Stürm und Drang – a Story of Love and War’. Here T’Challa’s childhood friendship with Ororo is slowly and painfully re-cultivated during an incursion into Wakanda by alien-hunting US Federal Agents, and a barely-civil embassy from the secret race known as Deviants, all seeking possession of an unearthly parent and child. The untenable situation eventually forces a drastic reaction from the sympathetic African heroes…

As an orphaned part of an ongoing storyline, this interlude, although smart and pretty, is pretty baffling and aggravating too, ending as it does on an unsatisfying cliffhanger, and unless you already know the greater tale, is far more annoying than elucidating…

Still at least you can track down the entire tale in numerous Black Panther collections…

This intriguing safari into the unknown concludes with the far more pleasing – and done-in-one – story of Ororo and T’Challa’s first meeting as kids in the wilds of Africa. It first appeared as a back-up in Marvel Team-Up #100 in 1980, cleverly revealing how the kids enjoyed an idyllic time on the veldt (reminiscent of Henry De Vere Stacpoole’s 1908 novel The Blue Lagoon) until a South African commando team tried to kidnap the Wakandan prince as a bargaining chip.

Now, as adults in America they are hunted by the vicious Afrikaner Andreas de Ruyter who has returned, attempting to assassinate Ororo before seeking to exact final revenge upon the Black Panther. Cue long-delayed lover’s reunion and team-raid on an automated House of Horrors…

Clearly designed as an outreach project to draw in audience demographics perceived to be short-changed by mainstream Marvel, Storm and the Black Panther have proved to be a winning combination in terms of story if not sales, and Worlds Apart is the kind of tale that will please fans of the genre and followers of the film franchises.
© 1980, 2001, 2008, 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Cat & Cat volume 1: Girl Meets Cat


By Christophe Cazenove, Hervé Richez & Yrgane Ramon, translated by Joe Johnson (Papercutz)
ISBN: 978-1-54580-427-8 (HB) 978-1-54580-428-5 (TPB)

There’s an amazing abundance of comics about cats being sent to me these days, so – in anticipation of our furry feline overlords finally taking full possession of the planet – I’m thinking of an imminent solid week of cat-themed coverage. Until then though, let’s make do with this recent addition to the genre, courtesy of those fine folk at Papercutz and pray that it’s enough to hold the cute little brutes at bay (the cats, I mean, not the all-ages readership)…

Debuting in Europe as Cath et son chat in 2012’s in initial volume Virus au bahut (they’re up to 8 books by now), the series details the grudging accommodations made by a single-parent father, his naively optimistic daughter and a rather strong-willed, painfully adventurous cat they name Sushi…

Girl Meets Cat sees young Catherine gradually getting to know the newest addition to the household, although dad isn’t really acclimatising that well to the hairy third wheel. In this delightful paperback or digital catalogue (tee hee) of short strips, you’ll see the hapless humans discover Tomcat Sushi’s darling little tricks – such as shredding carpets, wallpaper, drapes and furniture (“broderie de chat” as actor Leslie Phillips once dubbed it), shunning expensive cat-toys, sleeping for eons and utterly failing to understand the principles of cat doors or the off-limits sanctity of Christmas trees and decorations…

Enthralling episodes cover where cats sleep, opening the fridge, food, litter trays, learning to use pet-carriers, professional cat groomers, holiday provision, fishbowls, what cats do to tech – especially computers – the joy of cardboard boxes, hiding, marking territory and presenting prey (generally garden gnomes in this case).

These commonplace activities are often complicated by the fact that Sushi has a rich and imaginative dream life which frequently has painful real-world repercussions. He’s been an astronaut cat, polar explorer, pirate, ghost and Victorian detective Catlock Holmes and is particularly partial to those five-hour long sessions of vigorous violent exercise cats compress into six minutes – generally known as “the Rips”. Most importantly, he is implacable in the never-ending war that ensues over who gets to sit in the best spot in the house…

In this tome you will also learn of Sushi’s nine lives through the length of human history from Jurassic times to WWII, and understand humanity’s true place in the Grand Scheme of Things.

Rendered by Yrgane Ramon in a frantic and frenetic modern animation style, and scripted – probably from painful personal experience – by veteran comedy scripters Christophe Cazenove (Les Pompiers; Les Fondus; Les Petits Mythos) and Hervé Richez (Buzzi; L’Effaceur; Les Poulets du Kentucky), this a wonderfully bright and breezy sitcom cat lovers and cartoon connoisseurs will adore.
© 2012-2020 Bamboo Édition. All other material © 2020 Papercutz. All rights reserved.

