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Mighty Marvel Masterworks The Avengers volume 3: Among Us Walks a Goliath


By Stan Lee & Don Heck with Frank Giacoia, Wallace Wood, Dick Ayers, John Romita & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4895-5 (PB/Digital edition)

Probably Marvel’s biggest global franchise success, The Avengers celebrate their 60th anniversary in 2023, so let’s again acknowledge that landmark and offer more of the same…

These stories are timeless and have been gathered many times before but here we’re enjoying an example of The Mighty Marvel Masterworks line: designed with economy in mind and newcomers as target audience. These books are far cheaper, on lower quality paper and smaller – like a paperback novel. Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but at 152 x 227mm, they’re perfect for kids. If you opt for digital editions, that’s no issue at all.

After a period of meteoric expansion, in 1963 the burgeoning Marvel Universe was finally ready to emulate the successful DC concept that had cemented the legitimacy of the Silver Age of American comics. The notion of putting a bunch of all-star eggs in one basket had made the Justice League of America a winner and subsequently inspired the moribund Atlas outfit – primarily Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko – into conceiving “super-characters” of their own. The result – in 1961 – was The Fantastic Four…

After 18 months, the fledgling House of Ideas had generated a small successful stable of costumed leading men (but still only 2 sidekick women!), allowing Lee & Kirby to at last assemble a select handful of them into an all-star squad, moulded into a force for justice and soaring sales…

Cover dated September 1963, and on sale from early July, The Avengers #1 launched as part of an expansion package which also included Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and The X-Men. This edition collects The Avengers #21-30 (cover-dates October 1965 to July 1966): groundbreaking tales no lover of superhero stories can do without…

Here the team consists of Captain America, Hawkeye and mutant twins Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch who had replaced big guns Thor, Iron Man, Giant-Man and The Wasp and were already proving a firm fan-favourite. Spectacle had been nudged aside in favour of melodrama sub-plots, leavening the action through compelling soap-opera elements which kept readers riveted.

After debuting insidious infiltrator Swordsman in the previous volume, scripter Stan Lee and illustrators Don Heck & Wally Wood launched another soon-to-be big-name villain in the form of Power Man. ‘The Bitter Taste of Defeat!’ (#21) depicted his origins and a diabolical plan hatched with evil Asgardian archfoe The Enchantress to discredit and replace the quarrelsome quartet. The scheme was only narrowly foiled in a cavalcade of cunning countermoves in concluding episode ‘The Road Back’…

An epic 2-part tale follows when the turbulent team is shanghaied into the far-future to battle against – and eventually beside – Kang the Conqueror. ‘Once an Avenger…’ (Avengers #23 with, incidentally, my vote for the best cover Jack Kirby ever drew) is inked by slick John Romita (senior), and pits the heroes against an army of fearsome future men. The yarn explosively and tragically ends in ‘From the Ashes of Defeat!’ with inker Dick Ayers backing up Lee & Heck.

The still-learning but ever-improving squad then face their greatest test yet after being lured to Latveria and captured by the deadliest man alive in #25’s ‘Enter… Dr. Doom!’ and forced to fight their way out of the tyrant’s utterly cowed, hyper-militarised kingdom…

As change is ever the watchword for this series, the next two issues combine a threat from subsea barbarian Attuma to drown the world with the epic return of some old comrades. ‘The Voice of the Wasp!’ and ‘Four Against the Floodtide!’ (pseudonymously inked by Frank Giacoia as Frank Ray) form a superlative action-romp but are merely prelude to the main event – issue #28’s revival of founding Avenger Giant-Man in a new guise. ‘Among us Walks… a Goliath!’ was an instant classic that reinvented the Master of Many Sizes whilst also introducing the villainous – and ultimately immortally alien – hobbyist dubbed The Collector whilst extending the company’s pet motif of heroic alienation. After rushing to save Wasp from the cosmic kleptomaniac and his stooge The Beetle, the team are unable to prevent Hank Pym becoming tragically trapped at a freakish ten-foot height, seemingly forever…

As Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch briefly bow out – returning to Europe to reinvigorate their fading powers – Avengers #29 features ‘This Power Unleashed!’: bringing back Hawkeye’s lost love Black Widow as a brainwashed Soviet agent tasked with destroying the team.

Despite recruiting seasoned foes Power Man and Swordsman as cannon-fodder, her plan fails due to her incompletely submerged feelings for Hawkeye…

This titanic tome terminates on a cliffhanger as ‘Frenzy in a Far-Off Land!’ sees dispirited, despondent colossus Dr. Pym heading south to consult with his old college mentor Professor Anton. He never expected to find a hidden South American civilisation or become embroiled in a high-tech civil war that threatened to destroy the entire planet…

To Be Continued…

Supplementing the narrative joys is a single behind-the-scenes treasure: a Tee-shirt design by Jack Kirby & Wally Wood…

These immortal tales defined the early Marvel experience and are still an unbounded joy no fan should deny themselves or their kids.
© 2023 MARVEL.

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Superman: The Man of Steel volume 1


By John Byrne, Marv Wolfman, Jerry Ordway, Dick Giordano, Terry Austin, Mike Machlan, Karl Kesel & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0491-3 (HB/Digital edition)

In 1985 when DC Comics decided to rationalise, reconstruct and reinvigorate their continuity with Crisis on Infinite Earths they used the event to simultaneously regenerate their key properties at the same time. The biggest gun they had was Superman and it’s hard to argue that the change was not before time.

The big guy was in a bit of a slump, but he’d weathered those before. So how could a root and branch retooling be anything but a pathetic marketing ploy that would alienate the real fans for a few fly-by-night Johnny-come-latelies who would jump ship as soon as the next fad surfaced? This new Superman was going to suck…

They couldn’t have been more wrong.

The public furore began with all DC’s Superman titles being “cancelled” (actually suspended) for three months, and yes, that did make the real-world media sit-up and take notice of the character everybody thought they knew for the first time in decades. However, there was method in this seeming corporate madness.

The missing mainstays were replaced by a 6-part miniseries running from October to December 1986. Entitled Man of Steel, it was written and drawn by Marvel’s mainstream superstar John Byrne and inked by venerated veteran Dick Giordano.

The bold manoeuvre was a huge and instant success. So much so that when it was first collected as a stand-alone compilation album in 1991, it became one of comics’ premiere “break-out” hits in a new format that would eventually become the industry standard for reaching mass readerships. Nowadays few people buy the periodical pamphlets but almost everybody has read a graphic novel…

From that overwhelming start the Action Ace seamlessly returned to his suspended comic book homes, enjoying the addition of a third monthly title which premiered that same month.

Superman, Adventures of Superman, and Action Comics (which acted as a fan-pleasing team-up book guest-starring other favourites of the DC Universe, in the manner of the cancelled DC Comics Presents) were instant best-sellers.

So successful was the relaunch that by the early 1990’s Superman would be carrying four monthly titles as well as Specials, Annuals, guest shots and regular appearances in titles such as Justice League.

Quite a turnaround from the earlier heydays of the Man of Steel when editors were frantic about never overexposing their meal-ticket.

In Superman’s 85th year of more-or-less consecutive and continuous publication, this collection begins with the six self-contained stories from key points in Superman’s career, newly readjusted for contemporary consumption in the wake of that aforementioned worlds-shattering Crisis.

Spanning to cover-dates October 1986 to June 1987 and re-presenting The Man of Steel #1-6, Superman #1-4, Action #584-587 and Adventures of Superman #424-428 plus relevant pages from Who’s Who: Update ‘87 #1, 3, 4 this initial herculean compilation opens with the a reprinting of Byrne’s introduction from the 1991 collection ‘Superman: A Personal View’ before the revelations unfold…

Newsstands and comic stores on July 10th 1986 welcomed a startlingly new and bleakly dystopian Krypton in #1 as ‘Prologue: From Out of the Green Dawn…’ followed the child’s voyage in a self-propelled birthing matrix to a primitive world.

Discovered by childless couple Jonathan and Martha Kent, the alien foundling spends his years growing secretly in Smallville, indistinguishable from other earthlings until strange abilities begin to gradually manifest and hint at ‘The Secret’…

Eighteen years after his arrival, the boy learns of his extraterrestrial origins and leaves home to wander the world. Clark Kent eventually settles in Metropolis and we get a rapid re-education of what is and isn’t canonical as he performs his first public super-exploit, meets with Lois Lane, joins the Daily Planet and gets an identity-obscuring costume in ‘The Exposure’ and ‘Epilogue: The Super-Hero’…

Lois takes centre-stage for the second issue, scheming and manipulating to secure the first in-depth interview with the new hero before losing out to neophyte colleague Kent whose first big scoop becomes ‘The Story of the Century!’

