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The Art of Sean Phillips


By Sean Phillips, Eddie Robson and various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-420-6

Win’s Christmas Recommendation: A Magical Trawl through Fan-favourite Moments… 9/10

Sean Phillips started selling comic strips in 1980. He was 15 years old, still at school and for all intents and purposes “living the dream”. He’s been doing it ever since, with dedication, professionalism and ever-increasing proficiency.

This magnificent oversized (234 x 310 mm) hardback reproduces hundreds of comics pages and covers, plus an assortment of out-industry artwork, as accompaniment to an astonishingly forthright extended interview and career retrospective of the phenomenally talented and terrifying dedicated illustrator, covering his earliest cartooning efforts right through to his next big thing. There’s even baby pictures and school work. Of course Sean and his friends did make their first professional strip sale – to the local newspaper – when they were twelve…

Compiled by Phillips and writer and journalist Eddie Robson, with contributions from fellow artists, writers and editors the artist worked with over the decades, the book includes an Introduction from co-conspirator Ed Brubaker and offers many complete strips fans will probably never have seen.

As well as many unpublished works the gallery of visual wonder include early strips on “Girls” comics and Annuals such as Bunty, Judy and Diana For Girls as well as college work, try-out pages and portfolio pieces created with the sole purpose of getting into the cool mainstream…

Phillips is equally adept with paints and pen-&-ink and the book tracks his career as a jobbing artist through Bunty to early “mature reader” title Crisis (Crisis, New Statesmen, Straitgate), 2000AD and The Megazine (Armitage, Devlin Waugh), and that crucial jump to America as part of the “British Invasion”; producing features and one-offs at Vertigo and becoming part of the initial intake who launched and cemented the radical imprint’s look. Of particular interest and strongly emphasised are his runs on Kid Eternity, Hellblazer and The Invisibles.

The longed-for move into super-heroics began with Batman, a sidestep into Star Wars and back to Spider-Man. Early hints of later specialisation can be spotted in Scene of the Crime, Gotham Noir and Sleeper, but he was also busy with Wildcats and X-Men. He truly became a major name through the monumental sensation that was Marvel Zombies, but more attention here is paid to poorer-selling critical hit and career crossroads Criminal.

The parade of pictorial perfection continues with finished pages and original art from many more titles including User, Intersections, Incognito and more, strips and covers for licensed titles such as Serenity, Predator, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower spin-offs and for classic film repackager Criterion. Other non-comics work includes true lost gems such as political strip ‘Right Behind You’ from The Sunday Herald depicting how a certain meeting between George W. Bush and Tony Blair probably went as a certain invasion was discussed…

The comics conversation concludes with sneaky peeks at then-upcoming projects Fatale and European album Void 01 and we know just how damn good those both turned out…

Also sporting a healthy Bibliography section, heartfelt Acknowledgements and a Biography page, this massively entertaining, vibrant tome is as much an incisive and philosophical treatise on work-ethic as celebration of a stellar career telling stories in pictures: a beautiful, breathtaking and brilliantly inspirational compendium for the next generation of artists and writers, whatever their age.

If you already have the urge to make pictures but want a little encouragement, this rousing celebration offers all the encouragement you could possibly hope for – and is just plain lovely to look at too.
© 2013 Dynamite Entertainment. All artworks, characters, images and contributions © their respective creators or holders. All rights reserved.

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Heart of the Beast – A Love Story


By Dean Motter, Judith Dupré & Sean Phillips (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-491-6

What is art? Does it have anything to do with creativity? What is its value and what is the cost?

Originally released as an original hardback graphic novel in 1994 as one of the early experimental triumphs of DC’s Vertigo imprint, this evocatively disturbing reworking – or more accurately contemporary sequel – to one of literature’s greatest stories of mystery and gothic imagination features a tragic, doomed love triangle and carefully unravelled mystery.

In August 2014 this remastered 20th Anniversary commemorative hardcover edition was released by Dynamite, re-presenting the tale in all its subtly sinister glory, bolstered with a few textual extras for the inquiring, bonus-hungry minds of post-Millennials.

The first of those is ‘Circa Soho’: an atmospheric mood-enhancing and memory-intensive reminiscence from co-scripter Judith Dupré; now a globally celebrated author, commentator and critic on The Arts, but back then a fully active participant and observer in the scene.

As a self-confessed “Gallerina” making a living amongst the wild creatives and greedy lampreys attached to the arena of contemporary art burgeoning in the former no-go areas of New York City she was the perfect partner for writer, illustrator and designer Dean Motter.

Having worked on Mr. X, The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, Batman: Black and White, Electropolis and many more projects for young and old, Dean Motter is a creator with a singularly unique voice and style. Here his collaboration with Dupré on this striking addendum to a classic literary marvel and social critique of the price of creation adds chilling edges to a fantasy suitably sub-titled “a love story”…

The saga tells of Sandra, who spends a fateful night tending bar at a so-fashionable Gallery opening paid for by the rich but creepy celebrity plastic surgeon Dr. Andrew Wright. Even in the supremely decadent world of the Art Glitterati the surgeon is infamous, with dubious connections to both the high and mighty and the down and dirty. His patronage of bellicose wunderkind Jacob Sistine is fraught with haughty tension, pompous one-upmanship and barely suppressed loathing…

Drowning in the self-serving, pretentious pontificating of this week’s models, Sandra is surprised when she meets beautiful, sensitive Victor, a poetic rose among crass, wealthy thorns. Despite herself, she is drawn to the mysterious paragon who seems so much more than just Dr. Wright’s factotum and dogsbody.

A man of many secrets, Victor is almost the ideal (and – most frustratingly – reluctant and still largely prospective) lover, but his devotion to the shadier side of the doctor’s dealings with gangsters, fame-chasing poseurs and art forgers augers nothing but disaster for their budding relationship. Furthermore, there is some hideous secret Victor is keeping from her – an undisclosed past and unmoving obstacle not even the truest love or most forgiving nature can overcome…

I’ve endeavoured to obscure the originating source work since the unfolding secret is cleverly handled and the growing realisation adds to the dawning horror of the situation. The love-story spirals to its tragic conclusion, helped in no small part by the beguiling painted art of young Sean Phillips evoking the distant past and spotlighting the harsh modern world with equal skill and sensitivity.