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Goblin Girl


By Moa Romanova, translated by Melissa Bowers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-68396-283-0 (HB)

Scandinavian artists and authors seem to have a real knack for combining comics with therapy and producing truly memorable books you really want to tell your friends about. Here’s another…

Stockholm resident and dog-lover Moa Romanova was born in 1992. She’s an artist and musician who studied painting at the Gothenburg School of Fine arts and is a graduate of the wonderful Malmö Comic Art School. She’s probably done a whole bunch of other stuff too, if her debut graphic novel Goblin Girl is anything to go by. Already available in seven languages, it started life as Alltid Fucka Upp when first published in Sweden…

The Goblin in question is a young woman of artistic temperament and ambitions who suffers from panic attacks and other insecurities. Despite being broke and stuck in a grotty squat over a shop, she’s getting by, thanks to mum, friends and a counsellor I personally wouldn’t give house room to. Looking for love – aren’t we all? – she hooks up online with a minor TV celeb who’s far too old for her, but at least he seems to listen. It’s not undying passion, but in the absence of anything better…

He seems to want nothing, but validates her life and even offers to sponsor her art career. Are things finally looking up?  Aren’t there always strings attached?

And so, her life progresses: drink, panic attacks, other people, concerts, social services, work, no work, body issues, relationships, fraught travel, psych evaluations and admissions: all the crap that makes up a modern life if you’re not born perfect but still have a brain to be unhappy and discontented with…

Dealing with contemporary life, mental health issues and the inescapable problem of unequal power dynamics in all relationships in an uncompromising but astonishingly steady – if not upbeat – manner, Goblin Girl (available in breathtaking oversized hardback or digital editions) is a remarkable testament to modern living, beautifully drawn in a deliberately ugly way and deeply moving. You won’t all like it, but those of you who do will read it over and over again and still come away wanting more…
© 2020 Moa Romanova. English translation © 2020 Melissa Bowers. This edition © 2020 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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Hi Score Girl


By Rensuke Oshikiri translated by Alexander Keller-Nelson (Square Enix Manga & Books)
ISBN: 978-64609-076-7 (Tankōbon PB)

I’ve been dreadfully longwinded of late so here’s a quick review of a book I didn’t expect to like at all, but which happily surprised me.

Let me start by admitting I’m old and slow and physically decrepit. Computer gaming of all stripes and sorts has completely passed me by, and even when I was a fit, demi-god-like Adonis, I was completely immune to the allure of moving screens, ghastly cartoon explosions and things that went blip or bleep. I knew other folk liked them, but I couldn’t care less.

I still don’t, but they’ve been around long enough to have entertained generations and acquire some vintage, and this delightful manga (and the usual anime and movie/TV spinoffs) cannily access that sense of time well spent and happy childhoods to splendid effect for a very human story.

Created by Rensuke Oshikiri, the strip Hai Sukoa Gāru began in October 2010 in Monthly Big Gangan, running until September 2018 and filling ten Tankōbon volumes with the collected adventures. There is talk of a sequel series soon…

It’s actually a slow-burning romcom that begins in 1991, concerning poor schoolboy Haruo “Mighty Fingers” Yaguchi. He hasn’t got much, but he’s the king of his local video game arcade – and any other he can find money to enter. At least, that is, until little perfect miss Akira Oona comes in and starts trashing his scores…

She’s in his sixth-grade class: pretty, rich, aloof. Everybody loves her – even the teachers – even though she never speaks to anyone. What right – or need – has she to invade his sordid dominions?

He hates her.

As she continually and constantly wrecks his rep on a variety of games that will cripple fans and cognoscenti with overpowering nostalgia, his ire grows. However, as shared interests and surprisingly similar domestic problems push them together, his attitudes begin to change. Hers are harder to fathom. Like Tommy in that rock opera, she only seems to come alive in front of a console…

Packed with the kind of technical detail and historical background all geeks – gamers, comics, whatever – and surprise features, this is a truly engaging yarn that ends on a potentially tragic cliffhanger that will have you clamouring for more…
© 2016 Rensuke Oshikiri/SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. English translation © 2020 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.

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Daredevil Epic Collection volume 4 1970-1972: A Woman Called Widow


By Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Gary Friedrich, Gene Colan, Don Heck, Alan Weiss, Barry Windsor-Smith, Bill Everett & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2034-0 (TPB)

Matt Murdock is a blind lawyer whose remaining senses hyper-compensate, making him capable of astonishing acrobatic feats, a formidable fighter and a living lie-detector.

