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The Other History of the DC Universe


By John Ridley, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Andrea Cucchi, José Villarrubia & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-1197-3 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Hard-Hitting, Strong Medicine… 9/10

The evolution and assimilation of non-white, non-standard characters – defined and othered by skin colour, religion, ethnicity and who loves whom – has been in most mass media what author and screenwriter John Ridley (12 Years a Slave; Future State: The Next Batman) has described as “measured progressiveness”.

That’s especially true in comics, where incremental firsts have been applauded – and rightly so, as the industry has always been at the forefront of progressive thinking and action – but has also suffered from a tickbox mentality where true change has been slow to materialise and hard to sustain. We can say “first black superhero”, “first gay hero”, “first interracial marriage” or “first same-sex kiss” , but other than offering a glimmer of acceptance, and recognition, what has changed?

It’s certainly better than an all-white, all-male milieu where “different” equates to “lesser than”, where more than 50% of the populace and who knows how much of the readership doesn’t conform to proposed norms and are reduced to eye-candy, plot props and useless bystanders (not even competent villains who at least have agency!). For the longest time these attitudes were tacitly enshrined on funnybook pages – and not even for sinister reasons – but what appears to simply be an unconscious acceptance of an unchallenged status quo…

You can read other books or even some previous posts here from the last month for background, if you want, but here and now, I’m pointing you towards a fascinating and gripping series recently collected as an answer to that situation.

Here Ridley – with illustrators Giuseppe Camuncoli, Andrea Cucchi, José Villarrubia and letterer Steve Wands – re-examines and deconstructs DC’s record of Diversity progress via all those slow incremental steps and breakthroughs: interpreting through the eyes and attitudes of the revolutionary characters the company added but with modern sensibilities and opinions in play…

Filtered from a socio-political perspective and assessment of those times – but not in the comfortably parochial “everything’s basically fine” tones of a white, male middle class parental audience-placator – you’ll learn a different history: one told not under Comics Code Restrictions, or commercial interests sanitising culture and attitude to keep (covertly and actively) racist authorities from embargoing titles but as heroic individuals finally telling their sides of a well-known story.

Published under DC’s Black Label mature reader imprint it begins with the story of Black Lighting in Book One – 1972-1995: Jefferson Pierce. Here we see the inner workings of an African American former Olympian who became a school teacher and vigilante to save lives and how it destroyed and damaged his family, after which Book Two – 1970-1989: Karen Beecher-Duncan & Mal Duncan recounts in their words how being the tokens on a team of white privileged teen super do-gooders shaped their lives and relationship.

A far darker divergence is applied to Japanese warrior/assassin Katana in Book Three – 1983-1996: (plus the kanji for Yamashiro Tatsu), exploring the tragic Japanese widow’s reinventions from faithful wife/widow to murderous killer and lethal weapon to nurturing superhero and beyond…

The lecture continues with the tale of a Gay Latinx cop who inherited the role of DC’s most mysterious avenger in Book Four – 1992-2007: Renee Montoya, before The Question resolves into second generation angst and answers for Book Five – 1981-2010: Anissa Pierce. Here Black Lightning’s actual legacy and effect on DC continuity is reappraised through the eyes of his superhero children Thunder and Lightning, with religion and sexual orientation also coming under fire.

All we’ve seen before is summed up with no obfuscations or confusions, but you might want to reread or acquaint yourself with the original material as seen in various volumes of Black Lightning, Teen Titans, The Outsiders as well as selected continuity highpoints of Green Lantern, Batman, Cosmic Odyssey, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Death of Superman. Don’t let the reading list deter you though: you could simply plunge right in and wing it. The material, its tone and reinterpretation are carefully orchestrated and fully approachable for any level of fan from veteran adept to casual film watcher…

Ridley enacts a miraculous slice of sleight of hand here, examining simultaneously the actual published comics as accepted DC lore but also the redefining times they were created in and filling out the characters in modern terms – quite a feat of meta-realism…

The covers are by Camuncoli & Marco Mastrazzo with Jamal Campbell producing some stunning variants, but the true attraction of The Other History of the DC Universe is the knowledge that times and attitudes have changed enough that this book is even possible. Read it and see…
© 2021 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Jughead: The Hunger volume One


By Frank Tieri, Michael Walsh, Pat & Tim Kennedy & various (Archie Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-68255-901-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

For over 80 years Archie Andrews has epitomised good, safe, wholesome fun, but the staid and stable company shepherding his adventures has always harboured an ingeniously hidden and deviously subversive element of mischief. Family-friendly superheroes, spooky chills, sci-fi thrills and genre yarns have been as much a part of the publisher’s varied portfolio as those romantic comedy capers of America’s cleanest-cut teens since the company Golden Age debut as MLJ publications.

As you surely know by now, Archie has been around since 1941, spending most of the intervening decades chasing both tantalisingly attainable (yeah, right!) Betty Cooper and wildly out-of-his-league debutante Veronica Lodge. The game was played with best friend Jughead Jones alternately mocking and abetting his romantic endeavours whilst rival Reggie Mantle sought to scuttle every move…

As crafted by a legion of writers and artists who logged innumerable stories of teen antics in and around idyllic, utopian small-town Riverdale, these timeless tales of decent, fun-loving kids captivated successive generations of readers and entertained millions worldwide.

To keep all that accumulated attention riveted, the company has always looked to modern trends with which to expand upon their archetypal brief. In times past they strengthened and cross-fertilised their stable of stars through a variety of team-ups such as Archie Meets the Punisher, Archie Meets Glee, Archie Meets Vampirella and Archie Meets Kiss, whilst every type of fashion-fad and youth-culture sensation have invariably been shoehorned in and explored on the pages of the regular titles.

The company has long exploited a close affinity with horror stories and – combined with the boost of racy new TV franchise Riverdale specifically aimed at “young adults” – launched a range of alternate scary, gory spins-off including Vampironica, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and the tasty treat on view here…

The premise is deliciously sharp and appetising: ever since his 1941 debut, Forsythe Pendleton “Jughead” Jones has been a witty, sarcastic outsider: a little bit weird, very intelligent, immune to teenage love, faithful and loyal to Archie but – above all else – preternaturally hungry and apparently insatiable.

Reimagining this evergreen comedy prop, Frank Tieri injected some harsh (meta) reality in One-Shot’ – illustrated by Michael Walsh, coloured by Dee Cunniffe and lettered by Jack Morelli – by heading deep into Teen Wolf territory…

In this Riverdale, the traditional setup maintains until the night when beloved teacher Miss Grundy is eviscerated and beheaded by “the Riverdale Ripper”. The old gang are the last to hear the awful news about their favourite educator because they’re all watching Jughead put another All-you-can-eat diner out of business…

However, all notions of innocent fun forever vanish as a season of mayhem continues. Pop Tate, Big Ethel and Jug’s cousin Bingo Wilkins are also victims of a savage serial killer, and the Jones kid is feeling utterly unlike himself as he shambles home at nightfall. Everything seems sharper, clearer, and more intense.