In the intervening years the illustrator has risen to a position of revered prominence in the comics business and this collection closes with a fascinating ‘Codex’ with Phillips plundering his files and wracking his memory in an interview and commentary section packed with photos, layouts, roughs and sketches detailing the development of the project, whilst Motter enthusiastically shares his childhood obsession with scary movies and horror tales in a picture-packed Afterword ‘Frankenstein & Me’…

This cunning yarn failed to find its proper audience when first released, but is a solid story superbly told for all that and might well be the treat that turns your film freak into a comicbook zombie…
Heart of the Beast – A Love Story © 2014 Dean Motter, Judith Dupré & Sean Phillips. All Rights Reserved.

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Small Press Sundays

Like so many others I started out in the business making minicomics, collaborating on fanzines and concocting stripzines with fellow weirdoes, outcasts and addicts. Even today, seeing the raw stuff of creativity in hand-crafted paper pamphlets – or better yet professionally printed packages which put dreamers’ money where their mouths are – still gets me going in ways which imperil my tired old heart…

So here’s a long-overdue peek at a brilliant publishing project bringing a wealth of independent graphic craft to your attention…

DiRTY ROTTEN Comics #8

By various, Edited by Gary Clap & Kirk Campbell (Throwaway Press)
No ISBN

Graphic narrative and cartooning covers a vast range of genres, formats, disciplines and tastes. Moreover, to my jaded old eyes, these days all the very best and most imaginative work seems to come from outside the pool of professional creators and publishers from what used to be called the “Small Press” …

At the moment in Britain we’re blessed with a fresh, vital and engaging wave of strip-makers and DiRTY ROTTEN Comics is periodically gathering up a wide sampling of the most impressive work and packaging it in sleek, professional-looking black-&-white books I would have killed to be printed in back in the so-cool, tech-deprived Seventies…

The brainchild of – and edited by – Gary Clap and Kirk Campbell, this splendidly broad church of graphic recollection, exploration, extrapolation and fancification is a superb snapshot of the creative vitality, welcome diversity and uncompromising inclusivity of the modern stripzine scene, and sheer heaven for an avowed sucker for all forms of black and white art such as we. I gravely mourn its passing in both film and comics media…

This particular compendium – the Autumn 2016 edition – opens with whimsical rumination in ‘Lady Masque’ by David Robertson and segues into nostalgic reflection with Henry Miller’s charming ‘Real Roman Coins’ before sliding towards comedic anarchy in ‘Journey into Stupid: Summer’ from Claude T. C. & Kyle Gerdes…

Andrew Warwick then heads into spooky M. R. James territory with ‘Insert 20 Pence’ whilst Joanna Harker Shaw waxes poetic with ‘Extract from ‘The Lesson” after which ‘Wallace’ experiences a technical itch in a comedy short from Kevin Loftus.

Maria Stoian explores domestic isolation in ‘Nighttime Routine’ whilst a child’s salient question gets a typically brusque adult answer in ‘Seabass’ by Stanley Miller.

Petitecreme’s manga-styled discursive debate on mourning in ‘It’ll Be OK’ quickly gives way to frustrating and surreal terror courtesy of Benjamin Leon’s ‘Knots’ and trenchant black humour in ‘What A Catch’ from James Gifford.

Social overload leads to a welcome moment of calm in ‘Dandelion’ by Francis M. whilst Faye Spencer displays another method of maintaining equilibrium in ‘Bile’ even as Lukasz Kowalczuk shows the world’s next owners at their unsavoury worst in ‘Hollow Earth’.

Benjamin A.E. Filby introduces us to a very human monster in ‘SANGUISUGE’ whilst Scott Wrigg nervously anticipates ‘Those Days’ and bereavement concerns inspire Rozi Hathaway’s bleak and languid ‘Sørgedag’.

Mock heroics and a search for love (or at least acceptance) concern diminutive ‘Sir Tramsalot’ in Ben Hutching’s mirthful, moving vignette, whilst Jey Levang examines the downside of immortality in ‘Amaranthine’ and Tom Mortimer considers the ramifications and necessity of population control in ‘#Neutered’.

A delicious moment of domestic veracity in depicted in ‘Maladroit’ by Josh Hicks after which Elias Bevan comments on the small press creative mill with ‘Grow Them…’ before this aggregate walk on the personal side concludes in epic style with James Wragg’s poignant mystic ‘Remembrance’…

Concise, expressive, intimate and evocative, this is a compendium with something for everybody who loves the comics medium and is well worth your time, money and impassioned support.

All content © 2016 by their respective creators.
For more information and sales details check out THROWAWAYPRESS.COM

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Marvel Masterworks: Luke Cage, Hero for Hire volume 1


By Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, Billy Graham, Tony Isabella, George Tuska & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9180-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Ideal Item for new Marvel Movie-verse addicts… 8/10

In 1968 the consciousness-raising sporting demonstration of Black Power at the Olympic Games politicised a generation of youngsters. By this time a few comics companies had already made tentative efforts to address what were national and socio-political iniquities, but issues of race and ethnicity took a long time to filter through to still-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 was accidentally re-coloured Caucasian at the printers, who clearly didn’t realise his ethnicity). He was followed by first 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 star in 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, Lobo was a gunslinger in the old west, battling injustice just like any cowboy hero would, first appearing in December 1965.

Arguably a greater breakthrough was Joe Robertson, City Editor of the Daily Bugle; an erudite, brave and proudly ordinary mortal distinguished by his sterling character, not a 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 slowly grew out of raised social awareness during a terrible time in American history; yes, even worse than today’s festering social wound, as typified by cops under pressure providing no answer to the seemingly constant Black Lives Matter events. Although far rarer, those tragedies occur here in the UK too, so we have nothing to be smug about either. We’ve had race riots since the Sixties here which left simmering scars that only comedians and openly racist politicians dared to talk about. Things today in post-Brexit Britain don’t seem all that different, except the bile and growing taste for violence is turned towards European accents as well as brown skins…

As the 1960s became a new decade, more positive and inclusive incidences of ethnic characters appeared in the USA, with DC finally getting an African-America hero in John Stewart (Green Lantern #87 December 1971/January 1972), although his designation as a replacement Green Lantern might be construed as more conciliatory and insulting than revolutionary.