Very much a second-string hero for most of his early years, Daredevil was nonetheless a striking and popular one, due in large part to the roster of brilliant artists who had illustrated the strip. He only really came into his own, however, after artist Gene Colan signed up for the long haul…

The natal DD battled thugs, gangsters, an eclectic mix of established and new super-villains and even the occasional monster or alien invasion. He quipped and wise-cracked his way through life and life-threatening combat, utterly unlike the grim, moody quasi-religious metaphor he became under modern authorial regimes…

In these tales from the pivotal era of relevancy, social awareness and increasing political polarisation, the Man Without Fear was also growing into the judicial conscience of a generation turning its back on old values…

Covering May 1970 -April 1972, this trade paperback and digital compilation chronologically re-presents Daredevil #64-86 plus a crossover with Iron Man #35-36 and sees the once-staid and so-very Establishment Murdock move with the shifting cultural mores as scripter Roy Thomas hands over the reins to newcomer Gerry Conway in an increasingly determined move to make the Man Without Fear cutting edge and relevant… …

The action opens here with Horn-Head prowling the rooftops of Los Angeles. He’s there to find the love-of-his-life, who quit New York when the pressure of sharing DD’s secrets proved too much…

After trailing the star-struck Karen Page to Hollywood, DD gets to take out his bad mood on a handy hood in ‘Suddenly… The Stunt-Master!’ (Thomas, Gene Colan & Syd Shores) before eventually helping his old enemy (a petty criminal biker) get a TV show of his own…

Murdock remains in LA to oversee Karen’s first acting gig – a pastiche of then-hot spooky TV phenomenon Dark Shadows – and prevents her becoming part of a murder spree in ‘The Killing of Brother Brimstone’: a classy whodunit which cataclysmically climaxes one month later in ‘…And One Cried Murder!’

Still stuck on the West Coast, DD tackles another grudge-bearing villain as ‘Stilt-Man Stalks the Soundstage’ (Gary Friedrich, Thomas, Colan & Shores) with now-respectably reformed Stunt-Master ably assisting our hero. Matt eventually leaves Karen to the vicissitudes of Tinseltown, landing back in the Big Apple just in time to become embroiled in a plot blending radical politics and the shady world of Boxing – ‘The Phoenix and the Fighter!’

The Black Panther returns seeking a favour in ‘A Life on the Line’ as kid gangs and the birth of the “Black Power” movement leap from news headlines to comic pages. The same consideration of youth in protest also inspired the seditious menace of ‘The Tribune’ (written by Friedrich) as youthful ideologues, cynical demagogues and political bombers tear a terrified and outraged city apart.

The unrest peaks in Daredevil #71 as Thomas contributes his swansong script and concludes the right-wing manufactured anarchy in ‘If an Eye Offend Thee…!’

New find Gerry Conway assumed the scripting with #72, easing himself in with an interdimensional fantasy frolic wherein the Scarlet Swashbuckler encounters a strange rash of crimes and a mirror-dwelling mystery man named Tagak in ‘Lo! The Lord of the Leopards!’ before plunging readers into an ambitious cosmic crossover yarn which begins in Iron Man #35.

Here the Armoured Avenger, seductive, morally-ambivalent free agent Madame Masque and S.H.I.E.L.D. supremo Nick Fury all seek‘Revenge!’ (illustrated by Don Heck & Mike Esposito) for various vile acts, and specifically the near-fatal wounding of valiant young American agent Jasper Sitwell at the hand of the mercenary Spymaster.

Their efforts – and those of their assembled enemies – are somehow fuelling an alien artefact called the Zodiac Key and, when its creators suck Daredevil into the mix to battle Spymaster and a bunch of super-villains affiliated to the cosmic device, everybody is ultimately shanghaied to another universe for more pointless fighting in ‘Behold… the Brotherhood!’(Daredevil #73, illustrated by Colan & Shores with plot input from Allyn Brodsky) before the epic concludes with extreme briskness in Iron Man #36.

So brisk, in fact, that only the first 8 pages of ‘Among Us Stalks the Ramrod!’ (Conway, Heck & Esposito) are reprinted here, leaving this potent brew of action and suspense to wrap up with Daredevil #74: an impressive and mercifully complete conundrum with DD trapped ‘In the Country of the Blind!’ (art by Colan & Shores) and calling on a group of sight-impaired volunteers to help him thwart a criminal plot to cripple New York…

The social upheaval of the period produced a lot of impressively earnest material that only hinted at the true potential of Daredevil. These beautifully illustrated yarns may occasionally jar with their heartfelt stridency but the honesty and desire to be a part of a solution rather than blithely carry on as if nothing was happening affords them a potency that no historian, let alone comics fan, can dare to ignore.