The third chapter recounts the Metropolis Marvel’s first meeting with Batman as ‘One Night in Gotham City…’ reveals a fractious and reluctant team-up to capture murdering thief Magpie. The unsatisfactory encounter sees the heroes part warily, not knowing if they will become friends or foes…

‘Enemy Mine…’ in MoS #4 expands and redefines the new Lex Luthor: a genius, multi-billionaire industrialist who was the most powerful man in Metropolis until the Caped Crime-buster appeared. When the tycoon overreaches himself in trying to suborn the hero with cash, he is publicly humiliated and swears vengeance and eternal enmity…

By the time of ‘The Mirror, Crack’d…’ in #5, Luthor is Superman’s greatest foe – albeit one who scrupulously maintains a veneer of respectability and plausible deniability. Here, Luthor’s clandestine attempt to clone his own Man of Tomorrow results in a monstrous flawed duplicate dubbed Bizarro and introduces Lois’ sister Lucy to play hapless victim in a moving tale of triumph and tragedy.

The reimagination concludes with ‘The Haunting’ as a troubled Clark/Superman returns to Smallville. Reuniting with childhood sweetheart Lana Lang – who shares his secrets and knows as much as he of his alien origins – the strange visitor finally learns of his Kryptonian origins and heritage when the long-hidden birthing matrix projects a recorded message from his long-dead parents and details their hopes and plans for him…

The shock and reaction of his foster family only affirms his dedication and connection to humanity…

John Byrne was a controversial choice at the time, but he magnificently recaptured the exuberant excitement and visually compelling, socially aware innovation which informed and galvanised Jerry Seigel & Joe Shuster’s inspired creation. Man of Steel granted a new generation the same kind of intoxicating four-colour fantasy that was the original Superman, and made it possible to be a fan again, no matter your age or prejudice. Superman had always been great, but Byrne had once again made him thrilling. Rivetingly so.

The never-ending battle recommenced on a monthly schedule with Superman volume 2 #1, where Byrne & Terry Austin reveal a ‘Heart of Stone’: presenting a new Metallo as thug John Corben is remade as a Terminator-style cyborg with a human brain and a Kryptonite heart by a deranged xenophobic scientist. The transition culminates in a deadly battle and baffling mystery portending big troubles to come. The focus then shifts to Action #584 and ‘Squatter!’ (by Byrne & Giordano) as a body-snatching mental force suborns the Metropolis Marvel and necessitates a team-up with the Teen Titans. The accent is predominantly on breakneck pace and all-out costumed conflict here…

Superman #2 (by Byrne & Austin) then describes ‘The Secret Revealed!’ as modern-day robber baron Luthor makes the biggest mistake of his life after kidnapping and torturing Kent’s first girlfriend Lana Lang…

This is followed by Marv Wolfman & Jerry Ordway’s ‘Man O’War!’ and ‘Going the Gauntlet’ (Adventures of Superman #424 & 425, and inked by Mike Machlan). The drama introduces tragic Dr. Emil Hamilton and rival reporter Cat Grant to the mythology as the Action Ace battles high-tech terrorists sponsored by rogue state Qurac and proves to be no respecter of international boundaries like his pre-Crisis counterpart…

These politically and socially aware dramas would become a truer and more lasting template for the modern Man of Tomorrow after Byrne’s eventual retirement from the character…

The Phantom Stranger guests in a battle against a deadly manifestation of unquiet spirits in ‘And the Graves Give Up Their Dead…’ (Byrne & Giordano, Action #585) before the next three chapters address the Superman segment of multi-part crossover event Legends.

Byrne & Austin’s Superman #3 began with ‘Legends of the Darkside!’, as Clark Kent is abducted to Apokolips by its evil master. He escapes to become a rebel leader of the lowly “Hunger Dogs” in Adventures… #426, wherein Wolfman, Ordway & Machlan give us an amnesiac Superman on Apokolips rising ‘From the Dregs’ before the rousing yarn concludes with ‘The Champion!’ as Action Comics #586 (Byrne & Giordano) reintroduces Jack Kirby’s New Gods post-Crisis icons Orion and Lightray, just in time for a blistering battle royale beyond the stars between the Man of Steel and deadly Darkseid…

Once the cosmic dust settled, it was back to the regular Never-Ending Battle, with Superman #4 introducing deranged lone gunman ‘Bloodsport!’ courtesy of Byrne & inker Karl Kesel. The merciless shooter is more than just crazy, however: some hidden genius has given him the ability to manifest wonder weapons from thin air and he never runs out of ammo…

Wolfman & Ordway generally concentrated on longer, more suspensefully dramatic character-based tales. Adventures of Superman #427-428 (cover-dated April & May 1987) took the Man of Tomorrow on a punishing visit to rogue state Qurac and an encounter with hidden alien telepaths The Circle: a visceral and beautiful tale of un-realpolitik. ‘Mind Games’ and ‘Personal Best’ combine a much more relevant, realistic slant with lots of character sub-plots featuring assorted staff and family of the Daily Planet.

The story portion of this first volume concludes with Byrne & Giordano back in Action (#587), crafting spectacle, thrills and instant gratification with ‘Cityscape!’ by teaming Superman with Jack Kirby’s Etrigan the Demon. The magic happens when sorceress Morgaine Le Fay seeks to become immortal by warping time itself…

Augmenting the Costumed Dramas are more recovered text commentaries and appreciations from earlier collections: specifically Ray Bradbury’s ‘Why Superman? Why Today?’ (1991), Wolfman’s ‘Reinventing the Wheel’ (2003) and Ordway’s ‘The Adventures of Superman’ from 2004. These are followed by the covers of earlier Superman: The Man of Steel compendia – all by Ordway – and pages taken from supplemental comics reading tool Who’s Who: Update ‘87.

Plucked from issues #1, 3, 4 are Byrne’s Amazing Grace, Bizarro, Bloodsport, Host, Lex Luthor, Krypton and Kryptonite, Lois Lane, Magpie and Metallo before a big bold pin-up of the Man of Steel ends the fun for now.

The back-to-basics approach successfully lured many readers to – and back to – the Superman franchise, but the sheer quality of the stories and art are what convinced them to stay. Such cracking, clear-cut superhero exploits are a high point in the Action Ace’s decades-long career, and these collections are the best way to enjoy one of the most impressive reinventions of the ultimate comic-book icon.
© 1986, 1987, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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From Headrack to Claude – Collected Gay Comics of Howard Cruse


By Howard Cruse (Nifty Kitsch Press/Northwest Press)
ISBN: 978-0-578-03251-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

It’s long been an aphorism – if not an outright cliché – that Gay comics – can we be contemporary and say LGBTQIA+? – have long been the only place in the graphic narrative business to see real romance in all its joy, pain, glee and glory.

It’s still true: an artefact, I suppose, of a society seemingly obsessed with demarcating and separating sex and love as two utterly different and possibly even opposing principles and activities. I’d like to think that here in the 21st century – at least in the more sensible, civilised parts of it – we’ve outgrown the juvenile, judgemental, bad old days and can simply appreciate powerfully moving and/or funny comics about people of all sorts without any kind of preconception.

Sadly, that battle’s nowhere near won yet and in truth it all looks pretty bleak unless you’re a fundamentalist zealot or bigot. Hopefully, compendia such as this will aid the fight, if only we can get the other side to read them…

To facilitate that, after this archive was originally self-published in 2008 it was rendered fully digital – with updates and extra material – from those wonderful people at Northwest Press. Oh, and there’s an abundance of sex and swearing on view, so if you’re the kind of person liable to be upset by words and pictures of an adult nature (such as joyous, loving fornication between two people separated by age, wealth, social position and race who happily possess and constantly employ the same range of naughty bits on each other) or sly mockery of deeply-held, outmoded and ludicrous beliefs then best retreat and read something else.

In fact, just go away: you have no romance in your soul or love in your heart.

Howard Cruse (May 2nd 1944-November 26th 2019) enjoyed a remarkable cartooning career spanning decades that overlapped a number of key moments in American history and social advancement. Beginning as a hippy-trippy, counter-culture, Underground Comix star with beautifully drawn, witty, funny (not always the same thing in those days – or now, come to think of it) strips, his work evolved over years into a powerful voice for change in both sexual and race politics. Initially as strips in magazines but ultimately through such superb collections and Original Graphic Novels as Wendel and Stuck Rubber Baby: an examination of oppression, tolerance and freedoms in 1950s America.