The first DC hero with his own title was Black Lightning, who didn’t debut until April 1977, although Jack Kirby had introduced 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 at 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 fired up commercial interests throughout America, and in that atmosphere of outlandish dialogue, daft outfits and barely concealed – if 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 full-colour hardback compendium collects the first 16 issues of the breakthrough series: the entire run before the series was thematically adjusted to become Luke Cage Power Man.

The saga begins with Lucas, a hard-case inmate at brutal Seagate Prison. Like all convicts he claims to have been framed and his uncompromising attitude makes mortal enemies of the savage, racist guards Rackham and Quirt whilst not endearing 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 some initial assistance from Roy Thomas and John Romita senior – and sees a new warden arrive promising to change the hell-hole into a proper, correctly administered correctional facility.

Prison Doctor Noah Burstein then convinces Lucas to participate in a radical experiment in exchange for a parole hearing, having heard the desperate con’s tale of woe…

Lucas had grown up in Harlem, a tough kid who had managed to stay honest even when his best friend Willis Stryker had not. They remained friends even though they walked 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 – an experiment in cell-regeneration – but Rackham sabotages it, hoping to kill the con before he can expose the illegal treatment of convicts. The equipment goes haywire and something incredible occurs. Lucas, panicked and somehow super-strong, punches his way out of the lab and the through the prison walls, only to be killed in hail of gunfire. His body plunges over a cliff and is never recovered…

Months later a vagrant prowls the streets of New York City and stumbles into a robbery. Almost casually he downs the felon and accepts a reward from the grateful victim. He also 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 became 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, and the tense action continued in ‘Vengeance is Mine!’ as the man now 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 Doctor Claire Temple came 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 has opened 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, and 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 lad 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…

Issue #3 introduced Cage’s first returning villain in ‘Mark of the Mace!’ as Burstein – for his own undisclosed reasons – decides to keep Cage’s secret, and 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 as a deranged and deformed maniac carried out random assaults in Times Square. Or was there perhaps another motive behind the crazed attacks?

Steve Englehart took over as scripter and Tuska returned to pencil ‘Don’t Mess with Black Mariah!’ in the next issue: a sordid tale of organised scavengers which introduced unscrupulous reporter Phil Fox, an unsavoury sneak with greedy pockets and a nose for scandal…

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. It allowed Cage to maintain an outsider’s edginess but also meant that danger and adventure literally walked through his shabby door every issue.

Such was the case with ‘Knights and White Satin’ (by Englehart, Gerry Conway, Graham and Paul Reinman) as the swanky, ultra-rich Forsythe sisters hire him 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 (not counting a madman and killer-robots) is followed by ‘Jingle Bombs’, a strikingly different Christmas tale by from Englehart Tuska & Graham, before Cage properly entered the Marvel Universe in ‘Crescendo!’ when he is hired by Doctor Doom to retrieve rogue androids which had absconded from Latveria.

They were hiding as black men among the shifting masses of Harlem and the Iron Dictator needed someone who could work in the unfamiliar environment. Naturally Cage accomplishes his mission, only to have Doom stiff him for the fee. Big mistake…

‘Where Angels Fear to Tread!’ in issue #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 an alien invader called the Faceless One.

It was back to street-level basics in ‘The Lucky… and the Dead!’ as Cage takes on a gambling syndicate led by the schizophrenic Señor Suerte who could double his luck by becoming murderous Señor Muerte (that’s Mr. Luck and Mr. Death to you): a two-part thriller complete with rigged games and death traps that climaxes in the startling ‘Where There’s Life…!’ as relentless Phil Fox finally uncovers Cage’s secret…

Issue #12 featured the first of many battles against alchemical villain ‘Chemistro!’, after which Graham assumed full art duties with ‘The Claws of Lionfang’ – a killer using big cats to destroy his enemies – before Cage tackles hyperthyroid lawyer Big Ben Donovan in ‘Retribution!’ as the tangled threads of his murky past slowly become a noose around his neck…

‘Retribution: Part II!’ finds Graham and Tony Isabella sharing the writer’s role as so many disparate elements converge to expose Cage. The crisis is exacerbated by Quirt kidnapping Luke’s girlfriend, and fellow Seagate escapees Comanche and Shades stalking him whilst the New York cops hunt him.

The last thing the Hero For Hire needs is a new super-foe, but that’s just what he get in #16’s ‘Shake Hands With Stiletto!’ (Isabella, Graham & inker Frank McLaughlin): a dramatic finale which literally brings the house down and clears up most of the old business. This would lead to a re-branding of the nation’s premier black crusader, but that’s meat for a different collection.

Bracketed by an Introduction from Steve Englehart – offering an informative issue-by-issue breakdown on how the series was created and bonus material including a cover gallery, promotional material from the times, unused artwork and pre-corrected/toned down pages (LCHFH was one of the most potentially controversial and thus most scrupulously edited books in Marvel’s stable at the time) and full creator Biographies, this is a fabulous and unmissable glimpse at one of the edgiest series of the era, and a fine way to back up the live-action Netflix iteration.
© 2015 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

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Benny and Penny in The Toy Breaker


By Geoffrey Hayes (Toon Books/Raw Junior)
ISBN: 978-1-935179-07-8

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: An Ideal Means of keep keeping adults and youngsters entertained… 10/10

If you give them a chance and great material, kids love to read. Happily, these days there’s a grand renaissance of books for the young to cut their milk-teeth on, and thanks to the dedication of folk like David Fickling Books (and their wonderful comic The Phoenix) in Britain and Toon Books/Raw Junior in the USA, plenty of avenues for youngsters to grow up reading comics too.

The latter was established by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly as an imprint of the groundbreaking alternative comics magazine to provide high-quality comics stories which would entice pre-schoolers and starter-readers into a lifelong love affair with strips in particular and reading in general.

A broad stable of talented creators has produced many superbly superior comic tales in three accredited educational standards (Level 1: First Comic for brand new readers, Level 2: Easy-to-Read for Emerging Readers and Level 3: Chapter Books for Advanced Beginners) and the company even supplements their publications with an on-line tool.

TOON-BOOKS.com also offers follow up such as interactive audio-versions read by the authors – and in a multitude of languages – and a “cartoon maker” facility which allows readers to become writers of their own adventures about the characters they have just met in the printed editions. Many books include a page of tips for parents and teachers on ‘How to Read Comics with Kids’…

Benny and Penny in Just Pretend is part of an on-going multi-award winning series of tales starring two young suburban mice: a typical brother-and-sister act, loving, loyal, occasionally wayward but always ready to learn and willing to learn from their mistakes.