The answer to Jug’s inner turmoil becomes clear when he meets Dilton Doily and the safe old life ends forever. As a wave of sensation overwhelms him, Jug he feels a change coming… and wakes up in his own bedroom, covered in blood and bits of Dilton…

Panicked and desperate, “Juggie” rushes to his best friend, only to learn Archie was a traumatised witness to the entire revolting encounter and saw him transform into a ravening beast… as well as what followed…

Before the best buds can even begin to process what’s happened, sweet dependable Betty arrives. The dilemma of whether to share the secret with her is solved when she explodes into martial arts mayhem, ruthlessly beating Jug before trying to shoot him…

Barely able to restrain her, Archie hears an incredible story: how the Jones clan have been lycanthropes for centuries, with her family – the Coopers – hereditary werewolf hunters for just as long. They are raised from birth to end their depredations when they turn feral…

She’s been watching and waiting for most of the gang’s lives and now it’s time to abandon friendship and do her duty…

Incredibly, Archies entreaties convince her to try an old unproven method, seeking to cure instead of kill. Days pass and all seems well until Jughead (and his beloved pet Hotdog) vanish from Riverdale. In their absence, the mangled body of Reggie Mantle is discovered…

All that occurred in a stand-alone debut released in March 2017, but the story picked up in October with a continuing series, joining other books in a separate Archie Horror imprint. Tieri remained as scripter, with Pat & Tim Kennedy, Bob Smith, Jim Amash, Matt Herms & Morelli completing the creative cast. The first three issues complete this terror tome, with the tale expanding as emergency doctors manage to resuscitate Reggie. They don’t live long enough to regret it…

Meanwhile, young wanderer “Smith” and his dog have joined a circus. Friendly but tight-lipped, they fit right in, and nobody asks why the kid “borrows” the escape artist’s gear every night…

Archie and Betty are relentlessly searching the region, but she is becoming increasingly unstable and violent. All Archie’s attempts to placate her are wasted, especially after she links up with her kin in the Cooper Underground: all eagerly looking for a fresh werewolf to kill. Andrews is now painfully aware that the entire world is crazy and he was utterly unaware of how it really works…

The same can be said for Jughead, who wakes up beside the bloody remnants of a circus girl. However, once he calms down enough to doublecheck, he realises he didn’t escape his bonds but was released by persons unknown…

Back in Riverdale, Ronnie Lodge is baffled and shaken by events and only achieves understanding in the brief moments before the true architect of all Jughead’s woes adds her to the body count…

With additional art contributions from Joe Eisma, the second chapter sees even more beloved characters fall to the mystery murderer. Not far away, Archie gets a crash course in monster-fighting and comes to the appalling conclusion that the only way to be true to his friend is to end him…

With Juggie’s face all over TV, a manhunt closes in on the “teen serial killer”, but when cops close in, Jones finds he has an unsuspected ally, someone he’d believed long dead…

Issue #3 finds that comrade sharing some useful werewolf tricks and tips; disclosing how he’d been using Jug to protect his own secret life. Their falling out mirrors the moment Betty takes Archie to meet her Auntie Elena who runs a global cabal dedicated to killing weird beasts, and the Andrews boy makes his own momentous decision. Inevitably all factions converge just as Jughead is battling for his life and trying to decide who’s side he’s on.

Silver bullets fly and the decision is taken out of his gore-streaked hands…

To Be Continued…

Fast-paced, pleasingly irreverent, blood-soaked and bombastic, the wild ride also offers a Special Features section comprising an Introduction by screenwriter Matthew Rosenberg discussing “Americana”, and a closing gallery of covers & variants by Franco Francavilla, Adam Goreham, Robert Hack, Walsh, and T-Rex, plus Character Sketches and Sample Pages by the Kennedys and pages tracing the process from pencils to finished art.

This terror-packed tome closes with a bonus story: the initial outing of Vampironica by Greg & Meg Smallwood, detailing how the darling debutante became a decidedly unconventional bloodsucker. Stay braced for a full review of her own in the weeks to come…

Brilliantly reimagining cosy comforting friends into compelling new roles, this is a spooky feast for fans and newcomers alike.
™ & © 2018 Archie Comic Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Creature Commandos


By J.M. DeMatteis, Robert Kanigher, Mike W. Barr, Fred Carrillo, Pat Broderick, John Celardo, Bob Hall, Jerry Ordway, Dan Spiegle, & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4382-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

American comic books just idled along rather meekly until the 1938 invention of Superman provided a flamboyant new genre for heroes: subsequently and bombastically unleashing a torrent of creative imitation for a suddenly thriving and voracious new entertainment model that would enthral future generations.

Implacably vested in World War II, gaudily-garbed mystery men swept all before them until the troops came home, but as the decade closed traditional themes and heroes resurfaced to gradually supplant the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Even as a new crop of kids began buying and collecting, many of the first fans who had retained a four-colour habit sought more mature themes in their pictorial reading matter. Recent conflict and post-war paranoia irrevocably altered the psychological landscape of the readership as a more world-weary, cynical public slowly realised that all the fighting and dying hadn’t changed anything. The period’s established forms of entertainment – film, radio, theatre and prose, as well as comics – increasingly reflected this.

To balance the return of Western, War, Crime and imminent Atomic Armageddon-fuelled Science Fiction, comics created fresh fields. Celebrity tie-ins, escapist teen-oriented comedy and anthropomorphic animal features thrived, and gradually another of the cyclical revivals of spiritualism and increased public fascination with the arcane led to a wave of impressive, evocative and shockingly addictive horror comics.

DC Comics bowed to the inevitable by launching a comparatively straight-laced anthology which nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with December 1951/January 1952 cover-dated The House of Mystery.

After the hysterical censorship debate which led to witch-hunting Senate hearings in the early 1950s was curtailed by the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self-regulation, titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, but the audience’s appetite for suspense was still high and in 1956 National introduced sister titles Tales of the Unexpected and House of Secrets.

Stories were dialled back from uncanny yarns to (always) marvellously rendered, rationalistic fantasy-adventures and, ultimately, straight monster-busting Sci Fi tales which dominated the market into the 1960s. That’s when superheroes – enjoying their own visionary revival after Julius Schwartz reintroduced The Flash in Showcase #4 – finally overtook them.

Such was never the case with war comics. Tales of ordinary guys in combat began with the industry itself and although mostly sidelined during the capes-&-cowls war years, quickly began to assert themselves again once the actual fighting stopped.

National/DC were one of the last to get in on the combat trend: converting superhero/fantasy adventure anthology Star Spangled Comics into Star Spangled War Stories the same month Our Army at War launched (both cover-dated August 1952). Also repurposed, All-American Comics became All-American Men of War a month later as the “police action” in Korea escalated.

National grew the division slowly but steadily, adding Our Fighting Forces #1 (November 1954) – just as EC’s groundbreaking combat comics were vanishing – and in 1957 added GI Combat to their portfolio when Quality Comics got out of the funnybook business.

As the decade closed, the anthologies all began incorporating recurring characters to the mix. Gunner and Sarge – and latterly Pooch – launched in Our Fighting Forces #45 (May 1959). They were followed a month later by Sgt Rock in Our Army at War #83 and – addressing mystery as well as mayhem – The War that Time Forgot debuted in Star Spangled War Stories #99 (May 1960) and The Haunted Tank took off in G.I. Combat #87 (April/May 1961). Soon every DC war book had a lead star or feature to hold the fickle readers’ attention.