The Sightless Swashbuckler makes a politically-charged appearance in Daredevil #75 (April 1971) in a drama of devious intrigue and kidnapping that begins as Murdock travels to the banana republic of Delvadia where ‘Now Rides the Ghost of El Condor!’ (Conway, Colan & Shores) offers a canny yarn of revolutionary fervour, self-serving greed and the power of modern mythology.

The saga concludes in ‘The Deathmarch of El Condor!’ – wherein inker Tom Palmer (perhaps Colan’s most effective inker) starts his long association with the penciller.

Guest stars abound in ‘…And So Enters the Amazing Spider-Man!’ when an uncanny artefact appears in Central Park, inviting DD, the webspinner and the Sub-Mariner to participate in a fantastic battle in a far-flung, lost world. The adventure concludes in the Atlantean’s own comic (#40) but as our hero didn’t join the quest, that sequel isn’t included in this tome.

Issue #78 returns to more traditional territory as ‘The Horns of the Bull!’ traces the downfall of petty thug Bull Taurusafter enigmatic mastermind Mr. Kline has him transformed into a savage beast and sets him upon the Scarlet Swashbuckler…

Friedrich scripted cataclysmic conclusion ‘Murder Cries the Man-Bull!’, but plotter Conway was back the following month to spectacularly reintroduce a vintage villain ‘In the Eyes… of the Owl!’: presaging a major format change for the series…

From issue #81’s ‘And Death is a Woman Called Widow’ (inked by Jack Abel), Soviet defector Natasha Romanoff bursts onto the scene as the ubiquitous Mr. Kline is finally unmasked and revealed to be behind most of DD’s recent woes and tribulations…

Sometimes called Natalia Romanova, she is a Soviet-era Russian spy who came in from the cold and stuck around to become one of Marvel’s earliest and most successful female stars. She started life as a svelte, sultry honey-trap during Marvel’s early “Commie-busting” days, battling Iron Man in her debut exploit (Tales of Suspense #52, April, 1964).

She was subsequently redesigned as a torrid tights-&-tech super-villain before defecting to the USA, falling for an assortment of Yankee superheroes – including Hawkeye and Daredevil – before finally enlisting as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., freelance do-gooder and occasional leader of The Avengers.

Throughout her career she has always been considered ultra-efficient, coldly competent, deadly dangerous and yet somehow cursed to bring doom and disaster to her paramours. As her backstory evolved, it was revealed that Natasha had undergone experimental processes which enhanced her physical capabilities and lengthened her lifespan, as well as assorted psychological procedures which had messed up her mind and memories…

Following a stunning pin-up of the bodacious Black Widow by Bill Everett, the conspiracy crisis continues with ‘Now Send… the Scorpion’, as Kline – AKA the Assassin – sets a manic artificial arachnid against DD and the Widow, even as his Machiavellian master attempts to suborn Murdock’s greatest friend Foggy Nelson.

At the end of that issue the Scorpion is apparently dead and ‘The Widow Accused!’ by Nelson of the villain’s murder. A sham trial intended to railroad and pillory the Russian émigré ensues in #83, (rendered by Alan Weiss, Barry Smith & Everett), with the Assassin subsequently dispatching brutish Mr. Hyde to ensure his victory.

Against all odds, however, Murdock exonerates Natasha of the charges, prompting the hidden mastermind to take direct action in ‘Night of the Assassin!’ (Colan & Syd Shores). After attacking DD and the Widow in Switzerland – whence the jetsetting former spy had fled to nurse her wounded pride – Kline at last meets final defeat in a stunning and baroque climax to the extended saga.

In the aftermath of that cataclysmic clash, the odd couple are stranded in Switzerland before #85 sees them tentatively beginning a romantic alliance and returning to America on a ‘Night Flight!’ courtesy of Conway, Colan & Shores.

Typically, the plane is hijacked by the bloodthirsty Gladiator, after which another long-forgotten foe resurfaces – for the last time – in ‘Once Upon a Time… the Ox!’ (with stunning Tom Palmer inks) culminating in the broken romantic triangle of Matt, Karen Page and Natasha compelling a life changing relocation for our players from the Big Apple to San Francisco…

The next volume heads even further into uncharted territory…

Rounding out the comics experience are bonus pages including the covers to all-reprint Daredevil Annual #2 and 3, a selection of house ads, unused cover pencils by Colan and his contribution to the 1970 Marvel Artist Self-Portrait project.