Author Geoffrey Hayes is a past master of the children’s entertainment industry, having written and/or illustrated more than 40 books (including Otto and Uncle Tooth, Bear by Himself, the Patrick Bear series and Margaret Wise Brown’s When the Wind Blew amongst so many others) and happily shows no sign of stopping.

Here, just for a change the ever-argumentative tykes are playing together in the garden, seeking the treasure indicated on the pirate map Benny has made, when they hear the worst possible news. Cousin Bo has arrived for a surprise play-date…

Instantly Benny and Penny rush about hiding their dolls and games and favourite things, because Bo is very rough and is a toy breaker…

They’re only just in time as the well-meaning but over-excitable Bo bustles in, accidentally hitting Benny in the eye.

Unabashed, Bo wants to find the treasure on Benny’s map and, when they refuse to play with him, tears a leg off Penny’s never-to-be-parted cuddle-toy Monkey…

Left on his own, Bo wants to teach them a lesson but soon gets into more trouble than he can handle and it takes Benny, Penny and the mole girl next door to save him. With the crisis over, Bo realises that playing with others is far more fun than bossing everyone about…

Aimed at the four-and-over age-range and released as a child-sized (236 x1 62mm), gloriously evocative, beguilingly beautiful 32 page full-colour hardback, Benny and Penny in The Toy Breaker is the kind of illustrated extravaganza kids of all ages will treasure forever and return to again and again.
© 2010 RAW Junior, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Tarzan Archives: The Joe Kubert Years volume 3


By Joe Kubert with Robert Kanigher, Russ Heath & various (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-59307-417-3

The early 1970s were the last real glory days of National/DC) Comics. As they slowly lost market-share to Marvel they responded by producing controversial and landmark superhero material, but their greatest strength lay, as it always has, in the variety and quality of its genre divisions. Mystery and Supernatural thrillers, Science Fiction, Romance, War and Kids’ titles remained powerful attractions and the company’s eye for a strong licensed brand was as keen as ever.

A global multi-media phenomenon, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan had long been a comicbook mainstay of Dell/Gold Key/Whitman, and when DC acquired the title they rightly trumpeted it out, putting one of their top Artist/Editors, Joe Kubert, in charge of the immortal Ape-man’s monthly exploits.

After decades as Whitman staples, total licensing of ERB properties was transferred to DC – not just Tarzan and his extended family, but also the author’s pioneering science fantasy characters – with DC wisely continuing the original numbering.

Tarzan #207 was the first (with an April 1972 cover-date) and the series stormed, garnering great acclaim until #258 in February 1977. Thereafter Marvel, Malibu, Dark Horse and Dynamite extended the Jungle Lord’s comicbook canon in sporadic sorties to recapture the sales and popularity of the 1950s…

The latter days of the Gold Key run had suffered ever since Russ Manning left the title to draw the syndicated newspaper strip, and even the likes of Doug Wildey were unable to revive the comic’s success in the face of constantly rising costs and a general downturn in sales across the market. DC’s continuation of the franchise premiered in a blaze of publicity at the height of a nostalgia boom and was generally well-received by fans.

DC pushed the title in many places and formats (such as bookstore digest collections and the gloriously oversized Tabloid Editions) and adapted other properties such as John Carter of Mars, Pellucidar and Carson of Venus in their own features and titles.

This third and final fabulous hardcover archive collection (also available in digital formats) re-presents material from Tarzan #225-235, covering November 1973 through February/March 1975 and concluding the master’s interior artistic contributions – writing, illustrating and lettering.

After more fond reminiscences in Kubert’s Introduction, the pictorial wonderment resumes with original tale ‘Moon Beast’ which sees a mother and child brutally slaughtered and Tarzan framed for the hideous crime by cunning medicine man Zohar. When the vile trickster overreaches himself, the captive Ape-Man breaks free but still has to deal with the mutant brute Zohar employed to perpetrate the atrocity…

Kubert only produced the cover for #226 as the crushing deadline pressures finally caught up with him. The contents – not included here – featured a retelling of the Ape-Man’s origins by Russ Manning, taken from the Sunday newspaper strips of 15th November 1970-7th February 1971.

Back in control for #227, Joe took Tarzan out of his comfort zone as ‘Ice Jungle’ saw young native warrior Tulum endure a manhood rite at the top of a mountain. Also converging on the site for much the same reason is American trust-fund brat J. Pellington Stone III, determined to impress his father by bagging a legendary snow ape. Sensing impending doom, Tarzan follows them both and is not wrong in his assessment…

After single-handedly killing an immense Sabretooth tiger in an unexplored region of the continent, Tarzan is captured by pygmies intent on offering him as to a mighty monster who has terrorised them for years. However, his ‘Trial By Blood!’ sees Tarzan cleverly outwit the giant lizard and teach the tribal elders a valuable lesson in leadership, after which albino queen Zorina seeks to extend her power by making him her consort.

The Ape-Man wants nothing to do with ‘The Game!’, and, after the kingdom descends into savage civil war, sees ironic Fate deal the white queen a telling death blow…

With Tarzan #230 (April/May 1974), the title transformed into a sequence of 100-page giants, mixing new material with reprints of ERB characters and thematically-aligned stars from DC’s vast back-catalogue.

Leading off that issue was a brief all-Kubert vignette as ‘Tarzan’ saved a deer from a lioness which neatly segued into ‘Leap into Death’ starring Korak, Son of Tarzan, written by Robert Kanigher, drawn by Kubert and inked by Russ Heath.

Here the titanic teen nomad hunted for his stolen true love Meriem and the barbarian Iagho who had taken her, before stumbling into a nest of aggressively paranoid bird-people who learned to respect his courage but still flew away with his lover…

The next issue featured the start of another-Kubert-adapted Burroughs novel: possibly the most intriguing conception of the entire canon.

