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Superman: Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite


By Roger Stern, Jerry Ordway, Dan Jurgens, Bob McLeod, Dave Hoover, Curt Swan, John Byrne, Kerry Gammill, Brett Breeding, Dennis Janke, Art Thibert, Scott Hanna & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-275-2 (TPB)

Although largely out of vogue these days as many varying decades of Superman mythology are assimilated into one overarching, all-inclusive multi-media DC franchise, the stripped-down, gritty, post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Man of Tomorrow – as re-imagined by John Byrne and marvellously built upon by a stunning succession of gifted comics craftsmen – produced a profusion of genuine comics classics.

Although controversial at the start, Byrne’s reboot of the world’s first superhero was rapidly acknowledged as a solid hit and the collaborative teams who complemented and followed him maintained the high quality, ensuring continued success. Over following years a vast, interlocking saga unfolded across a spread of titles which has only sporadically – and far too infrequently – been collected into graphic compilations. One of the best is this scarlet-themed selection gathering a key cross-title storyline plus a couple of choice solo stories in that fabled “never-ending battle”: presenting the contents of Action Comics #659-660, Adventures of Superman #472-473, 464-465 and Superman #49-50, and including a crossover component from Starman (volume 1 #28), all collectively occurring through cover-dates November and December 1990.

Almost as soon as the Byrne restart had stripped away most of the accreted mythology and iconography that had grown up around the Strange Visitor from Another World over 50 glorious years, successive teams spent a great deal of time and ingenuity putting much of it back, albeit in terms more accessible and agreeable to a cynical, well-informed audience far more sophisticated than their grandparents ever were.

One such was this notional tip of the hat to many memorably madcap tales revolving around both an irritating 5th Dimensional Imp and the bizarrely mutagenic mineral from Krypton which peppered and perplexed the Silver Age Superman’s life. However, the main story arc also served to advance two major plot threads which had grown from the soap opera styled stories: the imminent demise of Lex Luthor thanks to self-inflicted Green K poisoning and a blossoming romance between Clark Kent and dynamic fellow journalist/rival Lois Lane.

Those background details and more are discussed in Roger Stern’s Introduction before the stunning saga starts with ‘Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite: Part One’ (courtesy of Jerry Ordway & Dennis Janke  in Superman volume 2, #49) wherein Luthor – following the death of his only “heir” – ponders mortality in a cemetery until a talking red rock bops him on the back of his big, bald head.

The incensed billionaire quickly stifles his outrage as the scarlet stone resolves into cruelly devious trickster-sprite Mr. Mxyzptlk. Although currently preoccupied with another realm, the malign mischief-maker sees a chance to manufacture more mayhem in Metropolis with the Red Kryptonite he has magicked up: promising Lex it will make Man of Steel and mortal multi-millionaire “physical equals”…

Lex activates the rock expecting to gain the powers of a god – and just possibly a new lease on his rapidly expiring life – and is furious to realise he is still just human. However, across town Superman – having defeated bionic bandit Barrage – is transporting the supervillain to metahuman penitentiary Stryker’s Island when his abilities vanish and he plunges into vilely polluted Hobs Bay.

Crying foul, Luthor is again visited by Mxyzptlk who pettishly teleports the drowning Action Ace to Lex’s penthouse office where the evil industrialist can see what the spell has actually wrought…

After a brutal and strictly human-scaled tussle, a badly beaten, powerless Superman is ejected from Luthor’s HQ and staggers back to Kent’s home where he finds Lois waiting. The normally resolute reporter is badly shaken: her mother is dying from an apparently fatal illness – and Luthor is somehow responsible…

Dan Jurgens & Art Thibert’s ‘Clark Kent… Man of Steel!’ (Adventures of Superman #472) picks up the pace with our simply human hero about to be slaughtered by lethal lummox Mammoth. Kal-El is undergoing tests conducted by scientific advisor/close confidante Emil Hamilton into the cause of his malady, but when news of the giant thief’s robbery spree reaches him Superman dashes off to assist, equipped only with a hastily configured force field belt. It’s not nearly enough…

In the end wits, raw nerve and a simple bluff save the day, but with no solution in sight the Metropolis Marvel must admit he needs superhuman assistance if he is to survive…

At least on the domestic front his new fragility brings him closer to Lois…

The scene switches to Arizona where a recent acquaintance gets a phone call before ‘Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite: Part Two/A: The End of a Legend?’ (Roger Stern, Dave Hoover & Scott Hanna in Starman volume 1 #28) sees Stellar Sentinel Will Payton flying to the City of Tomorrow for a top secret rendezvous. A sun in human form, Payton had reenergised the Kryptonian’s cells with solar power once before when Superman’s powers were drained, but this time the sun-bath has no effect and almost fries desperate Kal-El during the process. With crime spiking, Starman sticks around and keep the peace, using his shapeshifting powers to perfectly mimic the Man of Steel. He even fools Luthor who, confronted by the somehow resurgent “Superman”, furiously throws the useless Red K at him…

With the mineral in Hamilton’s hands, stringent testing proves the mineral is only red rock with no radioactive properties and Superman is forced to think outside the box if he is to protect his city.

… And on Stryker’s Island, another old enemy is laying lethal plans to finally end the Man of Tomorrow…

Tension ratchets up in ‘Breakout!’ (Action Comics #659 by Stern, Bob McLeod & Brett Breeding) as Superman resorts to technological battle armour when murderous maniac Thaddeus Killgrave frees the inmates and takes control of Stryker’s, luring Starman-as-Superman into a deadly trap the neophyte hero cannot escape from. Meanwhile, in the highest corridors of financial power, Mxyzptlk personally briefs baffled bewildered Luthor on what’s happening…

Brave but not stupid, Superman calls in back-up for his raid on the penitentiary. Whilst cloned champion Golden Guardian and street vigilante Crimebuster tackle rank-&-file felons, the armoured Action Ace heads straight for Killgrave and a blistering confrontation which is mere prelude to the fateful finale of concluding chapter ‘The Human Factor’…

Superman volume 2, #50 was a super-sized special by Ordway & Janke with celebratory anniversary contributions from Byrne, Curt Swan, Kerry Gammill, Breeding & Jurgens, opening with Clark unceremoniously ejected from Lexcorp Tower only to stumble upon the billionaire’s personal physician Dr. Gretchen Kelly acting oddly…

Heading home, the powerless hero is saved from a mutant rat by The Guardian and, after seeing Crimebuster thrashing street thugs, comes to a painful conclusion. Maybe Superman isn’t necessary any more. Maybe now he can have his own life and even ask Lois to marry him…

First though, there’s a little unfinished business and a simple phone call to Luthor gets the ball rolling. Offering to trade the Red K for a story, Clark inadvertently causes Lex to break the terms of his infernal pact with Mxyzptlk, thereby negating the whole power-sapping deal.

Ticked off, petulant and impatient to get back to mischief-making in another universe, the imp makes a personal appearance in monstrous form, but loads the blistering battle in the fully restored Man of Tomorrow’s favour just to get out of his self-imposed arcane contract quickly – albeit not without an astounding amount of collateral damage to Metropolis…

With the crisis over, however, Superman has made a life changing decision. Following the red-tinged resumption of his super status, the Action Ace is joined by a brace of green guest stars in ‘Rings of Fire’ (Jurgens & Thibert in Adventures of Superman #473). Even as Clark and Lois announce their engagement, Superman is fretting. He has been unable to tell his intended about his secret life, but is quickly distracted and drawn away when unconventional Green Lantern Guy Gardner blows into town looking for missing mentor Hal Jordan.

Earth’s “real GL” has been captured by a monolithic alien who has siphoned off his emerald energies to power a long-delayed return to the distant stars. Of course that departure will eradicate half of Wyoming…

After foiling the scheme, freeing a mesmerised Army General and defeating the alien’s thralls Psi-phon and Dreadnaught, Superman and the GLs are able to arrive at a far less destructive solution for all parties involved…

This titanic tome concludes with ‘Certain Death’ (by Stern, McLeod & Breeding from Action Comics #660) which seemingly ushers in the end of an era. For years Luthor has masqueraded as a billionaire philanthropist whilst dominating Metropolis and the world. Few people knew the unsavoury truth and the cunning villain kept Superman literally at arms-length by wearing a ring made from Green Kryptonite.

Subsequent stories revealed that K radiation gradually poisoned Luthor, initially causing the loss of his hand and eventually fatally irradiating his entire body. Now as his power and vitality wane, Luthor – knowing that his pitiful condition must inevitably become public knowledge – puts a final desperate plan into operation. During a high profile publicity stunt attempting to set a new air-speed record, the manipulative mogul seemingly commits suicide in a spectacular manner which only marks the beginning of a stupendous 7-year long extended plotline…

To Be So Continued…

Superman is comics’ champion crusader: the hero who originated the genre and, in nine decades since his spectacular launch in June 1938, one who has survived every kind of menace imaginable. As such, it’s always rewarding to gather up whole swathes of his prodigious back-catalogue and re-present them in specifically-themed collections.

Thrilling, funny action-packed and exquisitely entertaining: what more could dedicated Fights ‘n’ Tights followers want?
© 1990, 1996 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Spain: Rock, Roll, Rumbles, Rebels & Revolution

Version 1.0.0

By Manuel “Spain” Rodriguez (Burchfield Penney Art Center/Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-782-2 (TPB)

Manuel Rodriguez was one of the most bombastic and well-known pioneering lights of America’s transformative Underground Commix movement: a mainstay of the counterculture which subversively reshaped the nation’s psyche in the 1960s and 1970s. However, although always a left-leaning radical, infamous for his raucously hyper-violent, audaciously sexual urban vigilante Trashman, Spain was also a quietly dedicated craftsman, historian, educationalist and graphic biographer.

Born in Buffalo, New York state in 1940, the Hispanic kid spent a lot of time with notorious biker gang The Road Vultures and these experiences, as much as his political upbringing and formal education at the Silvermine Guild Art School in New Canaan, Connecticut (1957-1960), moulded and informed his entire creative career.