Despite a few bumpy spots, during this period Daredevil blossomed into a truly magnificent example of Marvel’s compelling formula for success: smart, contemporarily astute stories, truly human and fallible characters and always magnificent illustration. These bombastic tales are pure Fights ‘n’ Tights magic no fan of stunning super-heroics can afford to ignore.

© 2019 MARVEL.

 

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Muhammad Ali


By Sybille Titeux de la Croix & Amazing Améziane, translated by Nicole Seguin-Morris for Studio Cutie (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-318-3 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-63008-899-6

Fuelled largely by European comics, there’s a superb wealth of graphic biographies and auto biographies around for us mere English-speakers and I’ve reviewed a fair few of them. One of the best is this redoubtable treat from 2016, crafted by all-round artist and musician Sybille Titeux de la Croix (L’Apparition, Dostoyevski’s Gratte Moi La Puce) who studied at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs. Her tag-team partner and illustrator here goes by Amazing Améziane: a multi-disciplinary creator, screenwriter and avowed child of the 1970s. He started crafting comics in 2001 and his other efforts include Clan, Bagmen and Cuatro Manos.

Their subject certainly needs no introduction. Born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. on January 17th 1942, he rose to fame through professional boxing during the most turbulent period in American history. Smart, incredibly fit and ferociously determined, he used his fame to become an activist, philanthropist and political and social influencer long before the term was coined or even possible. You don’t need me to tell you how important he was: history does that perfectly well and this superb appreciation and distillation of his life – available in hardback and digital editions – adds stylish gloss and polish to it all.

Following the Introduction from author Titeux de la Croix, the potent blend of narrative art and calligraphic declamation begins with ‘Equality’, relating the early days in Louisville, Kentucky, describing the day to day hardships of segregation, racist atrocities such as ‘The Murder of Emmett Till’ and how little Cassius Clay accidentally falls into boxing after his bike is stolen…

Grit, determination and focus carry him to the Olympics where he wins gold, and back to America where he still can’t ride some buses or eat in any diner he chooses…

‘Islam’ relates the days of political and religious awakening, meeting Henry Cooper and Malcolm X, proving he’s “the Greatest” and changing his name…

Diverting for a detailed and comprehensive analysis of ‘Ali’s Technique’, we follow the champion’s major bouts and landmark fights in and out of the ring (with specific reference to FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover’s obsessive investigations) and the time when pro civil rights advocates started being assassinated, leading to a quest for ‘Justice’…

The increasingly famous fighter becomes a figurehead through the late 1960s and spokesman in the 1970s, all the while combatting other boxers, media persecution and the aging process, before the later years of ‘Freedom’ culminate in 1984’s ‘Diagnosis: Parkinson’s’ and the long, slow unwinnable fight that ultimately claimed his life on June 3rd 2016…

Remarkable and uncompromising – the book, as well as the man – Muhammad Ali celebrates a unique life and unmatchable achievements with compelling effect. Even if you don’t like biographies or sports, this is a story and graphic treat every comics lover will want to see…
Muhammad Ali, Ali the Great © ÉDITIONS DU LOMBARD (DARGUAD- LOMBARD S.A.) 2015 by Amazing Améziane, Sybille Titeux de la Croix. All rights reserved.

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Firestorm the Nuclear Man: Reborn


By Stuart Moore, Jamal Igle & Keith Champagne & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1219-3 (TPB)

One of the best “straight” superhero series of the last decade came and went with very little fanfare and only (thus far) this intriguing collection to mark its passage. Firestorm the Nuclear Man was created by Gerry Conway & Al Milgrom, launched in 1978 and promptly fell foul of the “DC Implosion” after five flamboyant, fun-filled issues.

High School Jock Ronnie Raymond and Nobel winning nuclear physicist Martin Stein were, due to a bizarre concatenation of circumstances, caught in an atomic blast that melded their bodies and minds into a fusion-powered being with extraordinary powers over matter and energy. Ronnie had conscious control of their consolidated body, and became an exuberant, flashy superhero, with a unique pantheon of villains all his own.

He was drafted into the Justice League of America, and eventually won a  well-received back-up series in The Flash (#289 to 304) which led to his second chance; Fury of Firestorm (100 issues and five Annuals between June 1982 and August 1990) before fading into the quiet semi-obscurity of team-books and guest-shots.