‘Tarzan and the Lion Man Part One’ saw a movie company on location in the deep jungle to make a picture about a white man raised by animals to become undisputed master of all he surveyed. The chain of coincidences grew more improbable as actor Stanley Obroski was a dead ringer for Tarzan… which probably explained why he was taken by savages set on torturing him to death…

Rescued by Tarzan, Stanley explained how the expedition was attacked, unaware exactly how much trouble his fellow actors were in. During Obroski’s absence, stand-in Rhonda Terry and starlet Naomi Madison were kidnapped by El Ghrennem‘s Arab bandits who believed the production’s prop map actually led to a valley of diamonds…

When Tarzan found the rest of the film crew he was mistaken for Stanley and drawn into their search for the missing women. The plucky Americans had already made a mad dash for freedom, however, and Rhonda had been captured by creatures she simply could not believe…

After a fascinating bonus section revealing Kubert’s ‘Layouts and Thumbnails’ for the opening chapter, ‘Tarzan and the Lion Man Part Two’ sees Rhonda taken by apes who speak Elizabethan English, and made the subject of a fierce debate. Half of the articulate anthropoids want to take her to “God” whilst the other faction believes her a proper prize of their liege lord “King Henry VIII”…

After being briefly recaptured by El Ghrennem, Naomi too is taken by the talkative Great Apes. When Tarzan discovers the kidnapper’s corpses he follows the trail up an apparently unscalable escarpment. Rescuing and returning Miss Madison to her surviving friends, Tarzan/Stanley then returns to ascend the stony palisade and discover an incredible pastoral scene complete with feudal village and English castle…

Tracking Rhonda, he enters the citadel and meets a bizarre human/ape hybrid calling himself God. The garrulous savant explains that once he was simply a brilliant Victorian scientist pursuing the secrets of life. When his unsavoury methods of procuring test subjects forced him to flee England and relocate to this isolated region of Africa, he eventually resumed his experiments and transformed himself into a superior being and apes into fitting servants.

Now they have a society of their own – based on the history books he brought with him – and his experiments are nearing completion. Having already extended his life and vitality far beyond its normal span by experimenting upon himself, God is now ready to attain immortality and physical perfection. All he has to do is consume Tarzan…

Of course the madman has no conception of his captive’s capabilities, and when the Ape-Man and Rhonda promptly vanish from their dungeon it sends the palace into turmoil and God into a paroxysm of insanity…

The chaos also prompts already ambitious apostate King Henry to begin a revolution to overthrow his creator. As ‘Tarzan and the Lion Man Part Three‘ opens, the war between Church and State is in full swing and Tarzan battles to rescue Rhonda whilst God’s castle becomes a flaming hell.

Losing her in the chaos Tarzan is forced into a hasty alliance with God, unaware that maniacal monarch Henry has taken her back to the jungles below the escarpment and into a region where God casts his scientific failures…

All too soon Henry is dead and Rhonda is facing beings even stranger than talking apes. Thankfully ‘Tarzan and the Lion Man Part Four‘ sees “Stanley” arrive in time to save her from incredible peril and return her to the film party in the dazzling, tragic conclusion…

Kubert then ended his close association with Tarzan in #235’s ‘The Magic Herb’. After the jungle hero saves a couple from a crashed aeroplane, siblings Tommy and Gail urge him to help them find a legendary flower that might cure the man’s fatal ailment. However, something about them makes Tarzan suspicious…

Nevertheless he takes them to the primeval lost valley where it grows, only to be betrayed as the intruders frame him: throwing the jungle lord to the resident lizard men whilst they make off with specimens that will make them millionaires in the outside world.

Sadly, the treacherous pair have completely misunderstood the powers of the plant and pay the ultimate price all betrayers must…

Wrapping up the astounding thrills and captivating artistry (splendidly remastered by Sno Cone Studious and Jason Hvam) is a revelatory selection of drawings from ‘Joe Kubert’s Sketchbook’ tracing the art process from page-roughs to competed page

Supplemented by Creator Biographies of Burroughs and Kubert, this tome is another unmissable masterpiece of comics creation and wild adventure no lover of the medium or fantasy fan can afford to be without.
Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan ® The Joe Kubert Years Volume Two © 1973, 1974, 1975, 2006 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. All rights reserved. Tarzan ® is owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., and used by permission.

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White Collar – a Novel in Linocuts


By Giacomo Patri (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80591-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: An Epic Reminder that not everyone enjoys the same joys and benefits we do… 10/10

We tend to think of graphic novels as being a late 20th century phenomenon – and one that had to fight long and hard for legitimacy and a sense of worth – but as this stunning over-sized (286 x 218 mm) two-colour hardback reveals, the format was known much earlier in the century… and utilised for the most solemn and serious of purposes.

White Collar was created by jobbing illustrator, artist, educator and activist Giacomo Patri in 1937: encapsulating the tenor of the times as America endured the Great Depression with a view to inspiring his fellow creatives…

Unable to find a publisher for his shocking and controversial pictorial polemic, Patri and his wife Stella self-published their first edition, but happily found publishers for subsequent releases, if not the huge, hungry, underprivileged and angry audience it deserved…

Patri (1898-1978) was born in Italy but raised in America. Living in San Francisco from 1916 he overcame the handicap of polio and worked at many menial jobs until his interest in art carried him through the California School of Fine Arts. Thereafter he became an illustrator for the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers.

Patri had been interested in social justice and labour issues since the late 1920s and once the Depression struck those beliefs only crystallised. Manual or “blue collar” workers had long organised and unionised to secure their bargaining rights and fair wages and Patri saw that office workers like himself were as likely to need such power and autonomy too. This book was his way of convincing them…

A compelling Introduction by his descendents Tito Patri & Georges Rey offers context, historical background and technical information on the production of linocut art as well as revealing how the creation of such cheap, language-transcending visual tracts became a relatively common method of dissemination.

Also included is the story of the artist/author’s troubles during the repressive, red-baiting Joe McCarthy years and beyond…

Following the salutary lesson is the Original Introduction by fellow artistic agitator and creative pioneer Rockwell Kent before Patri senior’s endeavours to arouse his fellow illustrators and clerical staff unfold in 128 bold images of stark metaphor and rousing symbology: an astounding visual record and call to arms tracing one family’s struggle between 1929 and 1933, delivered with beguiling subtlety and shocking silent potency in plates of deepest black or startling orange.