In the 1960s he became a regular contributor to landmark alternative magazine the East Village Other, which not only utilised his burgeoning talents as illustrator and designer but also commissioned, in 1968, his groundbreaking tabloid comic book Zodiac Mindwarp. That insert proved so successful that EVO subsequently sponsored a regular anthology publication. Gothic Blimp Works was a turning point and clarion call in the evolution of underground publishing.

However, the excessive exploits of Trashman – “Agent of the 6th International” – against a repressive dystopian American super-state were only the tip of the creative iceberg. Ardent left-winger Spain founded the trade organisation the United Cartoon Workers of America whilst contributing to many of the independent comics and magazines which exploded out of the burgeoning counterculture movement across the world. Manuel Rodriguez was also an erudite and questioning writer/artist with a lifelong interest in history – especially political struggle and major battlefield clashes, and much of his other work revealed a stunning ability to bring these subjects to vibrant life.

The breadth, depth and sheer variety of Spain’s work – from gritty urban autobiography (American Splendor, Cruisin’ with the Hound: the Life and Times of Fred Toote) to psycho-sexual sci fi (Zap Comix, Skull, Mean Bitch Thrills) is a testament to his incredible talent but the restless artist also found time to produce a wealth of other cartooning classics.

Amongst his dauntingly broad canon of comics are literary adaptations (Edgar Allen Poe, Sherlock Holmes’ Strangest Cases), historical treatises (War: The Human Cost) and biographies (Ché [Guevara]:a Graphic Biography, Devil Dog: the Amazing True Story of the Man who Saved America [Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler]) as well as educational and design works such as You Are a Spiritual Being Having a Human Experience and Nothing in This Book Is True, But It’s Exactly How Things Are (both with Bob Frissell).

He also produced the ongoing comics serial The Dark Hotel for American current affairs, politics and media news aggregation website Salon.

In 2012 Spain finally lost a six-year battle against cancer and this superb book – actually the Exhibition catalogue for a career retrospective at the prestigious Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College – celebrates his tumultuous life and spectacular contribution to the art form of graphic narrative with a compelling series of essays as well as a superb selection of the great man’s best pieces including some little known lost treasures.

The appreciation begins with ‘Stand Up’ by Anthony Bannon (Executive Director, BPAC), before the biographical ‘Grease, Grit and Graphic Truth’ by Edmund Cardoni (Executive Director, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center) explores Spain’s past, whilst ‘Keep the Flames of Buffalo Burning’ by Don Metz examines his lasting effect on comics and society.

However, the true value of this chronicle is in the 60+ covers, designs, story-pages, roughs, panel excerpts and strips both vintage and recent, monochrome and full-colour which demonstrate the sheer talent and drive to communicate that fuelled Spain for his entire life.

The Partial Spain Bibliography 1969-2012 and Selected Spain Exhibitions only hint at the incredible depth and lasting legacy of his career and I’m praying that some enlightened publisher like Fantagraphics or Last Gasp is already toiling on a comprehensive series of “Complete Works of…” volumes…

Stark, shocking and always relevant, the communicative power of Spain is something no true lover of comics can afford to miss….
© 2012 Burchfield Penney Art Center. All rights reserved.

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Safer Places


By Kit Anderson (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-77-6 (PB)

If you get a holiday this year and you’re one of those folk that like to read, here’s something a bit different that will certainly add to the desired sense of getting away from it all…

If you’re open to the idea, there’s wonder all around us. It’s not a new notion but remains a potently beguiling one that confirms its power in these interconnected vignettes exploring memory, imagination, inner worlds, nature, secrets, self-help solutions and isolation.

Explored over an initially undisclosed set of parameters and across myriad places and times, these are moments of shared-yet-exclusive realities that appear to be an example of a growing creative vogue/creative zeitgeist – as you’ll see when we imminently review similar but so different Avery Hill release Infinite Wheat Paste: Catalytic Conversions.

Here, however, cartoonist and tale-teller Kit Anderson merges mundane momentary travails with commonplace entertainment escape routes (wizard’s worlds, haunted houses, cyber-realities, alien mindscapes, fresh starts) to explore “liminal spaces and small magic”: digging deep to find the “something greater” we all crave and that must be waiting just out of our sight and other perceptions. Master of short form graphic narratives – you can just call them comics if you want – she hails from Boulder, Colorado but now lives near Zürich. Anderson was ceaselessly making graphic stories even before earning an MFA from The Center for Cartoon Studies in 2022. You can look for her stuff at Parsifal Press and The Rumpus for greater elucidation and edification…

Taking a year to complete, over 18 brief tales Safer Places melds inquisitive inspirations to contemplative cartooning and builds an interlocking sampling of other worlds, times and existences which all lead back to a common core. Blending pedestrian and surreal, employing a variety of art styles and colour palettes, it all begins with ‘Quest I’ as unseen critics speculate upon an old guy who seems to be a wizard who favours the wilds over civilisation, before a bereft boy looking for his cat finds something strange, wondrous and ultimately unsustainable in ‘The Basement’…

Tantalising travelogue ‘Wonders of the Lost City’ carries us to ‘Sleep Tape: Country Lane’ and a loving couple under strain and in need of calming talk therapies before the wizard – still moving in mysterious ways – pops back into view for ‘Quest II’, after which a boy in very uncharted waters takes a revelatory ‘Deep Breath’…

More calming tactics and rural idyls manifest in ‘Sleep Tape: Forest Walk’ for a woman too wedded to a Wi-Fi-enabled “Smart” world, whereas work pressure taking its toll on a watcher of post dystopian woodlands cannot be as readily assuaged in ‘Lookout Station’. At least the poetic ruminations of ‘Morning’, ‘Hills’ and ‘Waves’ carry us gently into ‘Quest III’ and the wizard’s dramatic interaction with a forest fox, prior to ‘Fallow’ detailing the shocking behaviour of an aged, burned out farmer making amends… and one last lifestyle change.

A computer nerd’s close encounter with digital ‘Wallpaper’ quietly segues into floral terrors as a student succumbs to transformative life-changing illness in ‘Weeds’ whilst ‘Quest IV’ sees a darker day dawn for the wizard before a harassed and lonely wage-slave finding solace and companionship thanks to ‘Sleep Tape: At the Seaside’…

‘Whump’ offers a contemplative laugh before a solitary walking tour takes a lonely wanderer to ‘The World’s Biggest Ball of Twine’ even as another recluse escapes connections by grabbing a bike and going for a ‘Ride’, all before the wizard heads home to recharge in ‘Quest V’…

Bemusing and seductive, these interlocking voyages reveal the cathartic force of creativity and therapeutic siren call of world-making. Come visit soon, yes?
© Kit Anderson 2024. All rights reserved.

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Spider-Man Newspaper Strips volume 1: January 3rd 1977 – January 28th 1979

4 images (2 covers + 1 illo and a spare combined covers if the preferred don’t match up)


By Stan Lee & John Romita, with Frank Giacoia & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-8561-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

It’s been a year since we lost genial giant John Romita. His work and life were inextricably woven into the Marvel canon: permeating and supporting the entire company’s output from top to tail, from before the House of Ideas even existed to the stellar Sixties to right now…

By 1977 Stan Lee had all but surrendered his role as editor and guiding light of Marvel Comics for that of a roving PR machine to hype-up the company he had turned into a powerhouse. In that year two events occurred that catapulted Marvel’s standout, signature character into the popular culture mainstream. One was the long-anticipated debut of The Amazing Spider-Man live action TV show (a mixed blessing and pyrrhic victory at best) whilst the other, and one much more in keeping with his humble origins, was the launch of a syndicated newspaper strip with the same hallowed title.

Both mass-audience outreach projects brought the character to a wider audience, but the latter offered at least a promise of editorial control – a crucial factor in keeping the wondrous wallcrawler’s identity and integrity intact. But even this closely-aligned creative medium dictated some tailoring of the Merry Marvel Madness before the hero was a suitable fit with the grown-up world of the “Funny Pages”.

Which is just my longwinded way of saying that completists, long-time fans and lovers of great artwork will absolutely enjoy this collection of periodical strips, as will any admirer of the stunning talents of the senior John Romita (latterly inked by the great Frank Giacoia) even though the stories are tame, bowdlerised and rather mediocre. Deprived of the support network of an overlapping Marvel Universe, they often struggled to find their wallcrawling feet and might feel a tad toned down and simplistic for readers familiar with the wider cast or long history. Those completists, however, might be keen on catching lost adventures featuring Wolverine, Doctor Strange and Daredevil, and it was always easier to import supervillains like Mysterio, The Kingpin and Doctor Doom into the alternate adventures of this Amazing Spider-Man.

Marvel Multiversal Continuity eventually caught up with the feature and it’s now designated Earth-77013 and a regular component of the “Spider-Verse” strand…

The strip was first posited and peddled around the papers in 1970 (Lee & Romita’s initial proposal and two weeks of trial continuities are included at the back of this book) but The Amazing Spider-Man only began on January 3rd 1977. It ran as a property of the Register and Tribune Syndicate until 1985, briefly switching to Cowles Media Company before becoming part of the King Features Syndicate in 1986. The strip went on hiatus following Lee’s death with the final new strip appearing on March 23rd 2019. Lee was still credited as writer even though Roy Thomas had been its ghost writer since 2000. It soon reappeared as reruns – until October 21st 2023 – before being replaced in syndicate packages by Flash Gordon.