The drive to produce superior material never wavered, however, hugely aided by the diligent and meticulous ministrations of writer/editor Robert Kanigher. As the Vietnam War escalated, 1960s America increasingly endured a Home Front death-struggle pitting deeply-ingrained Establishment attitudes against a young generation with a radical new social sensibility. In response, military-themed comic books from National Periodical Publishing became even more boldly innovative…

However, another sudden superheroes dieback led to serious rethinking and although war titles maintained and even increased sales, the editors beefed up both supernatural and anthological elements. Thus in 1971 (cover-dated October), a title merging horror scenarios with battle yarns seemed a forgone conclusion: a sure thing for both publishers and readers alike. The notion proved correct and Weird War Tales ran for 124 issues: a DC mainstay for 12 years and experimental forge for many young creators to learn the craft and business.

Eventually, history again repeated itself and character vehicles began to replace stand-alone stories: primarily revivals of earlier features such as The War That Time Forgot and G.I. Robot, but also the uncanny undercover unit that is the star of this turbulent tome.

Compiling stories and even some comedy sidebars first seen in Weird War Tales #93, 97, 100, 102, 105, 108-112, 114-119, 121 and 124 (spanning cover-dates November 1980 to June 1983), this vintage tome offers a broad blend of genre mash-ups for armchair combat fans with a taste for the dark and uncanny to relish.

It begins without flourish in WWT #93 as J.M. DeMatteis, Pat Broderick & John Celardo introduce ‘The Creature Commandos!’ Spring 1942 and America’s Project M (for Monster) and US Army Intelligence officer Matthew Shrieve want to create a specialist team for rapid strike missions using mankind’s primordial terrors as a psychological weapon.

Their prime candidates are three originally ordinary soldiers altered by science into analogues of Hollywood horrors. After stepping on a landmine and surviving experimental surgery Marine private Elliot “Lucky” Taylor is now a mute Frankensteinian colossus, whilst cashiered sergeant Vincent Velcro chose a course of bat blood serum treatments over 30 years in the brig: and is now a shapeshifting bloodsucking vampire. Unable to enlist because he suffered from “blood disorder” lycanthropy, Warren Griffiths was “treated” until he became an impermanently manifested werewolf. The proposed team would be completed by Shrieve himself: a human problem solver (for which read “callous psychopath”) in command of a relentless ruthless squad designed to strike fear into the hearts of the foe…

Allied Command are disgusted and never want to see the squad again, but as it’s wartime, that translates as dumping them in occupied France with orders to do as much damage as possible…

The first mission drops them on Castle Conquest, where Nazi robotic experiments prove no match for their savagery, but success is somewhat spoiled after Shrieve is shown to consider them utterly expendable freaks…

Fred Carrillo limns DeMatteis’ sequel in #97 (March 1981) as ‘The Creature Commandos vs. the Faceless Enemy!’  sees the monster squad enduring bitter winter weather and Nazi attacks whilst rescuing sexy scientist Dr. Frederique who turns out to be not what she seems, after which anniversary issue #100 (June 1981) highlights Mike W. Barr, Bob Hall & Jerry Ordway’s mighty team-up ‘Dinosaur Convoy!’

Here the eerie expendables are in the South Pacific to verify repeated reports of dinosaurs, only to clash with a Japanese task force on a similar mission. As Shrieve grows evermore bestial and brutal, his subordinates increasingly embrace their lost humanity even while slaughtering the foe and in the end “convince” their commander to keep the saurian secret and out of the war effort…

By now the terror team was assured of continued service and returned in #102 (August) as DeMatteis & Carrillo detailed ‘The Children’s Crusade!’ Here Adolf Hitler personally indoctrinates little German orphans to form a cadre of perfect, chemically-enhanced killers. To stop them, who better than Liberty’s own monsters, but in the end can even these dread agents do their duty?

A mirth break comes in a single-page gag by Dave Manak (WWT #104), as the squad star in patriotic movie ‘The Monster Marines’ before DeMatteis & Carrillo use #105 (November) to explore ‘The War at Home!’ Ordered back to upstate New York, the unit invades and eradicates the town of Freedom: routing out a nest of Nazi sympathisers where once again Shrieve proves just how much he belongs on a team of monsters…

Manak cartoonishly strikes again in #107 with an encore performance of ‘The Monster Marines’, after which DeMatteis, Hall & Celardo dump the squad ‘In the Kingdom of the Damned’ (#108 February 1982). It begins with Lucky attempting to end his abominable existence and triggers a flashback to the Creature Commandos’ last mission. Whilst destroying a Nazi death camp the team were captured and tortured, but the true horror for the patchwork man was making – and losing – a friend who truly understood him…

Weird war maestro Robert Kanigher signed up as writer with #109 and – with brilliant but underappreciated artist Dan Spiegle – contrived a continued tale that concluded in the next issue.

Velcro had been increasingly plagued by his uncontrollable blood thirst for months and ‘Roses are Red – But Blood is Redder, part 1: The Beast Within Us!’ saw him reject the bottled sustenance for fresher sources. Stopped by the recovered Lucky, the vampire swore off French maids (for now) even as the squad deployed to a fogged-in tank battlefield to halt a German counterattack by blowing up a dam.

The job was disaster-prone but still successful. ‘Roses are Red – But Blood is Redder, part 2: A Mirror for Monsters!’ found the almost drowned quartet stranded. Shrieve – whose bullying of “his freaks” had become incessant and obsessive was seriously injured and the monsters had to decide whether it was worth saving him. Valorous as ever, they carried him across enemy lines and a mountain of enemy bodies to a medical base where army plastic surgeon Myrna Rhodes saved the sadistic psycho. Tragically, their emotional overreaction cause a chemical accident bathing Rhodes in unknown chemicals and mutating her into a doppelganger of the mythical Medusa – albeit without the petrifying gaze…

With no other place to go, the medic becomes the latest addition to the Creature Commandos…

Cover-dated May, WWT #111 crossed over with comic book stablemate G.I. Robot as J.A.K.E. (Jungle Automatic Killer Experimental) #1 loses his human handler Sgt. Coker and goes AW/OL just as Shrieve’s team are returned to the Pacific Theatre to solve a mystery.

Allied shipping is being sunk and cannot relieve marines stranded on Tattu Island so the exotic expendables are dropped in by parachute only to encounter more dinosaurs.

Happily J.A.K.E. is on hand to save them from big hungry lizards, ancient “Atlantides” and ‘The Doomsday Robots!’…

Spiegle’s singular run ends with #112 as the unit is seconded to North Africa and Dr. Rhodes discovers an ancient analogue of her condition in an unearthed pyramid. With her comrades shockingly transformed by ‘The Medusa Sting!’, she is forced to carry them over the burning desert sands and foil Rommel’s advance until the spell wears off.

Carrillo joined Kanigher in #114 (August), remaining for the rest of the run. His first job was illustrating the monster squad’s infiltration of Berlin as a ‘Circus of Madness’ and raid on a concentration camp to rescue a nuclear scientist, before meeting J.A.K.E. II as he recuperates from injuries (damage?). As the mechanoid discovers love with blind blonde British princess Dana (just don’t, okay! It’s comics!) the weird heroes learn that ‘You Can’t Pin a Medal on a Robot’…

By this stage the writing was on the wall for genre comics, and internal logic and consistency was under mounting pressure. Weird War Tales #116 opened a ‘Doorway to Hell’ as ancient and heartless volcano goddess Inferna awakes just in time to interfere in the Commandos’ invasion of Sicily and abduct Shrieve to be her toyboy. Despite themselves, the terrors rescue their tormentor and head to Paris for R&R. After suitably upsetting the locals the horrors are recalled for another mission, but with Shrieve declared unfit for duty cannot find a commander to lead them. Bored, desperate and ever more unpopular, the team even take a pilgrimage to Holy Shrine of Lourdes before making ‘A Miracle for Monsters!’ to get back into the war.