In 2004 Dan Jolley & Chrisscross reinvented the character. Black Detroit kid Jason Rusch was brought back from the brink of death thanks to a blazing energy ball (the Firestorm matrix seeking a new host after the murder of its previous body – although nobody discovered that for nearly a year…). This new version of the Nuclear Man can absorb any other body into the matrix, using them as a kind of battery – or more accurately spark plug – for Jason’s powers.

After impressively establishing himself as a hero in his own right he joined Donna Troy‘s Space Strike Force in the Infinite Crisis, consequently suffering hideous injuries.

Inexplicably this volume (reprinting issues #23-27 of the third Firestorm comicbook series) ignores all that back-story and begins as part of the One Year Later narrative strand. Jason can now only combine with fellow atomic hero Firehawk, and their un-combined personas cannot safely be more than a mile apart. That’s rather problematic as Jason is a student in New York and Lorraine Reilley, when not Firehawk, is a United States Senator. Jason’s teleporting girlfriend Gehennaisn’t too keen on how much time her man and that “Older Woman” spend together either…

As Firestorm they are desperately searching for Martin Stein, missing for a year and somehow connected to a plot to destroy the Earth, but their quest has also made them/him the target for some extremely dangerous people…

By trying not to give too much away I might have made this tale seem a bit daunting or confusing, but it really isn’t. This is a deliciously clever and witty adventure, providing plenty of opportunities to bring first-time fans up to speed, with likable characters, dastardly villains, an intriguing mystery, plenty of action and loads of laughs – just like the rest of the series was. It reads enchantingly and is really beautiful to look at, so I just don’t understand why newcomers’ first exposure to this material should be with the 23rd chapter and not the first…

You would have thought Firestorm’s appearances in TV animation delight the Brave and the Bold or as one of the Legends of Tomorrow would have prompted somebody to release the rest of this utterly appetising little gem in trade paperback or digital editions by now. Still it’s never too late to start agitating for change is it?
© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Paul Robeson for Beginners


By Paul Von Blum, illustrated by Elizabeth Von Notias & Ramses (For Beginners)
ISBN: 978-1-934389-81-2 (PB)

The For Beginners book series produces heavily illustrated text primers: graphic non-fiction foundation courses in a vast variety of subjects from art to philosophy, politics to history and much more, all tackled in an accessible yet properly respectful manner. This particular volume was written by Paul Von Blum, author and Senior Lecturer in African American Studies and Communication Studies at UCLA with a wealth of strips and illustrations by graphic design specialist Elizabeth Von Notias and self-taught multi-media creator Ramses.

If remembered at all, Paul Robeson (April 9th 1898 – January 23rd 1976) is thought of by most people as that African American singer/actor with an incredible bass voice. Maybe some will recall that he was a left-wing political activist who fell foul of Senator Joe McCarthy during America’s infamous “Red-baiting” witch-hunting period.

That’s true enough, but he was also one of the most accomplished and gifted individuals in the nation’s history: a true Renaissance man cheated of his ultimate potential simply because his skin was the wrong colour…

The Introduction lists Robeson’s astonishing accomplishments – all the more amazing when you realise the lack of opportunities if not outright repression facing negroes in segregated America at the time of his birth, and not truly confronted until the Civil Rights movement began gaining traction in the late 1950s.

As told in more telling detail – both in word and pictures in ‘The Early Days’, ‘Paul Robeson the Athlete’, ‘Paul Robeson the Stage Actor’, ‘Paul Robeson the Screen Actor’ and ‘Paul Robeson the Singer’ – the unheralded superman was born in Princeton, New Jersey; the son of a preacher. He was the last of five children in a time and place rigidly defined by class and race divisions.

A brilliant student, Robeson graduated Somerville High School in 1915 and won a four-year scholarship to Rutgers University where, despite initial hostility and actual physical assaults, he became the star of the Football, Baseball, Basketball and Athletics squads, and was twice designated “All-American”.

From there he attended New York University Law School, before transferring to Columbia University Law School. Talented and seemingly tireless, he turned an interest in the dramatic arts into a part-time stage career and also became a professional Football player in 1920. He got married, acted, sang, played Pro ball and kept on studying. Graduating from Columbia in 1923, he worked as a lawyer at a prestigious law firm until the bigotry he experienced from his own subordinates became too much.