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

John Victor Romita was Brooklyn born and bred, entering the world on January 24th 1930. From Brooklyn Junior High School he moved to the famed if not legendary Manhattan School of Industrial Art, and graduated in 1947. After spending six months creating a medical exhibit for Manhattan General Hospital he moved into comics in 1949, working for Famous Funnies. A “day job” toiling at Forbes Lithograph was abandoned when a friend found him various inking and ghosting assignments, until he was drafted in 1951. Showing his portfolio to a US army art director, after boot camp at Fort Dix New Jersey, Romita was promoted to corporal, and stationed on Governors Island in New York Bay doing recruitment posters. He was allowed to live off-base in Brooklyn. During this period he started doing the rounds and struck up a freelancing acquaintance with Stan Lee at rapidly expanding genre factory Atlas Comics…

Romita illustrated horror, science fiction, war stories, westerns, Waku, Prince of the Bantu in Jungle Tales, a superb run of inviting cowboy adventures starring The Western Kid and was handed 1954’s abortive revival of Captain America and more, before an industry implosion derailed his – and many other – blossoming careers. He eventually found himself trapped in DC’s romance comics division – a job he hated – before – in 1965 – making a reluctant jump back to the resurgent House of Ideas. As well as steering the career of the wallcrawler and so many other Marvel stars, his greatest influence was felt when he became Art Director in July 1973 – a job he had been doing unofficially since 1968. He had a definitive hand in creating or shaping many key characters, such as Mary Jane Watson, Peggy Carter, The Kingpin, The Punisher, Luke Cage, Wolverine, Satana, ad infinitum. One story goes that it was Romita who suggested Gwen Stacy’s murder to Spidey scripter Gerry Conway…

Working from full scripts (not the acclaimed “Marvel Method”), Romita illustrated The Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip for its first four years, after which Stan’s brother Larry Lieber (Rawhide Kid, Ant-Man, Iron Man, Thor) took on the pencilling. Unhappy with the deadline pressures, he soon left, and was replaced by Fred (Airboy, Captain Britain) Kida who soldiered on from August 1981 to July 1986. A brief interim with Dan (Flash Gordon, Airboy, Tarzan) Barry led to Leiber’s return, and he drew the feature for the next 32 years with a variety of inkers and ghosts such as Alex Saviuk.

Since 2015 the stories have also been collected in IDW’s The Library of American Comics as The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Newspaper Comics Collection with five lavish hardback volumes released to date. This collection – available in landscape paperback and digital formats – is a modified rerelease of a hardback tome from 2008, offering extra editorial and commentary as it re-presents the first two years of the strip, with traditional single tier monochrome dailies accompanied by full-colour, full page Sunday strips. If the reader is steeped in the established folklore of the comic book Spider-Man, the serials here – solidly emphasising Peter Parker‘s personal relationships in the grand manner of strip soap opera drama – begin by introducing Dr. Doom and Dr. Octopus in heavy-handed potboilers light on action but intrinsically riffing on what has gone before in comic books.

However, for the presumed millions of neophyte readers the yarns must have been a tad confusing: presented as if all participants are already fully-established, with no development or real explanation of backstory. After the full-on Marvel villains are successively trounced, serpentine new baddie The Rattler stalks the city in search of increased powers, followed in turn by the more appropriate and understandable (for strips at least) gangster The Kingpin, who combines seditious politics with gun-toting thuggery.

Only then do the creators finally get around to a retelling of the origin, albeit one now based on that aforementioned TV show rather than the classic Lee/Ditko masterpiece. It’s safe to say that in those early years television informed the strip much (too much) more than monthly comic books.

A suitably revised Kraven the Hunter debuts next, presenting an opportunity to remove glamourous but shallow good-time girl Mary Jane Watson from the strip in favour of a string of temporary girl-friends, more in line with the TV iteration. This also signalled a reining-in of super-menaces in favour of less-fantastic or far-fetched opponents such as a middle-Eastern terrorist.

The launch of a Spider-Man movie (surely the most improbable of events!) then takes photojournalist Peter Parker to Hollywood and into a clash with a new version of deranged special-effects genius Mysterio, before Dr. Doom returns, attempting to derange our hero with robot pigeons and duplicates of Parker’s associates..

This is followed by an exceptional, emotionally-stirring run of episodes as three street thugs terrorise senior citizen Aunt May for her social security money, after which Spider-Man must foil a crazed fashion-model who has discovered his identity and blackmails him…

These drama-framed and human-scaled threats are a far more fitting use of the hero in this ostensibly more grown-up milieu – which pauses here with a protection racket romp set in the (feel free to shudder) discotheque owned by young entrepreneurs Flash Thompson and Harry Osborn, courtesy of newly-returned corpulent crimelord Kingpin…

To Be Continued…

Adding to the time capsule of arachnid entertainment is that aforementioned proposal by Lee & Romita, archival interviews with both creators conducted by John Rhett Thomas and Alex Lear plus a gallery of six Sunday title panels (used to summarise events and set the tone for readers who only read the sabbath colour strips), as well as a classic Romita pin-up page starring the artist and his greatest co-creations…

Happily, although goofy stories predominate in this oddball collection, and time has not been gentle with much of the dialogue, the stunning artwork of John Romita in his prime helps to counteract the worst of the cultural excesses. Moreover, there remains a certain guilty pleasure to be derived from these tales if you don’t take your comics too seriously and are open to alternative existences…
© 1977, 1978, 2019 Marvel. All rights reserved.

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Jack Kirby’s Kamandi – The Last Boy on Earth volume 2


By Jack Kirby, D. Bruce Berry & Mike Royer with Gerry Conway, Steve Sherman, Paul Levitz & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-2171 (TPB/Digital edition)

With elections looming, it’s hard not to worry about the world that’s coming, and as usual I’m retreating into comics for emotional sustenance. Sadly the prevailing attitude is one of doom and gloom whoever wins, so – in anticipation of calamity unbounded – here’s a comforting look at another always-rewarding end of world scenario…

Other than Gotham City, Jack Kirby’s Earth AD (After Disaster) is DC’s most successful and inspirational Dystopia. It has migrated to television via numerous animated features and informs many aspects of the greater shared continuity. In so many ways it’s a far more enticing world than the one we currently inhabit… albeit not for much longer…

Jack Kirby (28th August 1917 – 6th February 1994) was – and nearly 30 years after his death, remains – the most important single influence in the history of American comics. There are innumerable accounts of and testaments to what the man has done and meant, and you should read those if you are at all interested in our medium. Kirby was a man of vast imagination who translated big concepts into astoundingly potent and accessible symbols for generations of fantasy fans. If you were exposed to Kirby as an impressionable child you were his for life. To be honest, that probably applies whatever age you jump aboard the “Kirby Express”…

Synonymous with larger than life characters and vast cosmic imaginings, “ The King” was an astute, spiritual man who had lived through poverty, prejudice, gangsterism, the Depression and World War II. He experienced Pre-War privation, Post-War optimism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and the birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures, but always looked to the future while understanding human nature intimately. Beginning in the late 1930s, it took a remarkably short time for Kirby and his creative collaborator Joe Simon to become the wonder-kid dream-team of the new-born comic book industry. Together they produced a year’s worth of influential monthly mag Blue Bolt, dashed off Captain Marvel Adventures (#1) for overstretched Fawcett, and – after Martin Goodman appointed Simon editor at Timely Comics – launched a host of iconic characters including Red Raven, Marvel Boy, Mercury/Hurricane, The Vision, Young Allies and million-selling mega-hit Captain America. When Goodman failed to make good on his financial obligations, Simon & Kirby were snapped up by National/DC, who welcomed them with open arms and a fat chequebook.

Bursting with ideas the staid industry leaders were never really comfortable with, the pair were initially an uneasy fit, and awarded two moribund strips to play with until they found their creative feet: Sandman and Manhunter. They turned both around virtually overnight and, once safely established and left to their own devices, switched to the “Kid Gang” genre they had pioneered at Timely. Joe & Jack created wartime sales sensation Boy Commandos and Homefront iteration The Newsboy Legion before being called up to serve in the war they had been fighting on comic pages since 1940.

Once demobbed, they returned to a very different funnybook business, and soon after left National to create their own little empire…

Simon & Kirby ushered in the first American age of mature comics – not just by inventing the Romance genre, but with all manner of challenging modern material about real people in extraordinary situations before seeing it all disappear again in less than eight years.

After years of working for others, Simon & Kirby established their own publishing house: making comics for a far more sophisticated audience, only to find themselves in a sales downturn and awash in public hysteria generated by an anti-comicbook pogrom. Their small stable of magazines – generated for an association of companies known as Prize, Crestwood, Pines, Essenkay and Mainline Comics – blossomed and as quickly wilted when the industry contracted throughout the 1950s, but had left future generations fascinating ventures such as Boys’ Ranch, Bullseye, Crime Does Not Pay, Black Magic, Boy Explorers, Fighting American and the entire genre of Romance Comics…

Hysterical censorship-fever spearheaded by US Senator Estes Kefauver and opportunistic pop psychologist Dr. Frederic Wertham led to witch-hunting Senate hearings. Caving in, most publishers adopted a castrating straitjacket of draconian self-regulatory rules. Crime and Horror titles produced under the aegis and emblem of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised and anodyne affairs in terms of mature themes, political commentary, shock and gore even though the market’s appetite for suspense and the uncanny was still high. Crime comics vanished as adult sensibilities challenging an increasingly stratified and oppressive society were suppressed. Suspense and horror were dialled back to the level of technological fairy tales and whimsical parables…

Simon left the business for advertising, but Jack soldiered on, taking his skills and ideas to safer, more conventional, less experimental companies. As the panic abated, Kirby returned briefly to DC Comics, working on bread-&-butter anthological mystery tales and revamping Green Arrow (at that time a back-up feature in Adventure Comics and World’s Finest Comics) whilst concentrating on his passion project: newspaper strip Sky Masters of the Space Force. During that period Kirby also re-packaged a super-team concept that had been kicking around in his head since he and Joe had closed their innovative, ill-timed ventures. At the end of 1956, Showcase #6 premiered the Challengers of the Unknown. Following three further test issues they won their own title with Kirby in command for the first eight. Then a legal dispute with Editor Jack Schiff exploded and the King was gone…

He found fresh fields and an equally hungry new partner in Stan Lee at the ailing Atlas Comics outfit (which had once been mighty Timely) and launched a revolution in comics storytelling…

After more than a decade of a continual innovation and crowd-pleasing wonderment, Kirby felt increasingly stifled. His efforts had transformed the dying publisher into industry-pioneer Marvel, but that success had left him feeling trapped in a rut. Thus, he moved back to DC and generated another tidal wave of sheer imagination and pure invention. The result was experimental adult magazines Spirit World and In the Days of the Mob and a stunning reworking of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen – and by extension, all DC continuity. The latter was a prelude to his landmark Fourth World Saga (Forever People, New Gods and Mister Miracle): the very definition of something game-changing and far too far ahead of its time…

Kirby instinctively grasped the fundamentals of pleasing his audience and always strived diligently to combat the appalling prejudice regarding the comics medium – especially from industry insiders and professionals who despised the “kiddies world” they felt trapped in. After his grandiose, controversial Fourth World titles were cancelled, Kirby explored other projects that would stimulate his own vast creativity yet still appeal to a market growing ever more fickle. These included supernatural stalwart The Demon, traditional war stories starring established DC team The Losers, OMAC: One Man Army Corps and even a new metaphysically mighty Sandman – co-created with old pal Joe Simon and his biggest hit science fictional survival saga Kamandi.