Cover-dated December 1982, another team-up with the G.I. Robot in #118 proves ‘Heroes Come in Small Sizes’ as escaping German POWs take French children hostage to facilitate their escape but underestimate the ingenuity and determination of the beast warriors, before the scene shifts to London in #119 where unthinking prejudice drives the horror heroes back to the Front. Entering Italy, they battle Nazi execution squads covering atrocities and shut down rocket factories, but always meet rejection from those they aid…

When a sympathetic scientist offers to send them to a kinder future era, the monsters jump at the chance, but soon find that tomorrow’s ‘World Under Glass’ is even worse…

Returning to the devils they know, the squad resurfaces in #121 (March 1983) where ‘Death Smiles Thrice!’ and Hitler’s top brass unleash a psychological onslaught to destroy them. Of course, the unit have faced robot doubles before and know exactly how to respond.

The era of unbridled imagination unceremoniously ended with a single page sign-off in Weird War Tales #124 (June 1983) as Shrieve commits the Creature Commandos to one final mission… ‘Destination Unknown!’

With covers by Joe Kubert, Ross Andru, Romeo Tanghal, Rich Buckler, Dick Giordano, Frank Giacoia, Jim Aparo, Mike DeCarlo, Joe Staton & Bruce Patterson, Gil Kane & Trevor von Eeden, this manic menagerie of military monster madness celebrates a long-gone and much missed time of variety where “what if” was king and logic played second fiddle to moments of wide-eyed wonder.

By turns chilling, thrilling, daft, emotionally intense, and utterly outrageous – but always superbly illustrated, insanely addictive and Just Plain Fun – this is a deliciously guilty pleasure to astound and delight any lover of fantasy fiction and comics that work on plot invention rather than character compulsion. The Creature Commandos is a tome for all lovers of dark delight and one no arcane aficionada can afford to be without.
© 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 2014 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Ghost Tree


By Bobby Curnow & Simon Gane; coloured by Ian Herring & Becka Kinzie and lettered by Chris Mowry (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1684055999 (TPB) eISBN: 978-68406-810-4

The innate sadness and intense incompleteness of the spiritual world is something we tend to sideline in modern fiction, but once upon a time the melancholia of both the quick and the dead was far more important than scaring the pants off a thrill-seeking audience.

That old world approach is wonderfully revived in Ghost Tree, where author Bobby Curnow (Night of 1000 Wolves; My Little Pony; Battle Beasts; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), illustrator Simon Gane (They’re Not Like Us; Godzilla; Northlanders; Unfollow; Paris) and primary colour artist Ian Herring (Minor Threats; Ms Marvel; Nova: Resurrection; Junior Citizens) examine loss, legacy and duty. It’s all deftly done through a slowly unfolding search for self in its protagonist, and meaning or closure in the myriad spirits he is unwillingly connected to…

Despite growing up in the USA, Brandt was always close to his Japanese grandfather. However, the gentle old man also had other concerns and seemed to split his time. One day when the boy was visiting the old country, his beloved Ojii-chan wandered deep into the forests around the old ancestral home.

Curiously following, the boy stopped at a strangely twisted willow tree where the old man asked him to make a promise. A dutiful, diligent, loving – but uncomprehending – grandson, Brandt swore to return to this spot ten years after Ojii-chan died…

Decades later, the man Brandt is heading back to Japan. Grown up and married, he’d all but forgotten that day. Now with his world disintegrating and Alice leaving, he’s flying to the ancestral homestead where his widowed grandmother still lives. Cousin Mariko and her new baby meet him at the airport. She’s worried stubborn, headstrong Obaa-chan is not doing well…

Grandmother is as blunt and feisty as ever, hectoring the new generation on how they should live. It’s a little too much and Brandt has to step outside. Reminiscing about those carefree childhood days, he thinks he sees something at the edge of the woods…

Restless and jetlagged, his sleep is also disrupted as he thinks of what might have been if he had stayed here with Arami rather than living in America…

Unaware that he’s under keen scrutiny, Brandt tries to make peace with grandma, and learns that the happy family was anything but. Shocked by revelations of his forebears’ lives lived at odds, he wanders off into the woods. He might have forgotten that Ojii-chan has now been dead for a decade, but everything comes flooding back when he finds the old man waiting for him by that certain willow…

As they chat under the ghost tree, the dead man explains that for generations some family members have been able to see kami and talk to spirits. Moreover, certain places are attractors, and lost souls are drawn to them. They are usually, angry, confused and despairing, haunted by things left unsaid or not done…

Whilst they sit, dozens of dead people and stranger things draw closer. Grandfather explains they expect Brandt to intercede for them and help deal with their unfinished business…

The old man wants him to avoid the family’s burden and nor repeat his own mistakes: to live a life among the living. His advice is wasted and worthless as Brandt has seen his first love Arami is one of the clamorous phantoms…

Soon the mortal is counselling revenants and carrying out minor missions on their behalf, but the renewed activity around the tree has drawn some of the worst horrors of Japanese mythology, and Brandt learns that the Zero – a traditional guardian defender – is slowly fading.

With Grandfather urging him to forsake the dead and spend time with his family, and Arami looking for reasons to stay or pass on, the conflicted man of two worlds is clearly avoiding making decisions, when the choice is taken from him.

With the safety of the living also threatened by encroaching demons, Brandt must confront uncomfortable home truths before devising a solution to satisfy all parties and safeguard both worlds. Then it’s time to tackle the hard job: fixing his marital situation and getting on with life…

Powerful, sensitive, heartwarming and uncompromising, this very human drama offers echoes of classic movie fantasies such as A Matter of Life and Death (1948) and The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947), suggesting that the dead are always with us and that – unlike families – it’s nothing to be scared of…
Ghost Tree. November 2019. © 2019 Curnow. Gane. Herring. © 2019 Idea and Design Works, LLC.

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Mandrake the Magician®: The Complete King Years volume 1


By Lee Falk & Phil Davis, Fred Fredericks, Don Heck, Andre LeBlanc & various (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-098-7 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Vintage Magical Mystery Masterpiece… 9/10

Regarded by many as comics’ first superhero, Mandrake the Magician debuted as a daily newspaper strip on 11th June 1934 – although creator Lee Falk had first tried to sell the strip a decade previously. Initially drawing the strip too, Falk soon replaced himself, allowing the early wonderment to materialise through the effective understatement of sublime draughtsman Phil Davis. An instant hit, it was soon supplemented by a full-colour Sunday companion page which launched on February 3rd 1935.

Falk sold Mandrake to King Features Syndicate years earlier as a 19-year old college student, but asked the monolithic company to let him finish his studies before dedicating himself to the strip full time. Schooling done, the 23-year-old master raconteur settled in to begin his life’s work: entertaining millions with his astounding tales.