Since then he has become a columnist, worked on other writers’ work, illustrated an adaptation of Jeanne E. Shaffer’s The Swimmer With a Rope In His Teeth and continued his own unique brand of cartoon commentary.

Born the son of a Baptist Minister in Birmingham, Alabama, Cruse grew up amid the instinctive race-based privilege and smouldering intolerance of the region’s segregationist regime: an atmosphere that shaped him on a primal level. In the late ‘60s, he escaped to Birmingham-Southern College to study Drama: graduating and winning a Shubert Playwriting Fellowship to Penn State University.

Campus life never really suited him and he dropped out in 1969. Returning to the South, he joined a loose crowd of fellow Birmingham Bohemians; allowing room to blossom as a creator. By 1971, Cruse was drawing a spectacular procession of strips for an increasingly hungry and growing crowd of eager admirers. Whilst working for a local TV station as both designer and children’s show performer, he created a kid’s newspaper strip about talking squirrels Tops & Button, and still found time to craft the utterly whimsical and bizarre tales of a romantic quadrangle. Intended for the more discerning college crowd he remained in contact with, these strips appeared in a variety of college newspapers and periodicals and starred a very nice young man and his troublesome friends…

In 1972 the strip was “discovered” by publishing impresario Denis Kitchen who began disseminating Barefootz to a far broader audience via such Underground periodical publications as Snarf, Bizarre Sex, Dope Comix and Commies From Mars: all published by his much-missed Kitchen Sink Enterprises.

Kitchen also hired Cruse to work on an ambitious co-production with rising powerhouse Marvel Comics: attempting to bring a (somewhat sanitised) version of the counter-culture’s cartoon stars and sensibilities to the mainstream. The Comix Book was a traditionally packaged and distributed newsstand magazine that only ran to a half-dozen issues. Although deemed a failure, it provided the notionally more wholesome and genteel Barefootz with a larger audience and yet more avid fans…

As well as being an actor, designer, art-director and teacher, Cruse appeared in Playboy, The Village Voice, Heavy Metal, Artforum International, The Advocate and Starlog and countless other publications, yet the tireless story-man found the time and resources to self-publish Barefootz Funnies: two comic collections of his addictively whimsical strip in 1973.

For us, a captivatingly forthright grab-bag and memoir gathers the snippets and classics left out of previous must-have collections The Compete Wendel and Early Barefootz, with Cruse tracing his development through cartoons and strips all thoroughly and engagingly annotated and contextualised by the author himself: fondly, candidly revisited against a backdrop of the men he loved at the time.

Acting as an historical place-setter, Cruse’s informative Preface sets the ball rolling, laconically tracing his artistic career and development through domestic autobiographical strip ‘Communique’ (from Heavy Metal) to unveil home life at the time. A more detailed exploration overview of the Queer comics scene follows in ‘From Miss Thing to Jane’s World’ before the book truly begins.

For a better, fuller understanding you’ll really want to see the aforementioned Wendell and Barefootz collections, but for now we relive history in first chapter Artefacts & Benchmarks Part 1: 1969-76, blending contextualising prose recollection with noteworthy strip ‘That Night at the Stonewall’s’, advertising art, abortive newspaper strip sample, an episode of Tops & Button, and other published work, plus gay sitcom feature ‘Cork & Dork’.

An early example of advocacy comes from wry cartoon homily ‘The Passer-By’ before further reminiscences and picture extracts take us to an uncharacteristically strident and harsh breakthrough.

Preceded by explanatory sidebar ‘Backstory: Gravy on Gay’, we are formally introduced to Barefootz’s, way-out friend confidante – and openly gay hippy rebel – Headrack in ‘Gravy on Gay’: wherein – the laid-back easy-going artist is confronted with the ugly, mouthy side of modern living as voiced by obnoxious jock jerk Mort…

The march of progress continues in Artefacts & Benchmarks Part 2: 1976-80, detailing a variety of comics jobs from Dope Comix and Snarf to the semi-legitimacy of Playboy and Starlog. It also features the first meeting with life partner – and ultimately, husband – Eddie Sedarbaum before My Strips from Gay Comix 1980-90 traces his editorial career on the landmark anthology through reprints of his own strip contributions.

It begins in ‘Billy Goes Out’: recalling the joyous – or it that empty and tedious? – hedonistic freedoms of the days immediately before the AIDS crisis…

Incisive cloaked autobiographical fable ‘Jerry Mack’ takes us inside the turbulent mind of an ultra-closeted church minister in full regretful denial, after which further heartbreak is called up in devious tragedy ‘I Always Cry at Movies’ before home chores are dealt with in a manly manner in ‘Getting Domestic’.

Historical and political insight comes in ‘Backstory: Dirty Old Lovers’ before the outrageous and hilarious antics of the oldest lovers in town scandalise the Gay community in ‘Dirty Old Lovers’, whilst the thinking behind clarion call ‘Safe Sex’ is detailed in a ‘Backstory’ article prior to a straightforward examination of Acquired Immune-Deficiency Syndrome and its effects on personal health and public consciousness…

Surreal comedy infuses the tale of a man’s man and his adored ‘Cabbage Patch Clone’ after which faux ad ‘I Was Trapped Naked inside the Jockey Shorts of the Amazing Colossal Man!’ and Matt Groening spoof ‘Gay Dorks in Fezzes’ closes this chapter to make way for Topical Strips 1983-93.

With Cruse’s particular brand of “Gay” commentary/advocacy reaching more mainstream audiences through publications like The Village Voice, a ‘Backstory’ relates the author’s ultimately unnecessary anxiety over inviting in the wider world through polemical sally ‘Sometimes I Get So Mad’ and wickedly pointed social and media satire ‘The Gay in the Street’. That oracular swipe and ‘1986 – An Interim Epilogue’ are also deconstructed by Backstory segments (the latter being a 2-page addendum created for the Australian release of ‘Safe Sex’ in Art & Text magazine) before ‘Backstory: Penceworth’ shares one of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s vilest moments.

In 1988, her government attempted to set back sexual freedom to the Stone Age (or Russia, Turkey, Nigeria and other uncivilised countries today) by prohibiting the “promotion of homosexuality”. The British law – (un)popularly known as Clause 28 – was resisted on many fronts, including benefit comic AARGH (Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia). Invited to contribute, Cruse channelled Hillaire Belloc’s Cautionary Verses and excoriatingly assaulted the New Nazism with ‘Penceworth’: a charming illustrated poem like a spiked cosh snuggled inside a rainbow coloured velvet slipper…

Luxuriating in righteous indignation and taking his lead from the New York Catholic Church’s militant stance against the LGBT community, Cruse then illuminated a supposed conference between ‘The Kardinal & the Klansman in Manning the Phone Bank’ and targeted similar anti-gay codicils in America’s National Endowment for the Arts in ‘Homoeroticism Blues’…

Another Backstory explains how and why a scurrilous article in Cosmopolitan resulted in ‘The Woeful World of Winnie and Walt’ – a complacency-shattering tale in Strip AIDS USA, pointedly reminding White Heterosexuals that the medical horror wasn’t as discriminating as they would like to believe…

That theme is revisited with the kid gloves off in ‘His Closet’, after which ‘Backstory: Rainbow Curriculum Comix’ clarify how School Board rabble-rouser Mary Cummings set back decades of progress in American diversity education through her oratorical witch hunts. Cruse’s potent responses ‘Rainbow Curriculum Comix’ and ‘The Educator’ follow…

The artist’s Late Entries 2000-08 round off the historical hay ride: snippets including a full-colour rebuttal from Village Voice to Dr. Bruce Bagemihl’s study on animal homosexuality. ‘A Zoo of Our Own’ is accompanied by a fulsome Backstory and followed by wryly engaging modern fable ‘My Hypnotist’ and semi-autobiographical conundrum ‘Then There Was Claude’ before the bemused wonderment wraps up with prose article ‘I Must Be Important …Cause I’m in a Documentary (2011)’ and a superb Batman pin-up/put down…

This is a sublime and timeless compilation: smart, funny, angry when needful and always astonishingly entertaining. Read it with Pride.
© 1976-2008 Howard Cruse. All rights reserved.
For further information and great stuff check out Howardcruse.com

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Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse: “The Race to Death Valley” (Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Classic Collection volume 1)


By Floyd Gottfredson & various; Edited by David Gerstein (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-441-2 (HB/Digital edition)

As collaboratively co-created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, Mickey Mouse was first seen – if not heard – in silent cartoon Plane Crazy. The animated short fared poorly in a May 1928 test screening and was promptly shelved. (Happy technical 95th Anniversary, kid!)