However, although ideas kept coming (Atlas, Kobra, a new Manhunter and Dingbats of Danger Street), once again editorial disputes took up too much of his time. Reluctantly, he left again, choosing to believe in promises of more creative freedom elsewhere…

As early as 1974, worn down by a lack of editorial support and with his newest creations inexplicably tanking, Kirby considered returning to Marvel, but – ever the consummate professional – scrupulously carried out every detail of an increasingly onerous, emotionally unrewarding DC contract. The Demon was cancelled after 16 issues and he needed another title to maintain his Herculean commitments (legally obliged to deliver 15 completed pages of art and story per week!); Kamandi – The Last Boy on Earth had found a solid and faithful audience. It also provided further scope to explore big concepts as seen in thematic companion OMAC: One Man Army Corps. Both series gave Kirby’s darkest assumptions and prognostications free rein, and his “World That’s Coming” has proved far too close to the World we’re frantically trying to fix or escape from today…

Here, as DC’s fanatically interconnected universe takes a distant back seat to amazement, adventure and satirical commentary for most of Kirby’s tenure, this frankly monstrous tome gathers the second half of arguably his boldest, most bombastic and certainly most successful 1970s DC creation. Re-presenting cover-dates October/November 1972 – April 1976, Kamandi – The Last Boy on Earth #21-40 explores a shattered world that has grown from the rubble of Mankind’s achievements and mistakes, featuring every issue Kirby was involved with, although not the 19 issues that staggered on after under lesser creative lights once he had headed back to the House of Ideas…

A potent signature of the series was large panels, double-page tableaux and vast vistas, particularly spectacular and breathtaking double-page spreads (generally on the second & third pages  of almost every episode) adding an aspect of wide-screen cinematic bravura. It was especially effective in the first issue when a capable, well-armed teenager paddled through the sunken ruins of New York City. The explorer had just emerged from total isolation in a hermetically sealed bunker designated “Command D”, There he had been schooled by his grandfather, constantly accessing a vast library of microfilm and news recordings. The boy called himself “Kamandi”…

Having obliviously sat out a seemingly overnight decline and fall of humanity – in which atomic armageddon clearly played a major if not exclusive role – the boy constantly met incomprehensible change on every level resulting from a mysterious catastrophe called “The Great Disaster” by the recovering survivors. They were not what the lad had been expecting…

This new world was nothing like his education had promised. Wreckage and mutant monsters abound, the very geography has altered and humans had somehow devolved into savage, non-verbal brutes and beasts, hunted and exploited by many animal species who have gained intellect comparable to his own and the power of speech. Now jockeying for pole position in Humanity’s vacated niche in the world, most of them were engaged in wars for dominance, fuelled by territorial aggression and fuelled by the scavenged remnants of Man’s discarded technologies…

When the boy returned to the bunker, it had finally been breached and his grandfather was dead at the hands of opportunistic biped wolves far too much like men. Shocked, furious and utterly alone, Kamandi fought his way out of his former home and set off to find what else was out there in this scary new world…

As he roamed Earth AD seeking more of his own kind he found monstrous mutants and intelligent animals – such as tigers Grear Caesar, his heir Prince Tuftan, and their brilliant scientist/historian/advisor Dr. Canus who were locked into a struggle for dominance against talking gorillas and other hyper-evolved beasts. Ferocious rival civilisations were built on the salvaged discoveries of the mysterious vanished ancients who ruled before the Great Disaster, but he did eventually find rational men like those of his studies. However, Ben Boxer, Steve and Renzi turned out to be far, far from what was traditionally considered human…

The saga resumes as Kamandi flees the biggest disappointment of his young life. He believed he had found humans like himself in Chicago but the truth left him more lonely and broken than ever…

Exploring a rocky shore, Kamandi meets a new ally in ‘The Fish!’, as a dolphin and his support/assistance human enlist the boy’s aid in a vital mission. The charming cetacean’s subsurface civilisation is at war with ancestral enemy Killer Whales, and the wily foe has now perfected and unleashed an ultimate warrior: one who relentlessly patrols the seas and slays at will. When not fighting off marauding sea monsters, the dolphins are steadily failing to stop ‘The Red Baron’, even with the aid of Ben Boxer and his atomic brothers.

The nuclear mutants can transition from flesh & blood to organic steel by internal fission, and know many secrets of the new world, and have been recruited after crashing into the sea: aiding in exploring those vast territories behind a radiation barrier isolating what used to be Canada. Now, as Kamandi rapidly befriends and loses dolphin pals to the Orca’s trained human predator, the steely trio enact a dangerous plan. It works and ends the hunter, but in the aftermath ‘Kamandi and Goliath!’ finds both sides in the eternal sea war forced to face its savage costs and shattering emotional toll…

Adrift and possibly the sole survivor, in issue #24 battered, shellshocked Kamandi at last washes ashore, meeting a ragged troupe of travelling performers sheltering in a ramshackle old mansion. Schooled in human history during his early years in bunker Command D, he recognises it as a classical movie haunted house, especially once eerie lights and cruel poltergeist phenomena target elderly monkey ringmaster Flim-Flam and his three trained humans…

Terrified but always rational, Kamandi deduces who and what is really going on during ‘The Exorcism!’ before joining Flim-Flam’s ‘Freak Show!’ The ensemble is soon further enriched by Ben, Steve & Renzi, before an invasion of monsters forces a rapid evacuation of their shoreside sanctuary: a retreat taking them to ‘The Heights of Abraham!’ and the mystery land where Kamandi’s loyal bug steed/companion Kliklak had originally come from…

The region has been utterly transformed by the Great Disaster, and is a paradise of nature run riot. Sadly, this ‘Dominion of the Devils’ is under assault by the commercially voracious Sacker’s Company, harvesting its fauna and destroying its flora in a rabid quest for profit…

In the previous volume Kamandi had met the sister of his dead first love Flower and discovered a ruthless capitalist, plutocratic sentient snake had been training humans to talk as staff and livestock whilst he ruthlessly plundered Earth for the technological leavings of the ancients. The wanderers’ disgusted first response to stop the atrocity is only halted by the arrival of a ‘Mad Marine!’ in #27: a “Brittanek” bulldog who is advance guard to an armed force from what was once Europe. These cavalry-styled guardians (horses appear to be one species that never made the evolutionary leap to intellectual comprehension and personal autonomy) are sworn to ‘Enforce the Atlantic Testament!’, and marshal their animal armies to rout Sacker and restore this new world’s order.

Of course, that means immense bloodshed, valiant sacrifice and gallant stupidity on the part of the professional soldier, but Ben and Kamandi have no scruples in stopping Sacker’s forces by any means necessary…

Cover-dated May 1975, Kamandi #29 rapidly achieved cult status by apparently confirming the strip’s status as part of a greater DC Universe. This faith-fuelled fable sees Ben and Kamandi stumble upon a fanatical cult of gorillas awaiting the return of a mighty warrior who could leap over tall buildings, bend metal in his hands and was faster than a speeding bullet. The high priest holds in trust the fabled champion’s suit of blue and red cape, awaiting the day when a being would emulate his deeds and claim his birthright.

Outraged at gorillas appropriating humanity’s greatest cultural myth, Kamandi convinces Ben to become a Man of Steel and reclaim the garments of the ‘Mighty One!’

Canny cultural catastrophe is expanded via cosmic intrigue in #30 as the pair are suddenly scooped up by an extraterrestrial stranded on Earth for undetermined ages. ‘U.F.O. The Wildest Trip Ever!’ offers more clues as to how Man fell as the pair are dumped on a beach overflowing with human artefacts retrieved from across the globe. However, as ‘The Door!’ to another world opens and the artefacts start to vanish, Ben and Kamandi discover a suitcase atom bomb that has been primed to detonate since the night of the Great Disaster.

They barely get clear in time before the bomb shatters the portal, trapping an extremely angry alien far from home, but Boxer overdoses on the  radiation and is warped by ‘The Gulliver Effect!’ Reduced to a mindless metal colossus, he is made a monster just as Tuftan and Dr. Canus appear, exploiting a savage sea battle with the gorillas to look for their lost friends…

As that war bloodily expands, the dog boffin establishes contact with energy force ‘Me!’ whilst Kamandi manipulates his giant pal into driving off the gorilla flotilla. When the ape navy resumes its assault, going after the mixed bag of tigers, dogs, humans and unknowns on the beach, the energy alien saves the day by driving off the simians.