Falk – who also created the first costumed superhero in moodily magnificent manhunter The Phantom – spawned an entire comicbook subgenre with his first creation. Most Golden Age publishers boasted at least one (and usually many) nattily attired wizards in their gaudily-garbed pantheons: all roaming the world making miracles and crushing injustice with varying degrees of stage legerdemain or actual sorcery.

Characters such Mr. Mystic, Ibis the Invincible, Sargon the Sorcerer, and an assortment of … the Magician such as Zanzibar, Zatara, Kardak ad infinitum all borrowed heavily and shamelessly from the uncanny exploits of the elegant, enigmatic man of mystery who graced the pages of the world’s newspapers and magazines.

In the Antipodes, Mandrake was a suave stalwart regular of Australian Women’s Weekly and also became a cherished icon of adventure in the UK, Italy and Scandinavia. As seen and described in Eileen Sabrina Herman’s ‘Introduction: The Magic behind Mandrake’ the Magician was a major star of page & screen, pervading every aspect of global consciousness. This erudite appreciation also includes tantalising merchandise and memorabilia and movie posters plus original art by not just by Falk, Davis, Ray Baily, Don Heck, and Fredericks but also a stunning Phantom team-up pic from Don Newton.

Over decades he’s been a star of radio, movies, chapter-serials, a theatrical play, television animation (as part of the cartoon series Defenders of the Earth). With that came the usual merchandising bonanza of games, toys (including magic trick kits), books, comics and more…

Falk worked on Mandrake and “The Ghost who Walks” until his death in 1999 (on his deathbed he was laying out one last story), but also found a few quiet moments to become a renowned playwright, theatre producer and impresario, as well as an inveterate world-traveller. However, even he couldn’t keep up with the demand, which is where this collection comes in…

Between 1966 and 1967, King Features Syndicate dabbled with a comic book line of their biggest stars – Popeye, Flash Gordon, The Phantom and Mandrake – developed after the characters had enjoyed newsstand stardom under the broad and effective aegis of veteran licensed properties publisher Gold Key Comics.

Mandrake was no stranger to funnybooks, having featured in the David McKay Company’s 1939 Magic Comics (1939-1949 and Dell’s Four Color #752, as reformatted strip reprints and in new material. He was also a major player for child-friendly Big Little Books.

This initial archival full-colour volume gathers the pertinent contents of Mandrake the Magician #1-5, spanning September 1966 to May 1967, plus back-up material from Flash Gordon #1-3, and also includes a wealth of unseen art and candid photos.

As part of a cross-selling policy at that period, King Comics revived the ancient practise of adding short story vignettes of other stars to their publications. The Magician regularly added mystery and imagination to the line-up of Earth’s greatest interstellar explorer…

Those in the know are well aware that Mandrake was educated at the fabled College of Magic in Tibet, thereafter becoming a famous, suave globe-trotting troubleshooter: always accompanied by faithful African partner Lothar and beautiful companion (eventually, in 1997, bride) Princess Narda of Cockaigne. Together forever, they faced the uncanny, solved crimes and fought evil.

With covers by Don Heck & Mike Peppe, André LeBlanc and Fred Fredericks, all these stories are scripted by Dick Wood before Gary Poole takes over with the second story in #4. The show begins with a monochrome inside front cover feature from then-current strip artist Fred Fredericks who shared secrets of Mandrake’s mountaintop home in ‘Danger Drive to Xanadu’. Harold “Fred” Fredericks had taken over art production when Davis died in 1965, and assumed full creative duties when Falk himself passed on in 1999.

Here, however, Wood, Don Heck & André LeBlanc open festivities by detailing ‘Menace of the City Jungle!’, wherein Mandrake and Lothar volunteer to clean up a crime-infested park and its extended locality by playing hapless bait for an army of bandits and muggers. The combination of illusion, hypnotism and brute force is so successful, the duo then have to devise a scheme to stop the cops feeling slighted and inadequate!

Werner Roth & LeBlanc then expose ‘The Flying Phantom!’, as the city is plagued by an uncanny plunderer employing magic carpets and winged horses until Mandrake steps in to foil the thief and spoil the trick…

Fredericks then concludes his monochrome travelogue of ‘The House of Wonders’ for the inside back cover, after which the November cover-dated, all Wood & LeBlanc second issue opens with a truly tense sci fi drama. All Earth can hear the increasingly panicked pleas and threats of an alien space craft hurtling to its doom, but no tool of mankind seems able to see or save ‘The Spectre from Space’. Thankfully, Mandrake is around and able to apply his wisdom to the crisis…

A far more plebian police problem is solved when gangster Lucky Larry Yates opens his law-defying gamblers palace, and Mandrake is called in to exorcise ‘The Phantom Casino’…

Mandrake the Magician #3 (January 1967) addressed global politics after despondent British nuclear scientist Dr. Andrew Crane decides to save the world from itself by allowing enemy agents to use his ultimate weapon in a deterrence demonstration. Of course, foreign spies can’t be trusted and the free world needs Mandrake’s talents to save ‘The Doomsday Man’ from himself and everybody else from utter annihilation…

A sudden change of pace brings the magician and Lothar way out west to expose a rowdy ghost terrorising a frontier town. However, when brazen “bandito” Pancho Valdez proves immune to Mandrake’s gifts, the cunning conjuror simple switches to brain power to stop ‘The Terror of the Haunted Desert’…

Crime was the spur for Wood’s last outing as a magician’s convention is threatened by ‘The Black Wizard!’ who mimics the signature tricks of many magnificent showmen – until Mandrake and Lothar expose the mastermind behind the crimewave – after which Gary Poole joins LeBlanc to detail an insidious impersonator targeting High Society. This malign malcontent even puts Mandrake in jail before the magician can foil ‘The Frame-Up’… or does he?

Ray Bailey illustrated #5 (May 1967) beginning with a nautical campaign as Mandrake and Lothar spectacularly dismantle a ultra-modern pirate band in ‘Cape Cod Caper’, after which ‘The Fear Mongers’ sees warring kingdoms pacified and their (intimately related) rulers reconciled after a bizarre faux alien invasion…

Those aforementioned backup stories begin with Wood, Heck & LeBlanc’s ‘Midnight with Mandrake’ from Flash Gordon #1 (September 1966) as a gang of thieves unleashes sleeping gas on a city crowd, only to have Mandrake change it from soporific to an hallucinogen…

‘The Laughing Clown Caper’ then pits the wanderers against a malevolent mountebank seeking to wreck a rival’s career, whilst ‘The Little Giant’ sees the worldly wizard give an undersized fight promoter a psychological boost to deter local bullies and fight-fixing thugs. As an added bonus, the original art for this entire uncredited story (maybe Wood and Frank Springer?) is also included here, preceding a lavish and fascinating look at the strip and comic book career of an artistic legend as Spike Barkin conducts a copiously illustrated and informative ‘Focus: Interview with Fred Fredericks’.

This thrilling tome offers exotic locales, thrilling action, spooky chills and sheer elegance in equal measure. These stories have lost none of their impact and only need you reading them. Sprinkled liberally with original art pages, this a delicious, nostalgia-drenched triumph is perfect for the Halloween season: straightforward, captivating eerie action-adventure that has always been the staple of comics fiction. If that sounds like a good time to you, that’s Magic!
Mandrake the Magician® © 1966-1967 and 2015 King Features Syndicate, Inc.; Hearst Holdings, Inc. Reprinted with Permission. All rights reserved.