That’s why most people who care cite Steamboat Willie – the fourth Mickey feature to be completed – as the debut of the mascot mouse and co-star and paramour Minnie Mouse, since it was the first to be nationally distributed, as well as the first animated feature with synchronised sound. Its astounding success led to a subsequent and rapid release of fully completed predecessors Plane Crazy, The Gallopin’ Gaucho and The Barn Dance once they too had been given soundtracks. From those timid beginnings grew an immense fantasy empire, but film was not the only way Disney conquered hearts and minds.

With Mickey a certified solid gold sensation, the mighty mouse was considered a hot property and soon invaded America’s most powerful and pervasive entertainment medium: comic strips…

Floyd Gottfredson was a cartooning pathfinder who started out as just another warm body in the Disney Studio animation factory. Happily, he slipped sideways into graphic narrative and evolved into a ground-breaker of pictorial narratives as influential as George Herriman, Winsor McCay and Elzie Segar. Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse entertained millions – if not billions – of eagerly enthralled readers and shaped the very way comics worked.

Via some of the earliest adventure continuities in comics history he took a wild and anarchic animated rodent from slap-stick beginnings and transformed a feisty everyman/mouse underdog into a crimebuster, detective, explorer, lover, aviator or cowboy. Mickey was the quintessential two-fisted hero whenever necessity demanded…

In later years, as tastes – and syndicate policy – changed, Gottfredson steered that self-same wandering warrior into a sedate, gently suburbanised lifestyle, employing crafty sitcom gags suited to a newly middle-class America: a 50-year career generating some of the most engrossing continuities the comics industry has ever enjoyed.

Arthur Floyd Gottfredson was born in 1905 in Kaysville, Utah, one of eight siblings born to a Mormon family of Danish extraction. Injured in a youthful hunting accident, Floyd whiled away a long recuperation drawing and studying cartoon correspondence courses. By the 1920s he had turned professional, selling cartoons and commercial art to local trade magazines and Big City newspaper the Salt Lake City Telegram.

In 1928, he (and wife Mattie) moved to California where, after a shaky start, the doodler found work in April 1929 as an in-betweener with the burgeoning Walt Disney Studios. Just as the Great Depression hit, he was personally asked by Disney to take over the newborn but already ailing Mickey Mouse newspaper strip. Gottfredson would plot, draw and frequently script the strip for the next five decades: an incredible accomplishment by of one of comics’ most gifted exponents.

Veteran animator Ub Iwerks had initiated the print feature with Disney himself contributing, before artist Win Smith was brought in. The nascent strip was plagued with problems and young Gottfredson was only supposed to pitch in until a regular creator could be found.

His first effort saw print on May 5th 1930 (his 25th birthday) and Floyd just kept going for an uninterrupted run over the next half century. On January 17th 1932, Gottfredson crafted the first colour Sunday page, which he also handled until retirement.

In the beginning he did everything, but in 1934 Gottfredson relinquished the scripting role, preferring plotting and illustrating the adventures to playing about with dialogue. Thereafter, collaborating wordsmiths included Ted Osborne, Merrill De Maris, Dick Shaw, Bill Walsh, Roy Williams and Del Connell. At the start and in the manner of a filmic studio system, Floyd briefly used inkers such as Ted Thwaites, Earl Duvall and Al Taliaferro, but by 1943 had taken on full art chores.

This superb archival compendium – part of a magnificently ambitious series collecting the creator’s entire canon – re-presents the initial daily romps, jam-packed with thrills, spills and chills, whacky races, fantastic fights and a glorious superabundance of rapid-fire sight-gags and verbal by-play. The manner by which Mickey became a syndicated star is covered in various articles at the front and back of this sturdy tome devised and edited by truly dedicated, clearly devoted fan David Gerstein.

Under the guise of Setting the Stage the unbridled fun and revelations begin with gaming guru Warren Spector’s appreciative ‘Introduction – The Master of Mickey Epics’ and a fulsome biographical account and appraisal of Gottfredson and Mickey continuities in ‘Of Mouse and Man – 1930-1931: The Early Years’ by historian and educator Thomas Andrae.

The scene-setting concludes with ‘Floyd Gottfredson, The Mickey Mouse Strip and Me – an Appreciation by Floyd Norman’, incorporating some preliminary insights from Gerstein in …An Indebted Valley… before the strip sequences begin in ‘The Adventures: Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse Stories with Editor’s Notes’.

At the start the strip was treated like an animated feature, with diverse hands working under a “director” and each day seen as a full gag with set-up, delivery and a punchline, usually all in service to an umbrella story or theme. Such was the format Gottfredson inherited from Walt Disney for his first full yarn ‘Mickey Mouse in Death Valley’. It ran from April 1st to September 20th 1930 with the job further complicated by an urgent “request” from controlling syndicate King Features. They required that the strip immediately be made more adventure-oriented to compete with the latest trend in comics – action-packed continuities as seen in everything from Wash Tubbs to Tarzan…

Roped in to provide additional art and inking for the raucous, rambunctious rambling saga were Win Smith, Jack King, Roy Nelson & Hardie Gramatky. The tale itself involved a picaresque, frequently deadly journey way out west to save Minnie’s inheritance – a lost mine – from conniving lawyer Sylvester Shyster and his vile and violent crony Peg-Leg Pete.

To foil them Mickey and his aggrieved companion chased across America by every conveyance imaginable, facing every possible peril immortalised by silent movie westerns, melodramas and comedies. In their relentless pursuit they were aided by masked mystery man The Fox…

Next up – after brief preamble ‘Sheiks and Lovers’ – is another lengthy epic, featuring most of the early big screen repertory cast. ‘Mr. Slicker and the Egg Robbers’ (inked by Gottfredson, Gramatky & Earl Duvall and running from September 22nd – December 29th) opens with Mickey building his own decidedly downbeat backyard golf course before being repeatedly and disconcertingly distracted when sleazy sporty type Mr. Slicker starts paying unwelcome attention to Minnie. Well, it’s unwelcome as far as Mickey is concerned…

With cameos from Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow, goat-horned Mr. Butt and a prototype Goofy who answered – if he felt like it – to the moniker Dippy Dog, the rambunctious shenanigans continue for weeks until the gag-abundant tale resolves into a classic powerplay and landgrab as the nefarious ne’er-do-well is exposed as the fiend attempting to bankrupt Minnie’s family by swiping all the eggs produced on their farm. The swine even seeks to frame Mickey for his misdeed before our hero turns the tables on him…

A flurry of shorter escapades follow: rapid-fire doses of wonder and whimsy including ‘Mickey Mouse Music’ (December 30th 1930 – January 3rd 1931 with art by Duvall), ‘The Picnic’ (January 12th – 17th, Gottfredson inked by Duvall) and ‘Traffic Troubles’ (January 5th – 10th with pencils by Duvall & Gottfredson inks) before Gerstein introduces the next extended storyline with some fondly eloquent ‘Katnippery’…

With story & art by Gottfredson & Duvall, ‘Mickey Mouse Vs. Kat Nipp’ proceeded from January 19th until February 25th 1931, detailing how a brutal feline thug bullies our hero. The sad state of affairs involves tail-abusing in various inspired forms, after which ‘Gallery Feature – …He’s Funny That Way…’ reveals a later Sunday strip appearance for Kat Nipp in a story by Merrill De Maris with Gottfredson pencils & Ted Thwaites inks. The excerpt comes from June 1938.

Gerstein’s introductory thoughts on the next epic – ‘High Society: Reality Show Edition’ – precede the serialised saga of ‘Mickey Mouse, Boxing Champion’. Running February 26th to April 29th by Gottfredson, Duvall & Al Taliaferro, the hilarious episodes relate how ever-jealous Mickey floors a big thug leering at Minnie to become infamous as the guy who knocked out the current heavy lightweight boxing champ.

Ruffhouse Rat’s subsequent attempts at revenge all go hideously awry and before long Mickey is acting as the big lug’s trainer. It’s a disaster and before long the champion suffers an inexorable physical and mental decline. Sadly, that’s when hulking brute Creamo Catnera hits town for a challenge bout. With Ruffhouse refusing to fight, it falls to Mickey to take on the savage contender…

Having accomplished one impossible task, Mickey sets his sights on reintroducing repentant convict Butch into ‘High Society’ (April 30th – May 30th – story & pencils by Gottfredson and inks from Taliaferro). The story was designed to tie-in to a Disney promotional stunt – a giveaway “photograph” of Mickey – and the history and details of the project are covered in ‘Gallery Feature – “Gobs of Good Wishes”’…

‘Mick of All Trades’ introduces the next two extended serial tales, discussing Mickey’s every-mouse nature and willingness to tackle any job like the Taliaferro-inked ‘Circus Roustabout’ which originally ran from June 1st – July 17th. Here a string of animal-based gags is held together by Mickey’s hunt for a cunning thief, after which ‘Pluto the Pup’ takes centre-stage for a 10-day parade of slapstick antics and Gerstein’s ‘Middle-Euro Mouse’ supplies context to the less-savoury and non-PC historical aspects of an epic featuring wandering “gypsies”.