Kamandi #32 was a giant-sized special that also reprinted the first issue beside other extras, which here manifests as photo-feature/interview ‘Jack Kirby – A Man With a Pencil’ by Steve Sherman and a new, extended double-page map of ‘Earth A.D.’, before resuming abnormal service in #33. In the enforced calm, Canus helps the alien stranger build a physical body in ‘Blood and Fire!’: conditions in great abundance offshore as Tuftan’s tigers and the gorillas mercilessly restart hostilities…

By this time Kirby was evidently riding out his contract and #34 (October 1975) saw him relinquish cover duties and the editor’s blue pencil. From this issue on Joe Kubert drew those front images and Gerry Conway edited whilst the King concentrated on interiors, introducing flamboyant, inquisitive and emotionally volatile ‘Pretty Pyra!’ – who promptly soared off to investigate the sea battle. Whilst “she” is distracted, Kamandi and Canus unwisely try to pilot her ship and stop the fight, but instead end up in space, encountering a Cold War holdover who had become a living horror. ‘The Soyuz Survivor!’ is determined to carry out his doomsday scenario instructions, so it’s a good thing Pyra comes looking for them…

Returning to Earth, the voyagers land in ex-Mexico, finding respite of sorts in ‘The Hotel!’ The resort is still a valued destination but now runs on purely Darwinian principles as administered by intelligent – but really mean – jaguars. Visitors can stay where they want and do what they wish, until some other person or group takes the rooms from them. When Kamandi witnesses a tribe of humans driven off, he uses crafty, cruel cunning to set crocodiles and wolves at each other’s throats…

Cover-dated January 1976, ‘The Crater People’ was Kirby’s final script, disclosing how the Last Boy stays to shepherd the hotel humans when Canus and Pyra go off exploring. The boy is soon captured again, this time by what appear to be normal, technologically astute humans. They are anything but…

Initially beguiled into joining them, Kamandi soon learns they too are mutants: living at a hyper-rapid pace and dying of old age in five years. They are harvesting wild human DNA in search of the secret of extended longevity and regard this intelligent, slow-aging homo sapiens from the old world as a genetic goldmine. If only they’d been completely honest with him, instead of trying to exploit the boy via honeytrap Arna…

Kamandi #38 February 1976) was scripted by Conway and Mike Royer returned as inker with the story splitting focus between the plight of the crater people who overstepped their bounds and drove the appalled last boy away whilst in space, ‘Pyra Revealed’ details the truth about her world and mission…

Frantic fugitives, Kamandi and Arna are captured by intelligent lobsters and imprisoned in ‘The Airquarium’ run by a coalition of crustaceans, molluscs and sea snails, just as Canus and Pyra return to terra firma and encounter a nation of saurians. All this time, the tigers and gorillas have been engaging at sea and obliviously continue doing so, even as Kamandi engineers a mass breakout to liberate all the lobster league’s undersea playthings…

Issue #40 ended Kirby’s involvement entirely with the pencils for ‘The Lizard Lords of Los Lorraine!’ scripted by Conway and Paul Levitz. Kamandi & Arna and Canus & Pyra are gulled into stealing a heat-generating ‘Sun Machine’ for rival factions (lizards vs donkeys!) seeking absolute control of the rain forest region. Fast-paced but innocuous, it closed with the unlikely rivals reunited again and ready for fresh, non-Kirby adventures…

Rounding out this paper monolith are pertinent pages from Who’s Who in the DC Universe (Kamandi and Ben Boxer, illustrated by Kirby & Greg Theakston), before a selection of un-inked story pages reveal why ‘The Art of Jack Kirby’ is just so darn great.

For sheer fun and thrills, nothing in comics can match the inspirational joys of prime Jack Kirby. This is what words and pictures were meant for and if you love them you must read this.
© 1974, 1975, 1976, 2023 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Should you opt for complete full-on inundation in the world of Kamandi, all 40 tales in these two paperback tomes are available as the Kamandi by Jack Kirby Omnibus edition, but as there’s no digital iteration, you’ll need mutant muscles of steel to derive the best results…

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The Flood That Did Come


By Patrick Wray (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-53-0 (PB)

We have a proud and hard-won and passionately defended tradition in this country of using fiction and fantasy – especially those presented in the form of kids’ books – to hold up a light to cultural iniquities, political malfeasance and social dystopias. It works for Gulliver’s Travels and Animal Farm and dozens more plus a wealth of comics and graphic novels from Judge Dredd to Flook. This is one more and it’s supremely, chillingly good at what it does.

Artist, writer and musician Patrick Wray studied at the Dartington College of Art and took a long time living before crafting this telling and subtle exploration of property laws and the role of the people in how they’re governed…

Mimicking the look and narrative tone of children’s reading primers (and kids’ comics) The Flood That Did Come is set in the hilltop village of Pennyworth in the year 2036. It’s all the home little Jenny and her brother Tom know, but their happy, innocent days end when it starts to rain heavily… and never stops.

Soon, all of Kingsby County and the entire country are under water, with only a few high-lying hamlets remaining above water. The kids and their friends make the best of the new normal and enjoy the changes to the wildlife around them, leaving the adults to worry about the details such as being resupplied by airdrops…

One day, however, the holiday ends when a sailing boat arrives from nearby industrialised town Brooks Falls. The youngsters aboard have come to warn Pennyworth residents that the adults of their drowned conurbation are coming, armed with the latest technologies and The Law. It transpires that long ago – back in 1851 – Pennyworth was merely an outlying district of the sprawling metropolis and still remains part of the greater whole. Now that it’s the only part above water, the Mayor and council of Brook Falls intend to move their entire operation here and carry on their business as usual…

Sadly, as always when politicians and big business want something, the rights and feelings of ordinary people don’t count for much…

Simple, breezy and chilling to the core, this tale of resistance and capitulation is made all the more effective by Wray’s cunning choice of art style and faux children’s story feel. The result is reminiscent of school workshops and protest marches supplied with stencil screens, or of street-rebel print slogans and tagging-inspired found imagery and marches of solidarity and protest.

The industrial-flavoured visuals magnificently disguise the potency of the political allegory making this a tale no tuned-in, socially aware grown up looking to make changes can afford to miss.
© 2020 Patrick Wray. All rights reserved.

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Liebestrasse


By Greg Lockard, Tim Fish, Héctor Barros, Lucas Gattoni & various (Dark Horse/Greg Lockard-ComiXology Originals)
ISBN: 9781506724553 (TPB/Digital edition)

As we’re all mindful of D-Day, WWII and how the world changed after that, here’s a poignant fable set in those distant days about one of the things they were all fighting for – the right to love and be loved by whoever you choose…

The story opens covertly in the Land of the Free. It’s 1952 and an aging, wealthy man seeks solace and the company of “his own kind” in a very special bar…

The next day, Sam Wells visits a modern art exhibition where a brief encounter with a young man of similar tastes and disposition triggers memories and a potent flashback to an old friend. Soon after, Wells is flying to Berlin to establish new business contacts and, hopefully, relive some of the better moments of his past.

As he moves around the divided city, Wells’ mind flits back to 1932 when, as a young Mover & Shaker, he was posted to Germany to set up an overseas office for his company. For a young man of wealth and his particular proclivities, the Weimar Republic offered many opportunities and temptations. Crucially, it also allowed freedom from dangerous oversight. Nevertheless, there was also an inescapable sense of oppressive menace, especially after meeting audacious, outspoken Philip Adler and falling madly, passionately, head over heels in love.

Philip’s sister Hilde was already in the sights of the rising National Socialists for creating un-Aryan art, but his constant challenging of the party in words, and especially with his “degenerate” lifestyle, soon painted a target on all their backs, as well as on the numerous doomed-and-dancing-on-the-volcano’s-edge liberals Sam met at endless parties and in the music clubs…

As months passed, the affair intensified – as did the danger – and inevitably, the hammer fell. For Sam that meant a beating and deportation, but for Philip there was no such callous leniency. Now decades later, Wells is back and has to face Hilde again…

Set firmly in the footsteps of the Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood, Liebestrasse is a tale of regret, thwarted love and “might-have-beens ” from writer Greg Lockard and artist Tim Fish, aided and abetted by Héctor Barros on colours with Lucas Gattoni providing letters and calligraphy. Forceful, frantic, passionate and deeply moving, it is a powerful testament to the abiding power and wonder of passion but also a sobering reminder of how far we’ve come: an irrefutable argument for live and let love…
LIEBESTRASSE © 2019 Greg Expectations, LLC & Timothy Poisson. All rights reserved.

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Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: The Brittle Mastery of Donald Duck


By Carl Barks (Gladstone Comic Album #7)
ISBN: 978-0-94459-906-8 (Album PB)

Although experts quibble over the details of Donald Duck’s debut (I cleave to the notion we should use the premier of The Wise Little Hen on 3rd May rather than the June 9th US general release date), everybody agrees 1934 was the year and that the magnificent mallard is 90 this year. In honour of that achievement, here’s a lovely old book starring Disney’s top cartoon star that you might be lucky enough to find. Even if you can’t, the stories are scattered throughout Fantagraphics’ magnificent Carl Barks library editions which we will continue sporadically reviewing and which you really should already own…

Donald Duck ranks among a small group of fictional characters to have transcended the bounds of reality and become – like Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Popeye and James Bond -meta-real. As such, his origins are complex and convoluted. His official birthday is June 9th 1934: a dancing, nautically-themed bit-player in the Silly Symphony cartoon short The Wise Little Hen.

The animated cartoon was adapted by Ted Osborne & Al Taliaferro for the Silly Symphonies Sunday newspaper strip and thus classified by historians as Donald’s official debut in Disney comics. Controversially, he was also reported to have pre-originated in The Adventures of Mickey Mouse strip which began 1931. Thus the Duck has more “birthdays” than he knows what to do with, which presumably explains why he’s such a bad-tempered cuss.