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Swamp Thing: The Bronze Age volume 2


By David Michelinie, Gerry Conway, Carla Conway, David Anthony Kraft, Steve Englehart, Bob Haney, Martin Pasko, Nestor Redondo, Fred Carrillo, Keith Giffen, Michael Netzer, Murphy Anderson, Ernie Chan & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-9422-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Utter Moodily, Moss-Bedecked Entertainment Perfection… 9/10

The first fan-sensation of the modern era – now officially enshrined as the Bronze Age – of American comic books – Swamp Thing has powerful popular fiction antecedents and in 1972 was seemingly a concept whose time had come again. Prime evidence was the fact that Marvel were also working on a man-into-mucky, muddy mess character at the very same time.

Both Swampy and the Macabre Man-Thing were thematic revisions of Theodore Sturgeon’s classic novella It, and bore strong resemblances to a hugely popular Hillman Comics star dubbed The Heap. He/it sloshed through the back of Airboy Comics (née Air Fighters Comics) from1943 onwards and my fan-boy radar suspects Roy Thomas’ marsh-monster the Glob (from Incredible Hulk #121, November 1969 and #129, June 1970) either inspired both DC and Marvel’s creative teams, or was part of that same zeitgeist.

It should also be remembered that in the autumn of 1971 Skywald – a very minor player with big aspirations – released a monochrome magazine in their Warren Comics knock-off line entitled The Heap.

For whatever reason, by the end of the 1960s superhero comics were in another steep sales decline, again succumbing to a genre boom led by a horror/mystery resurgence. A swift rewriting of the Comics Code Authority augmented the changeover and at National/DC, veteran EC comics star Joe Orlando became editor of House of Mystery and sister title House of Secrets.

These returned to short story anthology formats and gothic mystery scenarios, taking a lead from TV triumphs such as Twilight Zone and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery.

Referencing the sardonic narrator/storyteller format of those EC horror titles, Orlando created Cain and Abel to shepherd readers through brief, sting-in-the-tail yarns produced by the best new and established creators the company could hire. Artists Neal Adams, Mike Kaluta, and especially Bernie Wrightson produced some of their best work for these titles, and the vast range of spin-offs the horror boom generated at DC.

The 12th anthology issue of the resurrected House of Secrets (#92, June/July 1971) cemented the genre into place as the industry leader. There writer Len Wein & Wrightson produced a throwaway gothic thriller set at the turn of the 19th century, wherein gentleman scientist Alex Olsen was murdered by his best friend with his corpse dumped in a swamp.

Years later, Olsen’s beloved bride – now the unsuspecting wife of the murderer – was stalked by a shambling, disgusting beast that seemed to be composed of mud and muck…

The tale struck an immediate chord with the public. That issue was the best-selling DC comic of that month, and reader response was fervent and persistent. By all accounts, the only reason there wasn’t an immediate sequel or spin-off was that the creative team didn’t want to produce one. Eventually however, bowing to interminable pressure, and with the sensible idea of transplanting the concept to contemporary America, Swamp Thing #1 appeared on newsstands in the Spring of 1972. It was an unqualified hit and instant classic…

Wein & Wrightson produced 10 issues together: an extended, multi-chaptered saga of justice and vengeance encompassing a quest for answers that was at once philosophically typical of the time and a prototype for the story-arc and mini-series formats that dominate today’s comics. They also used each issue/chapter to pay tribute to a specific sub-genre of timeless horror story whilst advancing the major plot…

When Alec and Linda Holland retreated deep into the Louisiana Bayou to work on a bio-restorative formula to revolutionise global farming, they had no idea criminal organisation “The Conclave” was after their research. Despite the best efforts of Secret Service agent Matt Cable, the lab was bombed and Linda died instantly. Alec – showered with his own formula and blazing like a torch – hurtled to a watery grave in the swamp. He did not die…

Transformed by the formula (and remember, please, this was prior to Alan Moore’s landmark re-imagining of the character) Holland transformed into a huge man-shaped thing: immensely strong, barely able to speak, and seemingly composed of living plant matter. Holland’s brain still functioned, however, and he vacillated between finding his wife’s killers and curing his own monstrous condition. Cable, misinterpreting the evidence, became obsessed with killing the beat, believing it caused the deaths of his two friends and charges…

Swamp Thing travelled the world, encountering the darkest outbreaks of classic supernature and the insatiable greed of human beasts before eventually convincing Cable of his innocence and true identity. Joined by Abigail Arcane – niece of archenemy and necromantic sorcerer Anton Arcane – they roamed a nation and world increasingly beset by uncanny terrors and macabre plots, with new allies like mystery man Bolt at their side.

Wein’s last issue was #13, having ushered in a new direction for Nestor Redondo – who replaced Wrightson with #11 – to display his own gifts and quickly become the artistic driving force.

Born in 1928 at Candon, Ilocas Sur in the American Territory of the Philippines, Redondo was influenced by US strips like Tarzan, Superman, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon which were immensely popular in the entertainment-starved Pacific Archipelago.

Drawing from an early age, Nestor emulated his brother Virgilio – who worked as a comics artist in the young country. The Philippines became a commonwealth in 1935, and achieved full-independence from the USA in 1946, but maintained close cultural links to America.

Nestor’s parents pushed him into architecture but within a year he returned to comics. A superb artist, he far outshone Virgilio – and everybody else – in the cottage industry. His brother switched to writing and they teamed up: producing some of the best strips the Islands had ever seen, the most notable and best regarded being Mars Ravelo’s Darna.

Capable of astounding quality and incredible speed, by the early 1950s Nestor was drawing for many titles. Publications like Pilipino Komiks, Hiwaga Komiks and Espesial Komiks were fortnightly and he usually worked on multiple series simultaneously, pencils and inks. He also produced a wealth of covers.

In 1953, he adapted MGM film Quo Vadis for Ace Publications’ Tagalong Klasiks #91-92. Written by Clodualdo Del Mundo, it was serialized to promote the movie in country, and impressed MGM so much that they offered 24-year old Nestor a US job and full residency. He declined, thinking himself too young to leave home yet.

Ace was the country’s biggest comics publisher, but by the early 1960s they were in dire financial straits. In 1963 Nestor, Tony Caravana, Alfredo Alcala, Jim Fernandez, Amado Castrillo and brother Virgilio set up their own company CRAF Publications, Inc., but times were against them and publishers everywhere. Around this time, America called again, in the form of DC and Marvel Comics.

By 1972, US based Tony DeZuñiga had introduced Filipino artists to US editors. Nestor drew horror tales for House of Mystery, House of Secrets, The Unexpected, Phantom Stranger, Secrets of Sinister House, Witching Hour, Weird War Tales; Marvel’s Man-Thing; and an astonishingly lovely run on Rima the Jungle Girl (loosely adapting W. H. Hudson’s seminal 1904 novel Green Mansions), before joining Swamp Thing.

He also worked on Lois Lane and the Tarzan franchise, and in 1973 produced literary adaptations including Dracula and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for Vincent Fago’s Pendulum Press Illustrated Classics (later reformatted as Marvel Classics Comics). In later years, he moved to Marvel to ink and eventually fully illustrate The Savage Sword of Conan.