‘Mickey Mouse and the Ransom Plot’ (July 20th – November 7th) follows the star and chums Minnie, Horace and Clarabelle on a travelling vacation to the mountains. Here they fall under the influence of a suspicious band of Roma exhibiting all the worst aspects of thieving and spooky fortune-telling. When Minnie is abducted and payment demanded, Mickey knows just how to deal with the villains…

Essay ‘A Mouse (and a Horse and a Cow) Against the World’ segues into fresh employment horizons for our hero as Gottfredson & Taliaferro test the humorous action potential of ‘Fireman Mickey’ (November 9th – December 5th). Another scintillating cascade of japes, jests and merry melodramas – and taking us from December 7th 1931 to January 9th 1932 in fine style – it offers glimmerings of continuity sub-plotting and supporting character development. These all shade a budding romance under the eaves of ‘Clarabelle’s Boarding House’. Although the chronological cartooning officially concludes here, there’s still a wealth of glorious treats and fascinating revelations in store in The Gottfredson Archives: Essays and Archival Features section that follows.

Contributed by Thomas Andrae, ‘In the Beginning: Ub Iwerks and the Birth of Mickey Mouse’ offers beguiling background and priceless early drawings from the earliest moments, as does Gerstein’s ‘Starting the Strip’ which comes packed with timeless ephemera.

As previously stated, Gottfredson took over a strip already in progress and next – accompanied by covers from European editions of the period – come the strips preceding his accession. Frantic gag-panels (like scenes from an animation storyboard) comprise ‘Lost on a Desert Island’ (January 13th – March 31st 1930, crafted by storyteller Walt and artists Ub Iwerks & Win Smith) are augmented by Gerstein’s ‘The Cartoon Connection’ with additional Italian strips from Giorgio Scudellari in ‘Gallery Feature – “Lost on a Desert Island”’.

Even more text and recovered-art features explore ‘The Cast: Mickey and Minnie’ and ‘Sharing the Spotlight: Walt Disney and Win Smith’ (both by Gerstein) before more international examples illuminate ‘Gottfredson’s World: Mickey Mouse in Death Valley’ whereafter ‘Unlocking the Fox’ traces the filmic antecedents of the hooded stranger, with priceless original art samples in ‘Behind the Scenes: Pencil Mania’.

More contemporaneous European examples from early collections tantalise in ‘Gallery Feature – Gottfredson’s World: Mr. Slicker and the Egg Robbers’ before Alberto Beccatini & Gerstein’s ‘Sharing the Spotlight: Roy Nelson, Jack King and Hardie Gramatky’ supply information on these lost craftsmen.

Gerstein’s ‘The One-Off Gottfredson Spin-Off’ highlights a forgotten transatlantic strip collaboration with German artist Frank Behmak, whilst ‘Gallery Feature – The Comics Department at Work: Mickey Mouse in Color (- And Black and White)’ covers lost merchandise and production art whilst ‘Gottfredson’s World: Mickey Mouse Vs. Kat Nipp’ and ‘Gottfredson’s World: Mickey Mouse, Boxing Champion’ offer yet more overseas Mouse memorabilia.

‘Sharing the Spotlight: Earl Duvall’ is another fine Gerstein tribute to a forgotten artisan, supplemented by ‘The Cast: Butch’ and ‘Al Taliaferro’, after which ‘The Gottfredson Gang: In “Their Own” Words’ (Gerstein – with texts by Mortimer Franklin & R. M. Finch) reprints contemporary interviews with the 2D stars, garnished with publicity tear-sheets and clippings. This is rounded off by more foreign covers in ‘Gallery Feature – Gottfredson’s World: Strange Tales of Late 1931’, ‘The Cast: Pluto’ and a stunning Christmas message from the Mouse as per ‘I have it on good authority’, giving Gottfredson himself the last word.

Gottfredson’s influence on not just the Disney canon but sequential graphic narrative itself is inestimable: he was among the first to produce long continuities and “straight” adventures; he pioneered team-ups and invented some of the first “super-villains” in the business.

When Disney killed the continuities in 1955, dictating henceforth strips would only contain one-off gag strips, Floyd adapted seamlessly, working on until retirement in 1975. His last daily appeared on November 15th with the final Sunday published on September 19th 1976.

Like all Disney creators, Gottfredson worked in utter anonymity, but in the 1960s his identity was revealed and the voluble appreciation of his previously unsuspected horde of devotees led to interviews, overviews and public appearances, with effect that subsequent reprinting in books, comics and albums carried a credit for the quiet, reserved master. Floyd Gottfredson died in July 1986.

Thankfully we have these Archives to enjoy and inspire us and hopefully a whole new generation of inveterate tale-tellers…
© 2011 Disney Enterprises, Inc Text of “In the Beginning: Ub Iwerks and the Birth of Mickey Mouse” by Thomas Andrae is © 2011 Thomas Andrae. All contents © 2011 Disney Enterprises unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

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Fann Club: Batman Squad – the Justiest Justice of All


By Jim Benton (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0889-8 (PB/Digital edition)

In recent years DC has opened up its vast and comprehensive shared superhero universe: generating Original Graphic Novels featuring its many stars in stand-alone adventures specifically tailored for kids and also that tricky demographic so sadly misnamed Young Adult. To date, results have been rather hit or miss, but when they’re good, they are very good indeed…

Another sublime example of the process at its best is this cheery elegy to the joys of crimefighting as channelled through the pristine but so-blinkered purview and perceptions of a youngster who believes in the process with all he’s got…

Ernest Fann is a little kid with a big imagination and a colossal passion. This drive has made him an absolute expert on Superheroes, Vengeance, Justice and The Batman, and that status comes with a necessary burden.

There is anxiety, impatience and even a motivating tragic loss – when something chewed his precious collectors’ item socks. His life is troubled by flashbacks and his sleep by the oddest dreams. It’s a mystery even his dog Westy can’t explain, whilst the neighbours’ kid and babysitter Harriet are completely oblivious to his inner life and secret…

Aware at he is probably the World’s Second Greatest Detective, he swears to share his gifts and the way of the Batman by founding… a fan club.

When willing recruits drawn by his cunning outreach arrive, he clothes them in the costumes he made and code names the (completely anonymous) strangers Night Terrier, Nightstand and Eyeshadow. He, of course, is the mighty Gerbilwing and Evil has never been more scared…

With his Batman Squad equipped it’s ‘Time to Begin: Fanning the Flames’ as their training montage shares secrets – like learning how to scowl and stand mysteriously – before going ‘On Patrol’ to note all the wickedness and mystery besetting the neighbourhood. All those little clues add up to trouble and before long Gerbilwing & Co. are unleashed when they intercept a bank robbery and uncover the true source of all the strange events…

Jim Benton began his illustration work making up crazy characters in a T-Shirt shop and designing greetings cards. Born in 1960, he’d grown up in Birmingham, Michigan before studying Fine Arts at Western Michigan University.

Tirelessly earning a living exercising his creativity, he started self-promoting those weird funny things he’d dreamed up and soon was raking in the dosh from properties such as Dear Dumb Diary, Dog of Glee, Franny K. Stein, Just Jimmy, Just Plain Mean, Sweetypuss, The Misters, Meany Doodles, Vampy Doodles, Kissy Doodles, jOkObo and It’s Happy Bunny via a variety of magazines and other venue…

His gags, jests and japes are delivered in a huge variety of styles and manners: each perfectly in accord with whatever sick, sweet, clever, sentimental, whimsical or just plain strange content each idea demanded, and his SpyDogs effortlessly made the jump to kids’ animated TV success.

He seamlessly segued into best-selling cartoon books (those are the best kind) such as Man, I Hate Cursive, Clyde, Catwad, Jop and Blip Wanna Know, Dog Butts and Love. And Stuff Like That. (And Cats) and Attack of the Stuff. It’ been 10 minutes since I started typing this, so there might be a few more published since then…

Perfectly capturing the wonder of childhood and sheer force of a kid’s unbridled imagination, Fann Club: Batman Squad is hilarious with a huge amount of heart and empathy and literally cloaked in the moody charisma of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight. The combination is utterly irresistible.