Visually, Donald Fauntleroy Duck was largely the result of animator Dick Lundy’s efforts, and, with partner-in-fun Mickey Mouse, is one of TV Guide’s 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time. The Duck has his own star on the Hollywood walk of fame and has appeared in more films than any other Disney player. Throughout the 1930s, his screen career grew from background and supporting roles via a team act with Mickey and Goofy to a series of solo cartoons beginning with 1937’s Don Donald. That one also introduced love interest Daisy Duck and the irrepressible nephews Huey, Louie and Dewey…

By 1938 The Duck was officially more popular than corporate icon Mickey Mouse, and even more so after his national service as a propaganda warrior in a series of animated morale boosters and information features during WWII. The merely magnificent Der Fuehrer’s Face garnered the 1942 Academy Award for Animated Short Film…

Crucially for our purposes, Donald is also planet Earth’s most-published non-superhero comics character, and blessed with some of the greatest writers and illustrators ever to punch a keyboard or pick up a pen or brush. A publishing phenomenon and megastar across Europe – particularly Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland – Donald (& Co) have spawned countless original stories and many immortal characters. Sales are stratospheric across all age groups there and in upwards of 45 other countries they export to. Japan’s manga publishers have their own iteration too…

The aforementioned Silly Symphonies adaptation and Mickey strip guest shots were trumped in 1937 when Italian publisher Mondadori launched an 18-page comic book story crafted by Federico Pedrocchi. It was quickly followed by a regular serial in Britain’s Mickey Mouse Weekly (a comic produced under license by Willbank Publications/Odhams Press that ran from 8th February 1936 to 28th December 1957). Issue #67 (May 15th 1937) premiered Donald and Donna – a prototype Daisy Duck girlfriend – drawn by William A. Ward. Running for 15 weeks, it was followed by Donald and Mac before ultimately settling as Donald Duck – a fixture until the magazine folded. The feature inspired similar Disney-themed publications across Europe, with Donald regularly appearing beside company mascot Mickey…

In the USA, a daily Donald Duck newspaper strip launched on February 2nd 1938, with a colour Sunday strip added in 1939. Writer Ted Karp joined Taliaferro in expanding the duck cast and history: adding a signature automobile, pet dog Bolivar, goofy cousin Gus Goose, and grandmother Elvira Coot whilst expanding the roles of both Donna and Daisy. In 1942, his comic book life began with October cover-dated Dell Four Color Comics Series II #9: AKA Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold. It was conceived by Homer Brightman & Harry Reeves, scripted by Karp and illustrated by Disney Studios employees Carl Barks & Jack Hannah. That was the moment everything changed…

Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon in 1901, and raised in rural areas of the West during some of the leanest times in American history. He tried his hand at many jobs before settling into the profession that chose him. His early life is well-documented elsewhere if you need detail, but briefly, Barks was a cartoonist, then an animator before quitting the Studio in 1942 to work in the new-fangled field of comic books. From then until his retirement in the mid-1960s (he officially downed tools in 1966 but was cajoled into scripting stories well into 1968), Barks worked in self-imposed seclusion: writing, drawing and devising a vast array of adventure comedies, gags, yarns and covers that gelled into a Duck Universe of memorable and highly bankable characters like Gladstone Gander (1948), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Magica De Spell (1961) and the nefarious Beagle Boys (1951) to supplement the Studio’s stable of cartoon actors.

His greatest creation was crusty, energetic, paternalistic, money-mad giga-gazillionaire Scrooge McDuck: the World’s wealthiest winged nonagenarian and frequent spur/gadfly and reluctant sugar daddy to the adventuresome youngsters…

Whilst producing all that landmark material Barks was also just a working guy, generating cover art, drawing other people’s scripts as asked, and always adding stories to a burgeoning international canon of Duck Lore. Only after Gladstone Publishing began re-packaging Barks material in books like this during the 1980s, did he discover the well-earned appreciation he never imagined existed. Media Historian Leonard Maltin called Barks “the most popular and widely read artist/writer in the world”…

So potent were Barks’ creations that they fed back into Disney’s overarching animation output, despite all his brilliant comic work being for Dell/Gold Key and not the studio. The greatest tribute was undoubtedly animated series Duck Tales, based on his classic Uncle Scrooge adventures. Barks was a fan of wholesome action, unsolved mysteries and epics of exploration, and this led to him perfecting the art and technique of the blockbuster tale: blending wit, history, plucky bravado and sheer wide-eyed wonder into rollicking rollercoaster romps that utterly captivated readers of every age and vintage. Without the Barks expeditions there would never have been an Indiana Jones…

During his working life Barks was utterly unaware that his work – uncredited due to company policy, as was all Disney’s comics output – had been recognised by a rabid and discerning public as “the Good Duck Artist”. When some of his most dedicated fans finally tracked him down, belated celebrity began.

In 2013, Fantagraphics Books began chronologically collecting Barks’ Duck stuff in curated archival volumes, tracing his output year-by-year in hardback tomes and digital editions that finally did justice to the quiet creator. These will eventually comprise the Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. Physical copies are sturdy and luxurious albums – 193 x 260mm – to grace any bookshelf.

Gladstone Publishing began re-releasing Barks material and sundry other Disney strips in the late-1980s and this album is one of their best. Printed in the European oversized format (278mm x 223mm) this joyous compendium collects an occasional series of similarly-themed yarns: some of the best and funniest Duck tales ever crafted.

The “Brittle Master” series is the name given by devotees to a group of stories wherein the perennial failing, fiery-tempered and eternally put-upon everyman Donald displays an excellence in some unique skill or service, winning the approval and veneration of all and sundry – only to have his own smug hubris bring about his ultimate humiliation and downfall.

The first untitled tale, from Walt Disney Comics and Stories #156 (1953) sees Donald as an airplane-piloting, cloud-sculpting Master Rainmaker catering to increasingly outrageous requests from his adoring public. This leads him inevitably to disaster – in this case the creation of a full-blown, devastating Ice-storm…

Next, from WDC&S #222 (1959) comes the tale of the Master Mover, as Donald displays an uncanny ability to transport anything anywhere, only to come a crushing cropper when he guarantees to shift an entire zoo to a mountaintop in one afternoon!

From Donald Duck #68 (also from 1959) ‘The Master Glasser’ (we’d call him a glazier) is a wickedly satirical glimpse at small-town America as the arrogant artificer at the height of his fame attempts to repair the aged fascia of Duckburg’s giant clock. Perhaps he shouldn’t have tried to do it live on TV?

The fourth tale is one where I suspect Donald actually found his true calling. The ‘Master Wrecker’ (WDC&S #26, 1962) is the go-to-duck if you need something demolished with no muss or fuss, and even in this hilarious yarn Donald doesn’t actually fail. The target is utterly razed: it’s just not the one he was supposed to demolish…

This delightful collection ends with the satisfyingly sharp ‘Spare That Hair’ (WDC&S #272, 1963) as Donald the Master Barber finally wins one for a change, even though he mistakenly shaves a gorilla and inspires the ire of a rowdy circus ringmaster…

Barks was as adept with quick-fire gag stories as epic adventures; blending humour with drama and charm with action, and even if you can’t find this particular volume, most of his unforgettable work is readily accessible through a number of publications and outlets and in many languages. So if you seek to become a Master Reader, you know what you need to do…
© 1988, 1963, 1962, 1959, 1953 The Walt Disney Company. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents World’s Finest volume 4


By Cary Bates, Bob Haney, Robert Kanigher, Denny O’Neil, Mike Friedrich, Curt Swan, Ross Andru, Dick Dillin, Mike Esposito & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3736-3 (TPB)

For decades Superman and Batman were quintessential superhero partners: the “World’s Finest team”. The affable champions were best buddies as well as mutually respectful colleagues, and their pairing made sound financial sense since DC’s top heroes could happily cross-pollinate and cross-sell their combined readerships.

This fourth monochrome compendium re-presents cataclysmic collaborations from the dog days of the 1960’s into the turbulent decade beyond (World’s Finest Comics #174-202, spanning March 1968 to May 1971), as shifts in America’s tastes and cultural landscape created such a hunger for more mature and socially relevant stories that even the Cape & Cowl Crusaders were affected – so much so in fact, that the partnership was temporarily suspended: sidelined so that Superman could guest-star with other icons of the DC universe.

However, after a couple of years, the relationship was revitalised and renewed with the “World’s Finest Heroes” fully restored to their bizarrely apt pre-eminence for another lengthy run until the title was cancelled in the build-up to Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1986.

The increasingly grim escapades begin with ‘Secret of the Double Death-Wish!’ by Cary Bates, Pete Costanza & Jack Abel from #174 (cover-dated March 1968, so actually the last issue of 1967) wherein mysterious voyeurs seemingly kidnap the indomitable heroes and psychologically crush their spirits such that they beg for death.

Smart and devious, this conundrum was definitely old-school, but a New Year saw subtle changes as, post-Batman TV show, the industry experienced superheroes waning in favour of war, western and especially supernatural themes and genres. Thus 1968 saw radical editorial makeovers at National/DC. Edgier stories of the costumed Boy Scouts began as iconoclastic penciller Neal Adams started turning heads and making waves with his stunning covers and two spectacularly gripping Cape & Cowl capers. It began in WFC #175 with ‘The Superman-Batman Revenge Squads!’, scripted by Leo Dorfman and inked by Dick Giordano. The story details how an annual contest of wits between the crimebusting pals is infiltrated by alien and Terran criminal alliances intent on killing their foes whilst they are off guard.

Issue #176 featured beguiling thriller ‘The Superman-Batman Split!’ (Bates, Adams & Giordano). Ostensibly just another alien mystery, this twisty little gem has a surprise ending for all and guest stars Robin, Jimmy Olsen, Supergirl and Batgirl, with the artist’s hyper-dynamic realism lending an aura of credibility to the most fanciful situations, and ushering in an era of gritty veracity to replace the anodyne and frequently frivolous Costumed Dramas.

Jim Shooter, Curt Swan & Mike Esposito also edged closer towards constructive realism with #177’s ‘Duel of the Crime Kings!’ as Lex Luthor again joins forces with The Joker. This go-round the dastardly duo used time-busting technology to recruit Benedict Arnold, Baron Hieronymus Carl Friedrich von Munchausen and Leonardo Da Vinci to plan crimes for them, only to then fall foul of the temporally displaced persons’ own unique agendas…

WFC #178 began a 2-part Imaginary Tale with ‘The Has-Been Superman!’ (Bates, Swan & Abel) which has the Action Ace lose his Kryptonian powers and subsequently struggle to continue his career as Batman-style masked crimebuster Nova. More determined than competent, he soon falls under the influence of criminal mastermind Mr. Socrates – a brainwashed stooge programmed to assassinate Batman…

The moody suspense saga was interrupted by #179 – a regularly scheduled, all-reprint 80-Page Giant featuring bright-&-shiny early tales from the team’s formative years – represented in this collection by its striking Adams cover – before the alternate Earth epic concludes in #180 with ‘Superman’s Perfect Crime!’ courtesy of Bates and new regular art team Ross Andru & Mike Esposito.