In 1924 he switched from stage acting to movies, but still carried on a glittering international career: starring as Othello in London and playing in many hit plays and musicals such as Showboat, Emperor Jones, Stevedore and All God’s Chillun’s Got Wings…

Politically active, he visited the Soviet Union in 1934, spoke out against Fascism during the Spanish Civil War, co-founded the anti-colonial Council on African Affairs and used his name and fame to agitate for social and legal changes in such contentious areas as Southern lynch law and trade union legislation. These activities made him a prime target in the USA and in 1941 J. Edgar Hoover ordered the FBI to open a file on him…

In 1950 the US government took away Robeson’s passport because he refused to recant his pro-Soviet, pro-socialist stance and he became an exile in his own country. He was unable to leave America for eight years, until a Supreme Court ruling decreed the State Department had no right to revoke passports due to an individual’s political beliefs.

Robeson’s life was filled with such social and cultural landmarks. Once free to travel again, he became an international political celebrity and social commentator, using his concerts and stage appearances in places as disparate as Wales, Australia, Russia, East Germany and elsewhere to promote a dream of World “Freedom, Peace and Brotherhood”…

His beliefs, struggles achievements and failures are examined in ‘Paul Robeson the International Activist’, ‘Paul Robeson the Domestic Political Activist’ before culminating in a thorough appreciation of ‘The Final Years and His Lasting Legacy’…

Augmented by a ‘Bibliography’, ‘Selected Chronology’ and creator biographies, this absorbing documentary – available in paperback and digital editions – proves again the astounding power of visual narrative when wedded to the life story of a truly unique individual.
© 2013 Paul Von Blum. Illustrations © 2013 Elizabeth Von Notias & Ramses. All rights reserved. A For Beginners Documentary Comic Book © 2013.

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Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery (New Edition/10th Anniversary Edition)


By Mat Johnson & Warren Pleece, with Clem Robbins (Berger Books/Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-564-4 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-50670-591-0

What’s prejudice? How does bigotry and that unthinking fear and hatred of otherness work? What happens when haters can’t tell the difference between “us” and “them?” Those are frankly disturbing and astonishing questions first asked in 2008 in an Original Graphic Novel released by DC’s Vertigo imprint that made a lot of noise and changed some lives. The book won acclaim and awards and its subject matter started a few conversations in exactly the right places: classrooms where it became a selected text for high schools and colleges.

This 10th Anniversary edition reprints the original tale in all its moody monochrome glory, backed up by a contextualising Author’s Note (‘I grew up a black boy who looked white’) and Afterword; a copious sketchbook section featuring designs by Pleece and ‘Reading Group Guide/Questions & Topics for Discussion’.

The tale itself is set in the segregationist South in the early 1930s and opens at a social gathering in Tuscaloosa with families all happily gathering to see a black boy strung up. As the attendees patiently queue for a picture with the “strange fruit”, a newcomer takes their names and addresses. It’s only when the photographer denies hiring him that Zane Pinchback of New York City’s African American newspaper The New Holland Herald realises he’s pushed his luck and needs to run for his life…

Sadly, however, not before a visiting bigwig from the Ku Klux Klan gats a good look at him and starts wondering…

Safely back north of the Mason-Dixon Line, Zane’s latest headline grabber upsets liberals and shames the perpetrators but the journalist is still unhappy. His exposés change nothing and he feels a fraud: a proud black man who makes a living pretending to be white. He can’t even use his own name – hence the byline “Incognegro” – or face on his widely syndicated columns: that would instantly negate the genetic advantage of a negro who can “pass”…

Things are liberal enough in Manhattan that he and his debonair wastrel pal Carl can intermingle with most folk and go drinking in swish clubs, but Zane knows things can go bad easily enough and resolves to quit and go legit…

His editor staunchly refuses to accept, instead offering him a deal: one more undercover assignment. He is certain Zane will accept. The negro jailed in Tupelo, Mississippi and accused of killing a white woman is a man he’s known his entire life. Heading off in a hurry and readying himself to play the high stakes game of his life, Zane has no idea how complex and convoluted this case will be, or that blithely incautious Carl has invited himself along to a place where his kind of idiocy has lethal consequences…

Author Mat Johnson took inspiration from his own childhood and the activities of Walter White (ultimately Chief Exec of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) who began his career investigating lynchings because of the same genetic quirk as Zane Pinchback…

Available in hardcover, trade paperback, digital editions and even in its original DC/Vertigo edition – Incognegro is smart, funny where it can be and devastatingly effective whenever it needs to be. As well as the racial injustice so savagely skewered here, this is a cunning and engrossing murder mystery with plenty of twists, which even finds room to have a stab at the still largely unaddressed problems of women’s independence and transgender acceptance. If you love great storytelling underpinned by real-world issues, this is something you must see.
Incognegro™ © 2008, 2018 Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece. All rights reserved.