The ‘Novel in Linocuts by Tito Patri’ is dedicated “To the great progressive Labor Movement, the Congress of Industrial Organisations” and remained both obscure and controversial for years not just for its left leaning content but due to its uncompromising depiction of the abortion catch-22: a truly heart-rending depiction of a family too poor to survive another mouth to feed but without the cash to pay a back street quack for an [illegal] termination…

Stirring, evocative and still movingly inspirational as the world staggers closer and closer to replicating those dark days of Haves, Have-Nots and Why-Should-I-Cares?; this magnificent rediscovery closes with a final assessment and plea from cartoonist, designer and contemporary activist Peter Kuper in his trenchant Afterword and the Original Epilogue by John L. Lewis…

Inventive, ferocious in its dramatic effects, instantly engaging and enraging, this is a book long overdue for revival and reassessment and one every callous “I’m All Right” Jackass and “Why Should I Pay For Your…” social misanthrope needs to see or be struck with…
© 1987 by Tamara Rey Patri. Introduction © 2016 by Tito Patri. Afterword © 2016 by Peter Kuper. All rights reserved.

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Dreadstar – The Beginning

By Jim Starlin (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-119-9

The creative renaissance in comics during the 1980s resulted in some utterly wonderful strip sagas which shone briefly and brightly within what was still a largely niche industry before passing from view as the business and art form battled spiralling costs, declining readerships and the perverse and pervasive attitude in the wider world that comicbooks were the natural province of mutants, morons and farm animals (I’m paraphrasing).

Unlike today, way back then most grown-ups considered superheroes as adolescent power fantasies or idle wish-fulfilment for the uneducated or disenfranchised, so an entertainment industry which was perceived as largely made up of men in tights hitting each other got very little approval – or even notice – in the wider world of popular fiction.

All that changed with the advent of the comic book Direct Sales Market. With its more targeted approach to selling, specialist vendors in dedicated emporia had leeway to allow frustrated creators to cut loose and experiment with other genres – and even formats.

All the innovation back then led inescapably to today’s high-end, thoroughly respectable graphic novel market which, with suitable and fitting circularity, is now gathering and re-circulating many of the breakthrough tales from those times; not as poorly distributed serials and sequences, but in satisfyingly complete stand-alone books.

Marvel was the unassailable front-runner in purveying pamphlet fiction back then, outselling all its rivals and monopolising the lucrative licensed properties market (like Star Wars and Indiana Jones) which once been the preserve of the Whitman/Dell/Gold Key colossus. This added to a zeitgeist which proved that for open-minded readers, superheroes were not the only fruit…

As independently published titles hit an early peak, Marvel instigated its own creator-owned, rights-friendly fantasy periodical in response to the overwhelming success amongst older readers of Heavy Metal magazine. Lush, slick and lavish, HM had even brought a fresh, music-&-literature based audience to graphic narratives…

That response was Epic Illustrated: an anthological magazine offering stunning art and an anything-goes attitude – unhindered by the censorious Comics Code Authority – which saw everything from adaptations of Moorcock’s Elric and Harlan Ellison novellas to ‘The Last Galactus Story’, plus numerous stories which would become compelling forerunners of today’s graphic novel industry.

The first issue also discretely started a very gradual introduction to one of the era’s biggest Indie sensations: Vanth Dreadstar…

This collection gathers a number of stories originally culled from an assortment of different places. The saga started in Epic Illustrated (#1-9, 12 and 15, spanning Spring 1980 to December 1982), whilst tangentially diverting in 1981 to Eclipse Graphic Album Series #5 (The Price) and then 1982’s Marvel Graphic Novel #3: Dreadstar: all laying the groundwork for one of the most successful independently-owned comic book characters of the era, and one of the most long-lived…

This stellar hardback re-presents those tales in the original monochrome or painted full-colour, with writer/artist Starlin aided and abetted by letterer by Tom Orzechowski. For this edition the art has been remastered by Jerron Quality Color, Mike Kelleher and Digikiore Studios.

Already a big gun thanks to his run on Captain Marvel, the engendering of mad Titan Thanos and the reinvention of Adam Warlock, Starlin cemented his cosmic creator credentials and seeming preoccupation with death and nihilism through the grandiose saga Metamorphosis Odyssey.

Delivered in painted grey-tones, the serialised tale began with the introduction of mighty alien wizard ‘Aknaton’: savant of ancient and benevolent race the Osirosians. These masters of the cosmos were perturbed by the advent of rapacious barbarian species the Zygoteans who were slowly and inexorably conquering planets and eradicating all life in the Milky Way galaxy.

Aknaton’s people fought back on behalf of all creation, but knew that their resistance was numbered in mere millennia before the predators would win.

Unsettled by the prognostication, Aknaton set out on a desperate tour of the galaxy, planting life seeds weaving a web of possibility and even depositing an incredible sword of power in a last-ditch plan which would take a million years to complete…

The first seed flowered in the form of spiritually advanced intellectual monster ‘Za!’, whilst another blossomed into 15-year old ‘Juliet’, taken by Aknaton from Earth in 1980 just as the Zygoteans arrived to eradicate the rest of her species.

The mage’s last living puzzle component was butterfly winged psychic ‘Whis’par’ whose gifts and sensitivities easily divined the dark underpinnings of Aknaton’s ambitions…

During this chapter the artwork transitioned into full-painted colour, and by the time the wizard reached war-torn ice-world Byfrexia to recruit ‘Vanth’ the cosmic conflict was in full phantasmagorical flow. This emotionless resistance leader battling the Zygoteans was a man with incredible physical powers, bequeathed by a magic sword he had found: the very weapon Aknaton has planted eons previously…

‘The Meeting’ between Vanth and his notional maker was interrupted by Zygotean killers, affording the wizard opportunity to assess his handiwork in action. He quickly realised the hero was far more powerful than he had intended….

Nevertheless the quest moved on to a recently-razed paradise, but ‘Delloran Revisited’ was merely a step tin a search for an ultimate weapon so long lost, so well hidden that Aknaton had no clue to its current location…

Appraising his unique team of one final push, Aknaton enjoyed ‘Sunrise on Lartorez’ before absenting himself to meet God and discuss ‘Absolution’, after which a ‘Requiem’ sounded for life as the Zygoteans found them and lit the skies with ‘Nightfire’.