During the late 1950s when the company’s editors cautiously expanded the characters’ continuities, they learned that each new tale was an event which added to a nigh-sacred canon, and that what was printed was deeply important to the readers – but no “ideas man” would let all that aggregated “history” stifle a good plot situation or sales generating cover.

Thus “Imaginary Stories” were conceived as a way of exploring non-continuity plots and scenarios, devised at a time when editors knew that entertainment trumped consistency and fervently believed that every comic read was somebody’s first and – unless they were very careful – potentially their last…

Bates, also scripted #181’s ‘The Hunter and the Hunted’ wherein an impossibly powerful being from far away in space and time relentlessly pursues and then whisks away the heroes to a world where they were revered as the fathers of the race, whilst in the next issue ‘The Mad Manhunter!’ depicted a suspenseful shocker which found Batman routinely rampaging like a madman due to a curse. Naturally, what seemed was far from what actually was…

Another massive con-trick underscored #183’s Dorfman-scripted drama as apes from the future accused the Man of Steel of committing ‘Superman’s Crime of the Ages!’ and Batman and Robin had to arrest their greatest ally. In WFC #184 Bates, Swan & Abel concocted another bombastic Imaginary Tale which revealed ‘Robin’s Revenge!’, tracing the troubled teen sidekick’s progress after Batman is murdered, with Superman powerless to assuage the Boy Wonder’s growing hunger for revenge…

Robert Kanigher joined old collaborators Andru & Esposito from #185 onwards, detailing the bizarre story of the ‘The Galactic Gamblers!’ who press-ganged Superman, Batman, Robin and Jimmy to their distant world to act as living stakes and game-pieces in their gladiatorial games of chance, before taking the heroes on a time-tossed 2-part supernatural thriller.

In #186, anecdotal stories of Batman’s Colonial ancestor “Mad Anthony Wayne” prompt the heroes to travel back to the War of Independence where the Dark Knight is accused of infernal deviltry as ‘The Bat Witch!’ and sentenced to death. Of course, it’s actually the Action Ace who is possessed to become ‘The Demon Superman!’ in the follow-up before all logic and sanity are restored by exorcism and judicious force of arms…

After the cover to World’s Finest #188 – another reprint Giant – Bates returns in #189 with a (still) shocking 2-parter opening in ‘The Man with Superman’s Heart!’ wherein the Caped Kryptonian crashes from space to Earth and is pronounced Dead On Arrival. As per his wishes, many of his organs are harvested (this was 1969 and still purely speculative fiction at that time) and bequeathed to worthy recipients. When Batman refuses to accept any organic bequests, Superman’s eyes, ears, lungs, heart and hands (yes, I know… just go with it) are simply stored …until Luthor steals them to auction off to gangland’s highest bidders…

Concluding episode ‘The Final Revenge of Luthor!’ sees a quartet of crooks running wild as the transplants bestow mighty powers Batman and Robin cannot combat, but the tragedy has a logical – if rather callous – explanation as the real Man of Steel appears to save the day…

Bates, Andru & Esposito then explore ‘Execution on Krypton!’ in WFC #191, as incredible events on Earth lead Superman and Batman back to Krypton before Kal-El was born. Here he learns how his revered parents Jor-El and Lara became radicalised college lecturers, and why they were teaching their students all the subversive tricks revolutionaries needed to know…

Bob Haney joined Andru & Esposito from #192 for a dark, Cold War suspense thriller as Superman is captured by the Communist rulers of Lubania and held in ‘The Prison of No Escape!’ When Batman tries to bust him out, he too is arrested and charged with spying by sadistic Colonel Koslov, utilising brainwashing techniques to achieve ‘The Breaking of Superman and Batman!’ in the next issue. However, the vile totalitarian’s torturous treatment disguises an insidious master-plan which the World’s Finest almost fail to foil…

Popular public response to Mario Puzo’s phenomenal novel The Godfather most likely influenced Haney, Andru & Esposito’s next convoluted 2-parter. WFC #194 sees Superman and Batman undercover ‘Inside the Mafia Gang!’ and hoping to dismantle the organisation of “Big Uncle” Alonzo Scarns from within. Sadly, a head wound muddles the Gotham Gangbuster’s memory and Batman begins to believe he is actually the “Capo di Capo Tutti”, condemning Robin and Jimmy to ‘Dig Now, Die Later!’ Helplessly watching, Superman is almost relieved when the real Scarns shows up…

An era ended with #196 as ‘The Kryptonite Express!’ (Haney, Swan & George Roussos) details how a massive meteor shower bombards the US with tons of the deadly green mineral. After countless decent citizens gather up the Green K, a special train is laid on to collect it all and ship it to somewhere it can be safely disposed of. Superman is ordered to stay well away whilst Batman takes charge of the FBI operation, but they have no idea master racketeer and railway fanatic K.C. Jones has plans for the shipment and a guy on the inside…

After #197 – another all-reprint Superman/Batman Giant – a new era launches (for the entire experiment you should see World’s Finest: Guardians of Earth please link to 2021, June 3rd) as the Fastest Man Alive teams with the Man of Tomorrow. DC Editors of the 1960s generally avoided questions like who’s best/strongest/fastest for fear of upsetting a portion of their tenuous and assuredly temporary fanbase, but as the tide turned against superheroes in general and upstart Marvel began making serious inroads into their market, the notion of a definitive race between the almighty Man of Steel and Scarlet Speedster became increasingly enticing and sales-worthy.

They had raced twice before (Superman #199 and Flash #175 – August & December 1967) with the result deliberately fudged each time, but when they met for a third round a definitive conclusion was promised – but please remember it’s not about the winning, but only the taking part. As World’s Finest became a team-up vehicle for Superman, Flash again found himself in contrived competition. ‘Race to Save the Universe!’ and conclusion ‘Race to Save Time!’ (#198-199, November and December 1970, by Denny O’Neil, Dick Dillin & Joe Giella) up the stakes as the high-speed heroes are conscripted by the Guardians of the Universe to circumnavigate the cosmos at their greatest velocities thereby undoing the rampage of mysterious Anachronids: faster-than-light creatures whose pell-mell course throughout creation is unwinding time itself. Little does anybody suspect Superman’s oldest enemies are behind the entire appalling scheme…

In anniversary issue #200, Mike Friedrich, Dillin & Giella focus on brawling brothers on opposite sides of the teen college scene, abducted with unruly youth icon Robin and “Mr. Establishment” Superman to a distant planet. Here undying vampiric aliens wage eternal war on each other in ‘Prisoners of the Immortal World!’ Green Lantern then pops in for #201, contesting ‘A Prize of Peril!’ (O’Neil, Dillin & Giella) which will give either Emerald Gladiator or Man of Steel sole jurisdiction of Earth’s skies.

Batman returns for a limited engagement in #202. The final tale in this compilation, O’Neil, Dillin & Giella’s ‘Vengeance of the Tomb-Thing!’ sees archaeologists unearth something horrific in Egypt as Superman seemingly goes mad: attacking his greatest friends and allies. A superb ecological scare-story, this tale changed the Man of Tomorrow’s life forever…

These are gloriously smart, increasingly mature comic book yarns whose dazzling, timeless style informed the evolution of two media megastars, which still have the power and punch to enthral even today’s jaded seen it-all audiences. The contents of this titanic team-up tome are a veritable feast of witty, gritty, pretty thrillers packing as much punch and wonder now as they always have. Utterly entrancing adventure for fans of all ages!
© 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Guardians of the Galaxy by Brian Michael Bendis volume 1


By Brian Michael Bendis, with Neil Gaiman, Steve McNiven, Sara Pichelli, Michael Avon Oeming, Olivier Coipel, Valerio Schiti, Francesco Francavilla, Kevin Maguire & Mark Morales Ming Doyle, Michael Del Mundo, John Dell & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9400-2 (HB/Digital edition)

With the final GoTG Marvel Cinematic interpretation long done and dusted, there’s little to look forward too other than the past, but at least in this anniversary year – 55 and counting! – there are still timely collection ideal for boning up on some of those blasts from futures past…

Although heralded since its launch in the early 1960s with making superheroes more realistic, Marvel Comics never forsook its close connection with outlandish and outrageous cosmic calamity (as embodied in their pre-superhero “monster-mag” days. This iteration of space crusaders maintains that delightful “Anything Goes” attitude by revisiting an impressive relaunch – then part of the MarvelNow! group reboot – that built on the movie franchise.

The Guardians of the Galaxy were created by Arnold Drake in 1968 for try-out title Marvel Super-Heroes (#18, January 1969): a group of futuristic freedom fighters dedicated to liberating star-scattered Mankind from domination by the sinister, reptilian Brotherhood of Badoon.

Initially unsuccessful, they floated in limbo until 1974 when Steve Gerber incorporated them into Marvel Two-In-One #4-5 and Giant Size Defenders #5 following up in the monthly Defenders title (#26-29, July through November 1975), wherein assorted 20th century champions travelled a millennium into the future to ensure humanity’s liberation and survival. This in turn led to the Guardians’ own short-lived series in Marvel Presents #3-12 (February 1976 – August 1977) before cancellation left them roaming the Marvel Universe as perennial guest-stars in such cosmically-tinged titles as Thor, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two-in-One and The Avengers. Eventually – in June 1990 – they secured a relatively successful series (#62 issues, annuals and spin-off miniseries until July 1995) before cancellation again claimed them.