During his DC period he was tapped to draw an adaptation of King Arthur which DC killed before it was completed (once again some pages survive and the internet is your friend if you want to see them) but did limn tabloid-sized Limited Collectors’ Edition: The Bible.

This epic bayou bonanza gathers the last of the original Swamp Thing run (#14-25), plus guest appearances from Challengers of the Unknown #81-87; The Brave and the Bold #122 & 176 and DC Comics Presents #8 (spanning cover-dates January/February 1975 to July 1981) .

Roving America during a period of political instability tainted by cultural hedonism and paranoia, Cable, Abby, Bolt and miserable misshapen Alec Holland (whom they had recently broken out of federal custody) continually stumbled into weird and deadly situations. With writer David Michelinie joining Redondo, proceedings open here with ‘The Tomorrow Children’ (ST #14, January/February 1975).

Separated again, Holland’s human helpers search for him as the depressed nomad discovers an isolated Bayou community of simple folk persecuting a family of freakish kids. Swamp Thing drives off one murderous mob, but stories of the outcast kids’ uncanny powers and the plain facts of strange accidents and mysterious disappearances won’t go away. By the time the townsfolk return to destroy the “demon children”, Holland has discovered radioactive waste is causing all the problems, but far too late to prevent tragedy or promote understanding…

Swamp Thing then falls under ‘The Soul-Spell of Father Bliss’: a seemingly serene and benign cleric with demonically disturbing notions on how to restore faith to his disinterested flock. When Cable and Abby finally find Swamp Thing, it’s not Alec Holland inside the vegetable colossus and only an ultimate sacrifice can save them and humanity from the priest’s folly…

In the awful aftermath, Bolt is captured by agents unknown and the restored Holland-Thing leads a rescue party against an old adversary. Typically, the venture is derailed by cruel fate and the monster ends up alone on tiny Kalo Pago island in the middle of a revolution. On one side is a viciously repressive military government while the rebels are led by High Priestess Laganna – who has a direct line to zombie gods.

Caught in the middle, Holland cannot stem the tide of terror on the climactic ‘Night of the Warring Dead’…

ST #17 finds Bolt a prisoner of resurrected former Conclave chief Nathan Ellery, but when Abby, Cable and Swamp Thing finally stumble into his HQ, the maniac’s mercenaries, mechanical myrmidons and global mind-control contraption ‘The Destiny Machine’ at first appear to be an unbeatable opposition. But only at first…

Fleeing the destruction they have partially wrought, the victorious heroes crash land in an idyllic hamlet filled with violently murderous old folk. Its apologetic administrator claims Serenity is an experimental “ultimate retirement facility”, but before long is revealed as a demonic  ‘Village of the Doomed’ requiring all Holland’s power to escape and exorcise…

Cover-dated October 1975, The Brave and the Bold #122 then counts down ‘The Hour of the Beast!’ Bob Haney & Jim Aparo detail the awesome spectacle of Swamp Thing’s return to Gotham City and efforts to save it from a monstrous vegetable infestation. When Holland then becomes a target for a profit crazed showman, it needs all Batman’s ingenuity to save his ally and his city…

That same month in Swamp Thing #19, Gerry Conway joined Redondo to reveal ‘A Second Time to Die’ as a very familiar muck monster prowls Florida’s Everglades and – barely sentient – is befriended elderly Seminole hermit Ho’tah Makanaw. Nearby, Abby Cable and Bolt drive into Gatorberg, seeking their lost companion and following rumours of a big green monster…

The town is far from friendly but one boy is happy to take them to the old Indian who might know something of what they’re seeking…

Events take a drastic turn when the plant giant attacks a government drilling installation even as Ho’tah reveals a magical secret and sets the stage for an incredible clash in the next issue when Swamp Thing Holland battles incredible duplicate ‘The Mirror Monster’ for all the wrong reasons and for people who don’t deserve his aid…

Although the quality of the storytelling was getting better, the times were turning against the horror medium and as Michelinie returned in #21, it was for a science fictional romp as Holland was abducted by alien collector/slaver Solus. The bitterly contested escape left the monster stranded in an American desert and captured by rogue scientists battling madness-inducing contagion in their top secret atomic weapons base. Of course, definitions of “victim” or “cure” for ‘The Solomon Plague’ depended on who was doing the diagnosing, and when the “patients” started resisting treatment Holland could only watch helplessly as nature took its course…

Another attempt at a new direction began in Swamp Thing #23 as Conway & Redondo unleashed ‘Rebirth and Nightmare’, with a mystery mastermind targeting the moss monster and despatching costumed nemeses Sabre and Thrudvang, the Earth Master, even as the lonely wander made contact with his long-lost – and never-mentioned – smarter brother Edward Holland…

Their combined efforts to concoct a cure are initially successful despite Sabre’s surprise attack, but as we all know “no good deed goes unpunished”…

Cover-dated August/September 1976, an era ended with #24 as Conway, David Anthony Kraft, Ernie Chan & Fred Carrillo all collaborated on ‘The Earth Below’ as human but still traumatised Alec Holland faces Sabre, even more costumed crazies and ultimately tectonic terror Thrudvang, all craving the bio-regenerative formula still afflicting the former plant monster…

That catastrophic cliffhanger clash was never completed as the title was cancelled without warning or fanfare, just as it was about to formally join the superhero section of the DCU. It was probably for the best. As the Vertigo imprint would prove in a later age, some champions need sophisticated darkness to properly thrive…

As for the Bronze Age, Swamp Thing became a part of the army that hung around waiting to be picked for guest shots or even a revival. With the superhero genre recovering, one old concept granted a new shot ultimately led to fresh shoots for Holland.

The Challengers of the Unknown was a bridging concept. As superheroes were being revived in 1956 here was a super-team – the first of the Silver Age – but with no powers, basic utilitarian uniforms instead of costumes and the most dubious of motives – Suicide by Mystery. They debuted in Showcase #6 (cover-dated February 1957 and on sale in early November of 1956) and followed up in #7, 11 & 12 before gaining their own title (#1-77, May 1958-January 1971, plus a reprint revival in #78-80 in 1973).

They were a huge hit and major players in their time, striking a chord that lasted for more than a decade before they finally died… only to rise again and yet again. The idea of them was stirring enough, but their situation made their success all but inevitable. Conceived by inspirational human hit-factory Jack Kirby – before his move across town to co-create the Marvel Universe – the solid adventure concept and imperfect action heroes he left behind were idealised everyman characters for the tumultuous 1960s – an era before superheroes overtook anthological genre heroes to secure a virtual chokehold on comic book pages.

Kirby had developed a brilliantly feasible concept and heroically archetypical characters in cool pilot Ace Morgan, indomitable strongman Rocky Davis, intellectual aquanaut “Prof.” Haley and daredevil acrobat Red Ryan. The Challengers of the Unknown were four (extra)ordinary mortals; heroic troubleshooter and explorers who walked away unscathed from a terrible plane crash. Already obviously what we now call “adrenaline junkies”, they communally decided that since they were all living on borrowed time, they should dedicate what remained of their lives to testing themselves and fate. The quartet would risk their lives for KNOWLEDGE and, naturally, JUSTICE.