Forced into precipitate action, ‘Dreamsend’ turned into ‘Doomsday!’ as Aknaton’s plan finally came into play… with cataclysmic effect…

A million years later, an energy bubble bursts in another galaxy and sole survivors Aknaton and Vanth find themselves on a rural world not much different from any other. They still have business to settle and only one will walk away from the ‘Aftermath’ of what they’ve done…

With the illustration reverting to painted monochrome, The Price is set in that new Empirical Galaxy: one riven by an unending war between intergalactic robber barons the Monarchy and omnipresent mystico-political religious order the Instrumentality. Over 200 years these instinctive enemies have taken half a galaxy each and now battle to maintain a permanent stalemate. The economies of both factions depend on constant slaughter but no outright victory…

At the heart of that strained environment, rising Instrumentality bishop Syzygy Darklock is drawn by arcane forces and the diabolical plotting of terrorist mage Taurus Killgaren onto a path of inescapable doom and destruction.

It begins with the demonic assassination of Darklock’s brother; leading the outraged cleric on a path of damnation and revelation, gaining immense mystic power and wisdom but only at the cost of sacrificing everything he ever loved.

He also is forced to share Killgaren’s infallible vision of the fearful future and the role a man named Dreadstar will play in the fate of the universe…

After the huge success of ‘The Death of Captain Marvel’ (Marvel Graphic Novel #1), Starlin was eagerly welcomed back for the third release. Here he finally launched Dreadstar as a creator-owned property that would kickstart the Epic Comics line into life.

The full-colour painted story focused on Vanth the man, as the immortal Cold Warrior abandoned his sword and warlike ways, settling down to decades of farming on isolated agri-world Caldor with retired Instrumentality researcher Delilah.

Toiling beside the gentle gengineered cat-people operating the farm planet, Vanth found a kind of contentment, which was only slightly spoiled when a bizarre creature named Syzygy Darklock set up his tent in the mountain wilderness and began tempting the old soldier with tales of the outer world and veiled promises of great knowledge and understanding .

Vanth was with the savant when Monarchy ships found Delilah and the cat-people. In the wake of their casual atrocities he renounced his vow of peace and resolved to end the stupid, commercially expedient war his way…

The drama concludes with ‘Epilogue’: one last black-&-white tale first seen in Epic Illustrated #15, and designed as bridging introduction to the hero’s comic book debut. Vanth and his cat-man ally Oedi are trying to quietly get off Instrumentality mining colony the Rock, but Dreadstar is nigh-fatally distracted by a worker who is the very image of his dearly departed Delilah.

Before he can do anything really stupid however the mine roof caves in and threatens all his ambitious plans to bring peace and stability to the Empirical Galaxy…

Bold, bombastic and potently cathartic, this is no-nonsense space opera with the just the right amount of deep thought, comforting cynicism and welcoming pop philosophy added to flavour the action and spice up the celestial grandeur. Above all this is smart, trenchant, uncomplicated fun for grown-up space freaks and well worth a few moments of your time…
© 2010 James Starlin. All rights reserved. Dreadstar is a registered trademark of James Starlin, and the Dreadstar logo and all characters and content herein and the likenesses thereof are also trademarks of James Starlin unless otherwise expressly noted.

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Attu: The Collected Volumes


By Sam Glanzman (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80158-2

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Epic Blockbuster Entertainment to digest that Dinner by… 8/10

After far too many years as an industry secret, in recent years Sam Glanzman has finally been awarded his proper station as one of American comics’ greatest and most remarkable creators – thanks in no small part to the diligent efforts of publishing house Dover, which has resurrected his groundbreaking graphic novel sequence A Sailor’s Story and overseen the collection of his astonishing semi-autobiographical series USS Stevens.

However, Glanzman has been drawing and writing comics since the 1940s, most commonly in the classic genres – war, mystery, adventure and fantasy – where his raw, powerful and subtly engaging style and wry wit made his work irresistibly compelling to generations of readers

On titles such as Kona, Monarch of Monster Island (and where’s the definitive omnibus collection of those wild yarns?), Voyage to the Deep, Combat, Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Hercules, the Haunted Tank, The Green Berets and cult classic The Private War of Willie Schultz, Glanzman always produced magnificently rousing yarns which fired the imagination and stirred the blood. That unceasing output always sold well and won him a legion of fans amongst fellow artists at least, if not from the insular and over-vocal fan-press.

In the 1990s Glanzman worked with Tim Truman’s 4Winds company on high-profile projects like The Lone Ranger and Jonah Hex whilst concocting a fantastic multi-genre mash-up named Attu. The first two volumes in a proposed series of original graphic novels, they were released at a time when the US marketplace was experiencing a glut of product and a storm of speculator interest. Those of us in the know patiently awaited more sci-fi barbarian wonderment, but it never materialised.

Now the wait is over: the first two books have been gathered into one superbly substantial oversized (278 x 208 mm) monochrome tome, graced and augmented at last by Glanzman’s unpublished third chapter.

Following Jeff Lemire’s fervent Foreword ‘What the Heck is Attu?’ and a fascinating Introduction and behind-the-scenes reminiscence from Tim Truman in ‘Four Winds and Forbidden Caves’, the uncanny blend of action and mystery begins…

On the primal super-continent of Gondwana in 137 million B.C., oddly clean-cut caveman Attu is making himself unpopular to the rest of the Kassar Tribe. Known as the Truth Seeker, the pest constantly vexes and troubles his hirsute, mountain-dwelling fellows and subsequently remands himself and forward-looking boy companion Oom to the lowlands: a place of giants, terrible beasts and uncanny creatures we would know as dinosaurs.

He also finds a lethally booby-trapped cave full of incomprehensible things where a beautiful woman sleeps in a tube of clear, warm ice…

Determined to liberate and possess her, Attu goes an on impromptu walkabout, encountering a multitude of strange monsters and weird men; learning new things and expanding his mind at every opportunity. When he appropriates a peculiar device under most unlikely circumstances, he instinctively knows it belongs with the pillar of

warm ice and the treasure inside…

Book Two: Durenella continues the wild rush of ideas as Attu – no longer a primitive by any means – unlocks the hibernation chamber of an alien princess and is cautiously introduced to and indoctrinated in the star-spanning culture of the Empire of Drago. Hearing – and eventually comprehending – the tragedy of Durenella as her Seeker Ship crashed to the primitive Earth and the crew all died, the caveman realises he now has no place on his own world anymore.