Also include is a teaser preview of ‘Young Alfred: Pain in the Butler’, but that’s not the point and can wait for its own review. Here you just need to swear your oath, kit up in your own justice gear and join The Bat Squad ASAP.

Tell them Gerbilwing said it was okay and Eyeshadow would be there to keep things safe…
© 20223 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Fann Club: Batman Squad will be published on June 6th 2023 and is available for pre-order now.

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Star Cat – A Turnip in Time


By James Turner & Yasmin Sheikh (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-256-4 (TPB)

Never forget: all the best cats are ginger, and especially so if they come from space…

Way back in January 2012, Oxford-based David Fickling Books made a rather radical move by launching a traditional anthology comics weekly aimed at under-12s. It revelled in reviving the good old days of picture-story entertainment intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in style and content.

Each issue still features humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material in a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy. Since then The Phoenix has established itself a potent source of children’s entertainment as, like the golden age of The Beano and The Dandy, it is equally at home to boys and girls, and has mastered the magical trick of mixing amazingly action-packed adventure series with hilarious humour strip serials such as this one.

One of the wildest rides of the early days was Space Cat by the astoundingly clever James Turner (Super Animal Adventure Squad, Mameshiba, The Unfeasible Adventures of Beaver and Steve). The strip began in issue #0 and some of those first forays appear here completely remastered and fully redrawn by Yasmin Sheikh (Luna the Vampire), jostling against stuff not collected before…

The premise is timeless and instantly engaging, focussing on the far-out endeavours of a band of spacefaring nincompoops in the classic mock-heroic manner. There’s so very far-from-dauntless Captain Spaceington, extremely dim amoeboid Science Officer Plixx, inarticulate, barely housebroken beastie The Pilot, and Robot One, who quite arrogantly and erroneously believes itself at the forefront of the cosmos’ smartest thinkers.

The colossal void-busting vessel the Captain and his substandard star warriors traverse the universe in looks like a gigantic ginger tom, because that is what it is: half cat, half spaceship. What more do you need to know?

We reconnect with the crew after ‘Prologue: Pilot’ sees the sorry stalwarts are almost exposed and fired by a highly critical Space Inspector. Just in time, another cosmic cock-up saves their bacon and a cross-chronal warning rocks Plixx’s world view and faith in science…

Nevertheless, duty always calls and when the voyagers arrive above Porcelainia, they are plunged into a ‘Spin Cycle of Terror’. Plixx is ready and willing – if not actually able – to help save the “most fragile planet in the universe” from deplorably deranged ultimate enemy Dark Rectangle. The terrifying two-dimensional tyrant has constructed a colossal bull-motifed super-washing machine to shatter the world and its so breakable denizens.

Thankfully, the villain had underestimated the crew’s sheer dumb luck and the forces of the universal principles governing laundry…

Dark Rectangle flees with the Star Cat in pursuit, and the chase allows Plixx and Robot One an opportunity to fiddle with cosmic constants. The resultant wave of disproportional maladjustment (to Spaceington, Pilot, mecha-robo Hamster suits, hench-being Murky Hexagon and more) in ‘Size Matters’ is almost the end…

The discovery of a new world and its superior inhabitants proves daunting and diminishing, but even the astounding ultra-intellects of Brainulon 7 pale before the sheer inanity of Plixx’s ‘Brain Drain’, and it’s not long until the far-our feline conveyor reaches Wetterania VII, just as rash of space fleas infest the ship-beast and leave all aboard ‘Itching for Trouble’…

The sinister shape of Dark Rectangle is next seen plundering the spaceways with our heroes desperately seeking new weapons and tactics. Nothing helpful comes from Plixx, whose latest innovation erases DNA sequences and delivers ‘The De-Evolution Dilemma’. With everyone aboard Star Cat affected, the Rhomboid Rogue attacks and encounters far less than he bargained for, but still too much to handle…

Chicken-with-a-mission The Space Mayor then tasks the solar swashbucklers with joining the extremely hazardous Great ‘Space Race’, where Dark Rectangle’s dire depredations in sabotaging the many entrants only leads to entirely the wrong Entity winning the prize of a Wish Granted…

Flushed with failure, the crew answers a distress call and is deposited on unsanitary orb Pootopia, charged with blocking an incipient civil war. Their ‘Mission Impoossible’ soon descends into scatological silliness after Dark (brown) God Bowlthulu manifests, and they’re quite happy to pass on to an undercover espionage mission against the bellicose Garflaxians. Sadly, Plixx’s  notions of disguise and camouflage are no help at all when ‘Spying High’…

‘Cryptid Calamities’ details a far too close encounter with the Space Ness Monster before the crew are asked to judge a flower show. It all leads to shame and ‘Herbaceous Horror’ when Dark Rectangle recklessly unleashes his merciless Mecha Slugs on the Star Cat crew.

The mis-educated Science Officer’s notorious addiction to cake then sparks the devastation of the Spacetime Continuum and really, REALLY ticks off God after fumbling a chronal experiment in ‘The Time Turnip’…

After experiencing Primal Revelation and witnessing the rebirth of Reality, Plixx resolves to become Space Scientist of the Year, but the competition at the ‘Science Fair’ is fierce, weird and really keen on not breaking any rules, once more leading to confrontation with sentient forces beyond the ken of sentient, sapient beings …and Plixx…

Wrapping up the sidereal silliness are Fact Files on ‘Brainulonians’, ‘Garflaxians’, ‘The Pootopians’, ‘Porcelainians’, and an activity section detailing ‘How to Draw’ and thereafter ‘How to Draw Pilot’, ‘Dark Rectangle’ and ‘Murky Hexagon’…

Star Cat is a spectacularly hilarious comic treasure: surreal, ingenious, wildly infectious, and fabulously fun. No pet owner, comedy connoisseur or lover of the Wild Black Yonder should miss this brilliant cartoon cat treat.

Text and illustrations © The Phoenix Comic 2023. All rights reserved.

Star Cat – A Turnip in Time will be published on June 1st 2023 and is available for pre-order now.

 

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From the Files of… Mike Hammer: The Complete Dailies and Sundays


By Mickey Spillane & Ed Robbins: edited by Max Allan Collins (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-025-3 (HB/Digital edition)

Frank Morrison Spillane was Brooklyn born on March 9th 1918 and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He started writing in High School and, after trying a wide variety of jobs, joined a production shop in 1940, where he worked on articles for magazines (“slicks”), pulps and – thanks to a connection to Joe Gill (Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Peacemaker and more horror, war and science fiction tales than you can imagine) – comic books.

Spillane wrote dozens of text fillers (usually the only place you could sign your own name) for Funnies Inc. who supplied Timely Comics, Fawcett, National/DC and more, but also crafted comics tales too, including Blue Bolt, Captain Marvel, Batman, Captain America and Sub-Mariner. A rough, tough guy, and already qualified pilot, he enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor, but his expertise denied him the combat he craved and relegated him to the despised role of Army Air Corps flight instructor, stationed in Mississippi.

Married in 1945, he found employment scarce when peace broke out and turned his 1942 comic creation Mike Lancer P.I. (latterly Mike Danger) into a rough, tough, vulgar and compelling paragon of toxic masculinity. The 1947 novel I, The Jury was written in 9 days and, on the suggestion of Ray Gill (brother of Joe), offered to EP Dutton. They published it in hardback which sold moderately that year. One year later the paperback edition sold six and a half million copies in the US alone, was translated everywhere, kicked off a detective boom in film and books, and created both an iconic character and arguably an entire subgenre. Spillane died in July 2006.

Love him or loathe (and people have always fallen pretty equally on either side) Mike Hammer changed the world of entertainment. Apparently based on Texas Ranger Mike Hamer (who killed Bonnie & Clyde in 1934), Hammer is hard-boiled and smart but also brutally violent, mercurial and misogynistic. His hatred for criminality borders on psychosis and in his later books viciously anti-communist. Despite respecting law and cops he considers both a constant impediment to justice. He carries a Colt 45 M1911A1 and has a distinctly modern relationship with his secretary Velda – who might well be a harder man than him. His best pal is NYPD Homicide Captain Pat Chambers…

Spillane wrote 13 Hammer novels between 1947 and 1996: a tiny fraction of a frankly heroic output, with the canon further extended in later years by crime maven and comics marvel Max Allen Collins – a close friend and associate who added 30 more to the tally. Working from Spillane’s notes, he posthumously extended Spillane’s Hammer canon by writing a further 13 Hammer novels and 17 other characters from the author’s notes…

Collins (Dick Tracy, Batman, Ms. Tree, Wild Dog, Mike Danger, Nathan Heller, Mallory, Nolan & Quarry series, The Road to Perdition) also edited and curated this epic collected archival edition, gathering another controversial Hammer spin-off but one of the anti-hero’s few failures…

We open with his Foreword ‘Mickey and Me’ and informative Introduction ‘From the Files of… Mike Hammer’ relating history and building context in heavily illustrated features sharing novel dustjackets, posters and lobby cards from some of the many movies, logos, designs and original art from the strip, all augmented throughout by promotional ads.