This isn’t them; this is another bunch…

In 2006 a massive crossover involved most of Marvel’s 21st century space specialists in a spectacular “Annihilation” Event, leading writing team Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning to reconfigure the Guardians concept for modern times and tastes. Among the stalwarts in play were Silver Surfer, Galactus, Firelord (and other previous heralds of the world-eater), Moondragon, Quasar, Star-Lord, Thanos, Super-Skrull, Tana Nile, Gamora, Ronan the Accuser, Nova, Drax the Destroyer, a Watcher and host of alien civilisations such as the Kree, Skrulls, Xandarians, Shi’ar et al.: all falling before a invasion of rapacious negative zone bugs and beasties unleashed by insectoid horror Annihilus. The event spawned a number of specials, miniseries and new titles (subsequently collected in three volumes plus a Classics compilation that reprinted key appearances of a number of the saga’s major players), and inevitably led to a follow-up event…

Sequel Annihilation: Conquest expanded the cast, adding Adam Warlock, The Inhumans, talking dog Cosmo, Kang the Conqueror, Vance Astro/Major Victory, Maelstrom, Jack Flag, Blastaar, The Magus, Galactic Warrior Bug (from 1970’s sensation Micronauts), the current Captain Universe (ditto), Shi’ar berserker Deathcry, Celestial Madonna Mantis, anamorphic adventurer Rocket Raccoon and gloriously whacky “Kirby Kritter” Groot, a walking killer tree and one-time “Monarch of Planet X”, amongst others…

I’ve covered part of that cataclysmic clash and will get to the rest one day: suffice to say that by the conclusion of the assorted Annihilations a new pan-species Guardian group had appointed itself to defend civilisations and prevent any such wars from ever happening again.

This isn’t them either… not exactly…

A few years later and with many more cosmic crises – such as a devastating War of Kings – averted, the remnants of those many Sentinels of the Stars are here getting the band back together, still determined to make the universe a safe place.

Thus this impressive and readily accessible volume (collecting Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow’s Avengers #1 Guardians of the Galaxy #0.1 & volume 2, #1-10 from February 2013 – January 2014#1-10) provides a handy jumping-on point, recapitulating the bare essentials before launching into an immensely absorbing interstellar romp tied inextricably into mainstream Marvel continuity.

Brian Michael Bendis, Steve McNiven, John Dell & Justin Ponsor set the ball rolling with the secret origin of Star-Lord, revealing how 30 years ago warrior Prince J’Son of the interstellar empire of Spartax was shot down over Colorado and had a brief fling with solitary Earther Meredith Quill. Despite his desire to remain in idyllic isolation, duty called J’Son back to battle and he left, leaving behind an unsuspected son and a unique weapon…

A decade later, the troubled boy saw his mother assassinated by alien lizard men determined on eradicating the legacy of Spartax. Peter vengefully slaughtered the Badoon with Meredith’s shotgun, before his home was explosively destroyed by a flying saucer. The orphan awoke in hospital, his only possession a “toy” ray-gun his mother had hidden from him his entire life…

Years later his destiny found him, and the half-breed scion of Spartax became Star-Lord. Rejecting both Earth and his father – now king of his distant corner of creation – Quill chose freedom, the pursuit of justice and the comradeship of disreputable aliens. The origin story concludes with Peter welcoming avid listener and neophyte spacer Tony Stark into his loose-knit fellowship of Guardians…

The series proper – by Bendis, Steve McNiven, John Dell & Justin Ponsor – opens with Peter Quill diplomatically ambushed in a seedy dive by his long-lost dad. J’Son rules Spartax but the rift between him and the Star-Lord is wide and deep and impassable. Dear old dad also has a message: he has entered into a compact with the other major powers and principalities of the universe and declared Earth off limits and quarantined from all extraterrestrial contact. He/they will act immediately to stop any alien individual or species from contaminating it.

That especially means his own wayward son…

A little later, Iron Man is playing with and in his new space armour when a Badoon starship attacks Earth. Overmatched, Stark is unexpectedly reinforced by Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket Raccoon and Groot who devastate the monolithic vessel – but not before fighter ships break atmosphere and bombard London.

With the Home Counties under attack despite The Council of Galactic Empires’ edicts – and apparently by one of the signatory civilisations – the Guardians go to work ending the Badoon, with Peter distracted in trying to divine his duplicitous father’s actual intent.

Meanwhile, in the Negative Zone J’Son is conferring virtually with his opposite numbers from the Kree, Shi’ar, Brood, Badoon and Asgard, with a new Annihilus presiding over the fractious meeting, and indeed dirty work and dirty tricks are afoot…

In blistering battles the Badoon are beaten, but no sooner do the Guardians pause for breath than a star fleet supposedly blockading Earth arrests them for breaking the embargo. Imprisoned on Spartax, Quill and Co eventually bust out and publicly declare war on J’Son, sowing seeds of a future rebellion – but even they are unaware that the devious and double-dealing king is also being played for a sucker…

After Stark scores an amatory epic fail with Gamora (a wry episode which delivers plenty of laughs for his new comrades, who can’t let it lie for the rest of the book), she storms out to cool off and is ambushed by an alien bounty hunter. Despite her formidable prowess Gamora is only saved by the arrival of the Guardians – who have just finished trashing a bar and the squad of Spartax soldiers who walked in on their drunken carousing…

With no information on who else now wants them dead, the disparate legion of the lost head back into space and a fateful dalliance with destiny…

Still being crushingly snubbed by Gamora, Stark occupies himself learning new ways to repair his comparatively primitive armour under the guidance of an aggravatingly disparaging racoon whilst Quill takes a secret meeting in one of the universe’s many unsavoury and unwelcoming armpits.

Star-Lord’s consultation with former ally Mantis about a bizarre episode (wherein he seemed to experience an inexplicable and debilitating chronal mind quake) provides no answers and he is forced to go ask the last person in creation he ever wanted to see again…

Meanwhile, Stark and the remaining Guardians spot an unidentifiable lifeform approaching Earth and rush to incept her before she can do any damage. They reason they can’t identify her is because she’s from another universe and time. Angela (created by Neil Gaiman for Spawn #9 in 1993 and, after much legal foofaraw, brought under Marvel’s auspices in Age of Ultron) is lost and baffled: approaching a world her people have always considered a fairy tale or religious myth when still-disgruntled Gamora smashes her into the moon, grateful for an excuse to work off her pent-up hostilities. The satellite’s oldest inhabitant – Uatu the Watcher – reels from the conflict. Not because of its savage intensity but because he knows what Angela is and how she simply cannot be present in this Reality…

Quill however is pumping mad Titan Thanos for information on his own time troubles and suddenly realises he has just poked the biggest bear in existence. The Death-Lover declares humanity’s perpetual tampering with the time-stream has broken the universe and brought our pathetic mud-ball to the attention of races and powers that won’t let Mankind muck up Reality any longer…

Rushing back to his birthworld, Star-Lord finds his team faring very badly against mystery menace Angela and pitches in. When she is finally, spectacularly subdued, Uatu appears and proffers dire warnings for all Reality as – with uncharacteristic diplomacy – Quill coaxes the enigmatic intruder into relating her story. Apparently she’s a “Hunting Angel” from somewhere called Heven, fallen through a gaping crack in Everything That Is.

Drawn to Earth – a place her race reveres but considers a beautiful fiction – she was ambushed by Gamora, who cannot believe Star-Lord’s next move: freeing Angela and, after personally conducting her on a tour of the world, letting her go free…

At this time almost all of Marvel’s titles were building to a big Avengers-centric crossover event Infinity, and the next two issues (#8-9, stunningly illustrated by Francesco Francavilla) form the Guardians’ contribution to the epic, in which a double crisis afflicts our particular portion of space. As Thanos invades Earth, an ancient array of races from far beyond attack those stellar empires still recovering from the Annihilation outrages and War of Kings. It’s nothing personal: this invading alien Armada is tasked with eradicating every Earth in every dimension and the Kree, Skrulls, Badoon, Galadorians, Spartax, Shi’ar and all the rest are simply guilty of associating with humans…

With all the Avengers called into space to fight beside their former enemies, Earth is helpless when enemy E.T.’s overwhelm The Peak (the planet’s orbital defence citadel) and Abigail Brand – Director of the Sentient World Observation & Response Department – sends a desperate distress call to Star-Lord.

His affirmative answer enrages Gamora, already bristling from the knowledge that Quill has been fraternising with despised Thanos. She quits – and with Iron Man also gone, Star-Lord, Groot and Rocket sneakily infiltrate the station (Drax doesn’t do unobtrusive) but quickly fall foul of the superior forces. Only the sudden return of Angela saves the day and when Gamora and Drax join the fray the Guardians are magnificently triumphant… but at a terrible cost…

Regular programming ends with a far lighter ‘Girls Night Out-rageous’ (#10, illustrated by Kevin Maguire) as Gamora and Angela enjoy a blistering bonding session and action-comedy moment whilst visiting Badoon homeworld Moord, freeing the reptilians’ vast contingent of enslaved races and accidentally uncovering an impossible connection between the scurvy raider race and Angela’s dimensionally displaced people…

This initial volume closes with more delving into formative events as seen in anthological Tomorrow’s Avengers #1 (Bendis, individually illustrated by Michael Avon Oeming, Ming Doyle & Michael Del Mundo), revealing how Quill tracked down old friends and prospective members for his new team, detailing recent exploits of at-large and unfocused stalwarts Drax, decidedly odd couple Rocket & Groot and, of course, the Deadliest Woman in the Galaxy…

The former bane of Thanos, Drax is idling away the days in pointless fighting when Star-Lord comes calling, whilst Groot at least is still defending the weak from the wicked in a classy farmers-vs.-bandits fable.

The unique, blaster-toting peril-loving Procyonidae (look it up) was mouthing off in a bar, drinking and fighting as usual when he found tantalising evidence that there was at least one other Rocket Raccoon at large in the universe, whilst gorgeous Gamora just never stopped. She was still slaughtering her adopted dad’s minions when Star-Lord made his offer…

Bright, breezy, bombastic and immensely enjoyable, these action-packed fun and frolic fables also include a beautiful and massive gallery of covers and variants – including a lovely movie-art landscape/wraparound by Charlie Wen, and a Lego variant by Leonel Castellani. Contributors comprise McNiven, Dell & Ponsor, Doyle, Ed McGuiness, Joe Quesada, Adi Granov, Mark Brooks, Milo Manara, Terry Dodson, Mike Deodato Jr., Phil Jimenez, Mike Perkins, Joe Madureira, Skottie Young, Pichelli & Ponsor, J. Scott Campbell, Julian Totino Tedesco, Brandon Peterson, Francavilla, John Tyler Christopher, Maguire, Paul Renaud, Paolo Manuel Rivera, Adam Kubert and more.
© 2020 MARVEL.