There’s also no place for him on fiercely embargoed and stratified Drago – even after a rescue ship arrives – unless he, the princess and the Emperor himself collude in a shameful and dangerous subterfuge which could topple a dynasty if exposed…

The series stalled for years as the nineties comicbook market turmoil essentially shut down 4Winds, but here the saga continues with the eagerly anticipated third chapter Jan-Uk.

The action-packed, blood-drenched extravaganza surprisingly goes back, not forward, to detail the brutal origins of Attu. As a young warrior barely past his manhood rites, Jan-Uk’s life changes forever after his father is betrayed and murdered and the boy seeks vengeance. His sire was both chief and seer, and before his demise foresaw his son living with strangers who rode strange birds from the stars but all that seems impossible to explain as the young warriors sets out after brutal rival Laanta and his cronies.

When the crime was perpetrated, Jan-Uk stalked the killers across the terrifying wilderness and tracked them up a mountain where even more primitive, half-ape creatures named Kassars lived. And then there was a blinding flash of light…

To Be Continued? (By Gosh I hope so…)

Following the astounding action extravaganza, Stephen R. Bissette offers a vast and comprehensive Caveman Comics Afterword on ‘Deconstructing Attu (Or: How a science Fiction Adventure Graphic Novel Can Indeed Be a Personal Work of Art from One of the Unsung Masters of Silver Age Adventure Comics’ and the book concludes with a bunch of stunning visual Extras including roughs, unused art (and hints of what’s next for Attu) plus charming pinups from Glanzman and celebrity guest contributors such as Michael T. Gilbert and Phil Hester.

An unrepentant fabulist adventure combining pre-history, monsters, murder mystery, political intrigue, super-science and even time-travel, this is a purely delightful slice of old-fashioned comics fun, rendered in stark, savage black and white; a brilliant paean to a bygone style and age. Moreover, it’s still not too late to urge this wonderful graphic master to sort out the next volume…
© 2016 Sam Glanzman. Foreword © 2016 Jeff Lemire. Introduction © 2016 Timothy Truman. Afterword © 2016 Stephen R. Bissette. All rights reserved.

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Yuge! – 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump


By G. B Trudeau (Andrews and McMeel)
ISBN: 978-1-44948-133-9

According to one of the two frontrunners in an upcoming electoral contest somewhere over the Pond, Garry Trudeau is a “sleazeball” “third-rate talent” who draws “overrated” comic strip Doonesbury, which “very few people read.”

He lives in New York City with his wife Jane Pauley, who “has far more talent than he has.”

For those who prefer recorded facts to illiterate, made-up gibber-jabber from the terminally biased and proudly uninformed, Garry Trudeau converted his comicstrip Bull Tales – which ran in the Yale University student newspaper Yale Daily News from 1968-1970 – into a satirical, comedy commentary on politics and contemporary society. He then managed to make it one of the most popular syndicated strips in the world…

“Starring” an everyman liberal college grad, Doonesbury debuted on October 26th 1970, and consequently got to immortalise, lampoon and pass judgement on some of America’s least finest moments and personages, casting a jaundiced eye over domestic and global events and converting them into wry, trenchant comedy gold. He is despised by many conservatives and immoderates on the Right of America’s political spectrum…

Over the years, as well as amusing millions of folks over there and around the world, the strip has aroused the ire of plenty of political, sporting and media figures – you can call them celebrities if you’re so inclined – whilst winning the cartoonist acclaim, fame and praise from some quite unlikely sectors of the society he perpetually regards with his gadfly’s eye.

Trudeau’s strip was the first to win a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, and he was awarded Certificates of Achievement from the US Army for strips dealing with the first Gulf War. In 1995 he won a Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society and in 2006 was given the US Army’s Commander’s Award for Public Service for strips about his character BD‘s recovery following the loss of a leg in Iraq.

His Mental Health Research Advocacy Award came from the Yale School of Medicine for his depiction of mental-health issues facing soldiers returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Doonesbury strip proceeds in real time and his large, broad cast of regulars has aged over the decades, whilst always interacting with the causes célèbres of the moment. As such, he has made a fair few enemies by enlisting many real-world oafs and bugbears amongst his long-lived itinerary of returning characters.

Generally these flesh-&-blood interlopers are represented by an icon – such as a waffle for Bill Clinton, a lit bomb for Newt Gingrich or a Stetson (later a Roman helmet) for George W. Bush – but that’s not always the case.

One of the most vocal – if not necessarily intelligible – over the years has been Donald J. Trump (who is usually depicted as a decadent, fat old white guy) and this superb collection gathers most of the best moments of cartoon lampoonery from three decades of less than cordial interaction.

It all begins with a Preface describing a rather fractious relationship and just why “The Donald” had to become a semi-regular in a comedy feature. The moneyed bully has never been slow to react to perceived criticism, and he and his lawyers first became acquainted with Doonesbury after Trump’s original timid “Kidding, I was only kidding!” dalliance with running for President in 1987.

That came to nothing but the big wind kept blowing and Trudeau kept pointing out a life of hubris, bad taste and excess played out on the screens and in the headlines of the Land of the Free.

Divided into discrete decades, Trudeau’s razor-sharp wit and crushing comedy critiques are re-presented here in full colour, spotlighting the vaulting ambition, sordid deals, shady landlord practises, tawdry hucksterism, serial misogyny, juvenile sexual bragging, grotesque bullying and blind narcissism of “the most unqualified candidate to ever aspire to the White House” over the numerous occasions he almost ran for office before bottling out at crunch time.

Capping all that cartoon japery is this time when he finally put other people’s money where his mouth is and found himself actually in contention for the most important job in the world… one even his own bewildered, terrified party faithful don’t want him to have…

And the best of all is that Trudeau has had an unwitting collaborator for so much of this material. Most of the baffling blather on those world balloons coming out of cartoon Donald’s mouth originated with the big orange blowhard himself…

Outrageous, alarming, more informative than any cartoon collection has a right to be and side-splittingly funny, Yuge! is a devastating tool of political instruction and character assessment which even the most deplorable basket case can enjoy, because it has loads and loads of really good simple pictures in it.

Most of us in the rest of the world can’t vote in November’s election, but we can all buy this book and make it a global bestseller. That’s the only real way to make your voice heard in a modern plutocratic democracy…
™®© 2016 G. B. Trudeau. All rights reserved.