The short run was distributed by Phoenix Features Syndicate from 1953-1954: written by Spillane, Joe Gill and illustrator Ed Robbins, narrated like the books, in first person by Hammer. The reason for the minor league management was to keep authorial control out of the hands of timid censorious editors but it proved the strip’s undoing…

Originally compiled by Ken Pierce Books as Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer – The Comic Strip volume 1 (The Sudden Trap and Other Stories) & 2 (The Dark City and Other Stories), this edition maintains their layout of up to 4 dailies per page and opens with ‘Half-Blonde’ as the grim gumshoe stumbles over a pretty singer, witness – or culprit – to senseless murder. Inserting himself into the case, Hammer is shot, beaten and lied to but still unearths a long-buried secret to expose high society schemes of embezzlement and casual execution…

Whilst recovering from the latest bullet wounds incurred in the line of duty, Mike discovers dark deeds in the hospital and intercedes on behalf of ‘The Bandaged Woman’ who doesn’t officially exist; bringing down a diabolical doctor happy to butcher and torture patients to mollify his own monstrous child and maximise his personal fortune. Hammer’s cure is suitably efficient and comes in a single treatment…

The strip was full of raw, violence, barely concealed sex and comparatively shocking violence for America’s prime family entertainment medium, which made the subject of ‘The Child’ a charged one as Hammer is gulled by one gangster inro saving a little girl from another mob of kidnappers. When he learns he’s been made a patsy and the actual bereaved parent is President Eisenhower things get really nasty in the name of patriotism…

Hammer was never a conventional hero and the stories always pushed boundaries. Emotional turmoil rages through ‘Another Lonely Night’ after best pal Pat callously makes Mike bait to draw out mob killers and sits back as a procession of assassins seek to rub him out. At least the wounded warrior can always depend on pistol-packing Velda…

Newspapers used seasons as key sales points and everybody worked a ‘Christmas Story’ angle. For Hammer it took a typically bleak turn as – after arguing with Velda – Mike sets out to catch a crook on Christmas Eve: the busiest day of the year for grifters, grafters, pickpockets and buttonmen. Although apparently proving his point, Hammer had to ultimately concede that there is such a thing as the spirit of the season…

The dailies wrapped up with an epic ideological challenge as Hammer is targeted by the greatest criminal in America and forced to hunt an even worse public enemy in ‘Adam and Kane’. Facing three generations of sheer evil, Mike suffers a psychological freeze and is helpless against the truly diabolical son of aged Adam Shaver.

That “Napoleon of Crime” retired when he found true love but the fruit of it was even more evil and Adam now wants the toughest man in New York to bring him down for the sake of all.

Despite being physically outmatched and intellectually dwarfed, Hammer’s biggest handicap is his own fear until gloating Kane attacks other innocents under Mike’s protection. From then on, the gloves are off…

Sundays began on May 17th 1953 and there were only three before reader complaints ended the run and both strips. It began in full colour splendour with ‘Comes Murder!’ as Hammer discovers a young couple who have been gulled and roughed up by pro gambling racketeers. Incensed, Mike goes after slick Art Selton and meets his match and a major setback in the mobster’s busty blonde “assistant”. Overpowered but undaunted, he changes tack and quickly realises he’s not the only one after Selton. All he has to do is stir things up and stand back, but it helps if you know who’s actually calling the shots…

Crime never rests and when Hammer takes a short country break he meets a ghost in ‘The Sudden Trap.’ His astonishment at seeing the wife of gang boss Al Quinn two years after she died in a car crash and hubby dearest collected a million-dollar insurance pay out obsesses the PI, and his bullish investigations soon have everyone gunning for him. Luckily, local reporter Miss Hayes (no first name; just loads of diminishing “terms of affection”!) backstops him as he crashes from one wrong conclusion to the next until the many murderous fiends who want the revenant dead again are caught and the incredible truth is exposed…

The series concluded with ‘Dark City’ as traumatised Korean War vet Buddie and his sister Eve hire Mike to keep her safe from unknown assailants. Whilst doing the job, Hammer learns that he’s been lied to again. However, before he can confront them, the shamus is compelled by sheer decency to rescue her from abductors.

The scene of her being tortured is extremely graphic even by modern standards, leading to artist Robbins being accused of doing what no man could… killing Mike Hammer…

The story was wrapped up rapidly with our hero exposing the siblings’ scam in two-fisted style and the dream was over…

At its best the strip was evocative and extremely competent as well as being true to its times and its tenets. For those who admired Hammer’s oeuvre they comprise a lost treasure…

Closing this collection is behind-the-scenes feature ‘Restoring Mike Hammer’ by Daniel Herman revealing how the scattered and distressed remnants of the series were saved for publication.

Then come more objects of interest in ‘Mike Hammer and Pop Culture’ delivering poster and book cover art, extracts from comic spoofs ‘My Gun is the Jury! By Melvie Splane’ (Panic! #1 1954) and Mad Magazine’s parody of the 1980’s TV show (illustrated by Sam Viviano), candid photos and more.

Certainly not everybody’s shot of rye, From the Files of… Mike Hammer: The Complete Dailies and Sundays is a glimpse at a global icon at his visual peak: one you can take or leave but never ignore if you love exploring the annals of crime fiction.
© 2013 Mickey Spillane Publishing, LLC.

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Crossroad Blues – A Nick Travers Graphic Novel


By Ace Atkins & Marco Finnegan (12-Guage Comics/Image)
ISBN: 978-1-5343-0648-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

Following the success of long-delayed originating Nick Travers tale Last Fair Deal Gone Down, Ace Atkins & Marco Finnegan regrouped and applied their brand of Southern discomfort to the first official published exploit. Prose novel Crossroad Blues was released in 1998, with three more following every two years thereafter until 2004.

Here history and myth collide with modern tastes and business practises as Travers reviews the celebrated legend of Robert Leroy Johnson who infamously sold his soul to the Devil for musical success. He “invented” the Delta Blues, was killed in still-mysterious circumstances, is a global presence and still personifies the image of a doomed musician at the mercy of his gifts and cruel commerce. Despite his fame then and influence since, Johnson’s recording career only lasted seven months in total…

Here, a glimpse at his last moments neatly segues into college lecturer/blues documentarian Travers who is momentarily stymied in his plans to make a film about his hero Guitar Slim. Keen to break the deadlock, he checks in with Tulane’s Head of Jazz Archives Professor Randy Sexton. A guy who likes to help and one easily distracted, Nick is soon heading into the Delta for Sexton, looking for absent colleague Professor Michael Baker, who has been missing since some big-time collector hired him to locate the fabled but apparently fictional “lost recordings of Robert Johnson”…

Disbelieving but still beguiled by the notion of the Holy Grail of Blues music, Travers dogs his trail across Mississippi, encountering many dubious characters and finding new girlfriend Virginia before being sent in the direction of negro-albino “Cracker”. This enigmatic “devil-touched” old coot actually met Johnson and now lives at the Old Three Forks Store where Johnson was murdered in 1938. Sadly, he’s not there now, having been abducted and tortured by a wannabe (possibly reincarnated?) new Elvis Presley. The gun for hire has been told the aged hermit knows the location of certain legendary recordings but is all shook up at the dotard’s resistance to pain and mockery of “The King”…

After rescuing Cracker, Travers and local sheriff Willie Brown join forces, but when Nick and multi-talented Virginia search another potential location, the sheriff is murdered and Travers takes the fall until Virginia provides an alibi…

In the interim, the closeted money man behind “Elvis” breaks cover and takes over questioning Cracker. When Nick gets home to New Orleans, trouble follows him back and begins hitting his closest friends – like JoJo and Loretta…

He also has a new suspect but nobody wants to tell him who Earl Snooks is or was, and many other people even try to kill just for saying his name…

In the end, it’s Professor Randy who supplies that information and also a possible prime suspect behind all the killings and horror. Just as Travers decides to come down heavy, he gets a message that the villain will trade the recordings no one has actually seen yet for Virginia…

When the dust and blood settles, the mystery of Johnson’s death is solved, but it’s only one of many homicides and the lost records are where they’ve always been as befits the dictates of a real myth…

Complex, compelling and sublimely orchestrated, this is a yarn to delight crime cognoscenti everywhere and one you cannot miss..
© 2018 Ace Atkins. 12-Guage Comics LL authorized user. All Rights Reserved.