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Alone volume 1: The Vanishing


By Gazzotti & Vehlmann, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-849181-96-9 (PB Album)

Fabien Vehlmann was only born in 1972 yet his prodigious canon of work (from 1998 to the present) has earned him the soubriquet of “the Goscinny of the 21st Century”. He entered the world in Mont-de-Marsan and grew up in Savoie, growing up to study business management before taking a job with a theatre group.

In 1996, after entering a writing contest in Le Journal de Spirou, he caught the comics bug and two years later published – with illustrative collaborator Denis Bodart – a mordantly quirky and sophisticated portmanteau period crime comedy entitled Green Manor. From there on his triumphs grew to include – many amongst others – Célestin Speculoos for Circus, Nicotine Goudron for l’Écho des Savanes and major-league property Spirou and Fantasio…

Bruno Gazzotti is Belgian, born in 1970 and was a student of Institut Saint Luc in Liège. Another artist addicted to comics from his earliest years, he started being paid to draw them in 1988, after being hired by Spirou editor Patrick Pinchart on the strength of his portfolio alone. Before long he was illustrating Le Petit Spirou with Tome & Janry. In 1989, he and Tome created New York Cop Soda, which kept Gazzotti busy until 2005, when he resigned to co-create award-winning feature Seuls…

Released in January 2006, Seuls – La disparition is a superb example of a kids’ thriller suitable for all ages: evoking the eerie atmosphere of TV series Lost and the most disturbing elements of Philip Wylie’s The Disappearance and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

Translated as The Vanishing, the first chapter show us peeks of an ordinary bustling town, with simple folk going about their business. Our swift glimpses show us a cross section of kids: Ivan, an imaginative child of wealth who wants for nothing but never sees his dad any more and Leila, a born engineer, inventor and tinkerer. Her poor but honest dad always has time to play and critique her latest gadget…

Camille is studious and over-focussed on exams and achievement and Terry is pretty much still a baby. He certainly acts like one, trying to stay up late, binge watching TV and throwing tantrums if he doesn’t get his way.

Sadly, not all children in town have such typical lives. Dodzi has just been taken into the system. His early life has made him tough and resilient but won’t stop the other young inmates handing him a beating on this ominous, odd-feeling night…

Next morning dawns overcast and forbidding. The city is quiet. Roaming empty streets, Dodzi calls out to anybody who can hear and is met – or actually run over – by Leila and Terry on her bike. They are all pretty scared and have seen nobody else at all…

No one else is around. All the adults have gone, and all their child pals. The internet is down, television and radio only blare out static. Above, fearsome storm clouds gather. Within minutes fear turns to panic and violence but eventually Dodzi brutally enforces calm and leads them away, only to stumble into Camille being attacked by a dog. As the tough guy tries to fight it off, the rabid beast senses something in the shadows of an alley and flees…

As they wander, someone watches the waifs and after they joyously blow off steam in a fountain, they meet final lost boy Ivan. He invites them back to his mansion on the edge of town where they find food while being subjected to his theories on what’s happened: everything from a shared dream to an extinction event to the possibility that they’re dead and in hell…

Needing more information, Dodzi and Leila try to drive one of many cars on the estate while the smaller ones sort out a proper meal, but neither task goes well. The cooking is a disaster while the near-lethal reconnaissance only finds more empty streets, wrecked shop fronts and wild animals in the streets. While the motoring minors seek to evade two rhinos, Terry and Camille are almost eaten by a white tiger that’s got through the estate gates…

When Dodzi and Leila return – and following a burst of viciously released tensions – the kids modify and weaponize a 4 by 4 and head back to town. Ivan’s dad owns the tallest building in the city: somewhere stuffed with resources and easily fortified and defended…

As the first day alone ends, the kids are bloated with vending machine snacks and playing in the vast office block’s upper reaches, but de facto leader Dodzi is still uneasy.

When Leia reports little Terry is missing, he heads out to search and finds to his horror where all the animals have come from: a scene of destruction that distracts him enough that a hidden stalker almost takes him.

Thankfully, the others have ignored his orders and followed so it isn’t Dodzi that dies…

Thus begins a spooky, powerful and often shocking tale of mystery and imagination with the bereft children facing increasingly daunting physical hazards and an escalating series of events which can have no logical or rational explanation…

Alone rapidly became one of the biggest critical and commercial comics hits of the decade and if you love eerie enigmas and powerful tale-telling, you’ll soon be buying this and seeing why for yourself…
© Dupuis 2006 by Gazzotti & Vehlmann. All rights reserved. English translation © 2014 Cinebook Ltd.