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Last Fair Deal Gone Down – A Nick Travers Graphic Novel


By Ace Atkins & Marco Finnegan (12-Guage Comics/Image)
ISBN: 978-0-9836937-1-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

For the majority of private eyes, unshakable ethics, deductive reasoning and an attitude are not enough. The best ones also enjoy a specific time and/or location as well as a quirk or fascination that drives them. For Nero Wolf it was fine food and rare orchids, Marcus Didio Falco was an anti-establishment family man in first century Rome, Miss Marple was elderly and genteel, and both Phryne Fisher and Lord Peter Wimsey were posh, rich, and socialist. Moreover, Harry Dresden abets sleuthing with wizardry, Dirk Gently favours a holistic approach and Detective Chimp is a chimp…

Locale and an overarching outside interest flavours so many great crimebusting ratiocinators, none more so than Nick Travers: a music-loving history-driven investigator plying his twin trades in the moody Big Easy and its shady, murder & melody immersed environs.

The musical mystery prodigy was devised by former footballer award-winning investigative journalist Ace Atkins, a prolific writer who was himself compelled to re-examine cold cases and forgotten crimes.

Born in 1970, Atkins began his fiction-weaving aged 30: penning Crossroad Blues before going on to write three more Travers books between 1998 and 2004, 11 novels of former soldier Quinn Colson and standalone novels White Shadow, Wicked City, Devil’s Garden and Infamous. In 2011, the estate of Robert B. Parker commissioned Atkins to continue that author’s saga of P.I. Spenser, with a further ten books resulting thus far.

All that industrious fictive intrigue stemmed from an unfinished, abortive early exploit of the still unformed Nick Travers. The author’s Introduction for this stunning monochrome graphic grimoire details the strange circumstances leading to that abandoned outline finally being finished in 2016 to become something of a crime-writing sensation. It pays particular heed to the fevered efforts of fan Marco Finnegan to adapt the potent parable into comics…

A masterpiece of mood and style, the story sees Blues historian and occasional Tulane University lecturer Travers enjoying the distinctive Saturday night ambience of JoJo’s Bar (as well as Loretta’s cooking). In that suitably seedy dive, veteran sax player Fats beguiles drink-sodden listeners whilst continuing his own gradual self-extinction via booze and betting. It’s the founding myth of this city…

At the close, Nick spots him a meal and realises the little legend is especially troubled. He talks about being in love Real Love. Two days later, Fats is dead… an accidental fall…

The bluesman had no friends or family so JoJo and Travers are asked to clear his meagre belongings from the flop he rented. Fats had practically nothing left but his vintage sax. It was worth a fortune if he could have ever conceived of selling it, but it’s missing now…

Outraged and overwhelmed, Nick relentlessly employs his other skillset to discover how Fats actually died, who did it and why. As more far-from-innocents are killed, he kicks open a viper’s nest of betrayal, twisted hopes, frustrated desires, criminal exploitation and bitter disappointment – which only confirms all the legends and lies of the men who make the music and the lovers they despondently play it for…

And of course, even when the case closes and the bad guy is dealt with, there’s one last moment of revelation and another betrayal to avenge…

Atmospheric, moodily authentic and drowning in potent edgy drama and tension, Last Fair Deal Gone Down is a perfect example of comics crime and Southern Noir: a wonderful passport to the world of passion, idealism and shop-soiled justice…
© 2016 Ace Atkins. Image Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Sam Hill™: In the Crosshairs


By Tom DeFalco, Greg Scott, Janice Chiang & Art Lyon coloured by Anne-Marie Ducasse, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Dark Circle Comics/Archie)
No ISBN: Digital edition

At the height of America’s Film Noir era of the early 1950s – and following the game changing emergence of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer in 1947 – comics concocted a flurry of lonely, tarnished knights. Like their literary and cinematic equivalents, they solved crimes and unravelled mysteries employing varying degrees of excessive violence, street savvy and frankly a high degree of manly misogyny.

We’ll be seeing the prime offender in action at the end of this week and I’ll be back with Hammer’s greatest disciple – Johnny Dynamite – in the not too distant future. Today, though, it’s the turn of a revived reincarnation of one of the gumshoe’s earliest imitators.

Swiftly moving to exploit the trend, recently rechristened Archie Comics (nee MLJ) launched sidebar imprint Close-Up, Inc. to carry the semi-sordid shenanigans of titular tough guy Sam Hill.

That series (boasting five or more adventures per comic) ran to seven issues in 1951 before shutting down until another century. The writer(s?) remain undisclosed to this day, but the majority of the casebook was illuminated by company A-Lister Harry Lucey (Archie, Betty & Veronica, The Hangman, Madame Satan).

For more broadminded modern times, the character was revived by Archie’s modern mature reading imprint Dark Circle. Enjoying a very contemporary setting and milieu, the enquiry agent is reinvented by scripter Tom DeFalco (Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, Fantastic Four, Spider-Girl, The Phantom), illustrator Greg Scott (X-Files, Area 51, Black Hood, Steve McQueen, Wolverine), colourist Art Lyon & letterer Janice Chiang also suffered from company hesitancy, and the presumably traditional print-designed tales ultimately surfaced as a digital only compilation. Thankfully, the material itself is eminently readable genre fare that fills a gap between mature material like Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips’ Criminal, Jason Aaron & R.M. Guéra’s Scalped or Azzarello & Risso’s 100 Bullets and all-ages crimebusting fare such as Max Allan Collins’ CSI comic adaptations, Marvel’s Cops: The Job (Larry Hama, Joe Jusko & Mike Harris) or Robert Loren Fleming & Ernie Colón’s Underworld from DC.

So, in the cosy manner of a post-watershed TV show, ‘The Case of the Willful Widow’ sees a now late middle-aged veteran sleuth hired to discreetly retrieve a sex-tape lost by or stolen from recently bereaved cougar Mrs. Clare Wentworth.

Offering no judgement, Sam scrupulously swears not to watch it before checking out family members who might profit from Clare’s public humiliation: accumulating a few suspects in the husband’s murder, and soon finding all leads point to lethal and grudge-bearing old adversary Philip “Big Marco” Marconi…

It’s not long before this poking around confirms that there’s a double cross in play, no one is telling the truth and that Hill is marked for murder… again…

After skilfully avoiding that trap, Hill and secretary assistant Molly Barsdale relax until life gets hectic again when notorious District Attorney Nathan Geller blows his brains out. ‘The Case of the Purged Politician’ latterly exposes the playboy politico’s corrupt connections to Big Marco and results in Hill being hired to shadow the DA’s successor amidst rumours that his entire staff were on the take…

Bullets replace flying accusations and more bodies drop, and just who is clean becomes a moot point when Sam’s cop buddy Detective Rufus Stack is forced to act on behalf of the city police chief who hates Hill’s guts. When another motive becomes embarrassingly clear, the true cost of power politics is apparent to all…

Sleazy glamour seizes the Private Eye’s attention in ‘The Car, the Chorus Girl and the Killers’ with Sam paid to find missing showgirl Jenna Ray DeCarlo. Gleefully checking out nightclubs, the suave shamus learns that other, far shadier guys are also seeking her…

Once again he’s stepped on the toes of Marconi and – crucially – his heirs. Oddly, Sam’s client – mob-accountant Mr Mopely – seems more eager to locate her car than his latest squeeze, and when he’s found executed in the traditional manner, Sam realises Jenna wasn’t missing but hiding…

Big changes are happening in the Marconi family, and when what everyone is looking for falls into Hill’s unwilling hands, the P.I. is hunted by the cops and the robbers…

Set square ‘In the Crosshairs’ the investigator goes on the run but doesn’t escape unscathed, (prompting an easter egg guest-shot for Archie’s own medical hero as originally seen in Young Doctor Masters) and a spectacular trap and showdown that offers no conclusion but just a precarious détente…

Stylish, smart, sassy and classy, Sam Hill: In the Crosshairs delivers plenty of action and comfortable crime drama to please any genre fan, with DeFalco’s steadfast tributes to past glories and mob fiction superbly realised by Greg Scott’s slickly atmospheric yet understated art.
© 2015 Archie Comic Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.