They were joined by an occasional fifth member, beautiful (of course) scientist June Robbins in their second appearance (‘Ultivac is Loose!’ in Showcase #7, March/April 1957), and she became a hardy perennial, frequently popping up to solve puzzles, catch criminals and generally deal with aliens, monsters, mad boffins and assorted supernatural threats. Over the decade other Challengers audited this core group, but none as bizarre as those that popped in during their late 1970s resurgence…

The return began in 1976 as a try-out serial in Super-Team Family #8-10 (January-May 1977) and led to the launch of Challengers of the Unknown #81 (June/July 1977). Crafted by Conway, Michael Netzer (nee Nasser) & Bob Wiacek, it’s included here and sees the boys and June Robbins defeat an old super-foe in ‘Multi-Man’s Master Plan’. In the course of the battle, Prof is diagnosed with an appalling, life-threatening fungal infection that dictates the team heading to Perdition, Pennsylvania, with persistent wannabe hanger-on Gaylord Clayburne desperately seeking to insert himself into the rescue mission…

Older fans will know that’s where Holland first defeated a Lovecraftian horror (Swamp Thing #8): a tale fully reprised in CotU #82, as Conway, Netzer & Joe Rubinstein reveal ‘The Lurker Below’, examine the ‘Legacy of the Damned’, expose ‘The Soul Predator’ and ruthlessly respond as ‘The Lurker Rises’…

As a deranged priest seeks to manifest cancer-god M’Nagala, Keith Giffen & John Celardo take over art duties with #83 as the embattled Challs seek to close ‘Seven Doorways to Destiny’. As Prof succumbs to fungal assimilation, aid comes as Clayburne recruits human Dr. Alec Holland as a potential ‘Savior from the Swamp?’ even as ‘The Gods Crawl Closer’. Unknown to the vainly striving Challengers, the subsequent battle reverts Holland to his vegetable form, but ‘Monsters, Good and Evil’ cannot stop the ghastly devil until Holland’s ultimate sacrifice. His triumph over M’Nagala goes completely unnoticed…

Issue #84 finds the human heroes attempting ‘To Save a Monster’ called Prof Haley, but falter until the spirit of Boston Brand occupies and cures him ‘When Deadmen Walk’. In the meantime the Challs learn Holland is the Swamp Thing and seek to make amends. With unperceived aid from Brand, they track the bog beast down only to find he/it has been taken over by Multi-Man…

The threat is covertly countered by Deadman, who sticks around when the Challs offer the plant monster a place on the team, just as Challengers of the Unknown #85 introduces ‘The Creature from the End of Time!’ as ‘The Box from Beyond’ materialises in Toronto, spawning murderous ‘Monsters and Men’ and necessitating a ‘Flight into the Future’…

The team had hoped to consult legendary specialist Rip Hunter, Time Master, but learn he and his team have been missing for a decade…

Disappointed but undeterred, the Challs (minus angry quitter Red Ryan but with unsuspected stowaway Deadman) take off for 12 million AD, leaving recuperating Prof behind to face an unsuspected menace…

Penultimate issue #86 solves the mystery of Rip Hunter as the heroes encounter ‘The War at Time’s End’, whilst recap ‘The Way it Began’ restates the convoluted path and events that brought the situation about.

The dismantling of humanity’s final dystopia begins as ‘If This is Tomorrow, You Must Be Rip Hunter!’, leads to the Challenger team investigating ‘Time Times Terror’ and discovering ‘A Pit by Any Other Name’ before the saga concludes in complete chaos with #87 (June/July 1978) as the  ‘Twelve Million Years to Twilight’ pits the human heroes against mutated terrors of the dominant Sunset Lords.

In the end, the future of humanity depends on monsters ghost and primitives enacting an ‘Assault on Sunset’ to secure ‘Twilight’s Last Glimmer’, courtesy of Carla & Gerry Conway, Giffen & Celardo.

Once again, an abrupt cancellation was the reward for valorous service and all players returned home to be shelved again. This compendium closes with a brace of superhero team-ups and a lost treat for true devotees, beginning with DC Comics Presents #8 (April 1979), as ‘The Sixty Deaths of Solomon Grundy!’ by Steve Englehart & Murphy Anderson pairs bog beast with the Man of Steel. Still believing he was a transformed human and not an enhanced plant, Swamp Thing here searches the sewers of Metropolis for a cure to his condition, only to stumble onto a battle between Superman and the mystic zombie who was “born on a Monday…

Crafted by Martin Pasko & Aparo, an encore in The Brave and the Bold #176 (July 1981) reunites Batman and Swamp Thing in a convoluted tale of Bayou-based murder and frame-ups in ‘The Delta Connection’ before the previously unpublished contents of Swamp Thing #25.

With the series cancelled, in-production story ‘The Sky Above’ by Kraft, Chan & Carillo is presented here as plot, script, uncoloured cover 16 pages of layouts, the pencils and inks in a clash with Hawkman that really should have officially taken place…

Also offering covers by Redondo, Aparo, Chan, Netzer, Neal Adams, Rubinstein, Rich Buckler, Jack Abel, Frank Giacoia, Alex Saviuk, Dick Giordano, José Luis García-López and Mike Kaluta; editorial material from Challengers of the Unknown #86 and an unused cover by Rick Veitch & Michelle Madsen, this collection comprises a genuine landmark of the art form, with stories that are superb examples of old-fashioned comics wonderment, from a less cynical and sophisticated age, but with a passion and intensity that cannot be matched. And, ooh, that artwork…

If you love comics you must have his buried treasure.
© 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981, 2019 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Haunt of Horror: Lovecraft


By H.P. Lovecraft adapted by Richard Corben with Jeff Eckleberry (MARVEL MAX)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3287-5 (HB/Digital edition)

Richard Corben was one of America’s greatest proponents of graphic narrative: an animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist, who sprang from the tumultuous wave of independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a major force in graphic narrative storytelling with his own unmistakable style and vision.

He is equally renowned for his mastery of airbrush, captivatingly excessive anatomical stylisation and delightfully wicked, darkly comedic horror, fantasy and science fiction tales. In later years he has become an elder statesman of horror and fantasy comics lending his gifts and cachet to such icons as John Constantine, Hulk, Hellboy, Punisher and Ghost Rider as well as new adaptations and renditions of literary classics by the likes of William Hope Hodgson, and the master of gothic terror Edgar Allan Poe.

Corben never sold out and American publishing eventually caught up, finally growing mature enough to accommodate him – due in no small part to his own broad and wickedly pervasive influence…

Born in Anderson, Missouri in 1940, Corben graduated with a Fine Arts degree in 1965 and found work as an animator. At that time, the neutered comic books of the Comics Code Authority era were just starting to lose disaffected, malcontent older fans to the hippy-trippy, freewheeling, anything-goes publications of independent-minded creators across the continent. These folks were increasingly making the kind of material Preachers and Mummy and their Lawyers wouldn’t approve of…

Creativity honed by the resplendent and explicitly mature 1950s EC Comics, Carl Barks’ perfectly crafted Duck tales and other classy early strips, a plethora of young artists like Corben responded with numerous small-press publications – including Grim Wit, Skull, Slow Death, Fever Dreams and his own Fantagor – which featured shocking, rebellious, sexed-up, raw, brutal, psychedelically-inspired cartoons and strips blending the new wave of artists’ unconventional lifestyles with their earliest childhood influences… honestly crafting the kind of stories they would like to read.

Corben inevitably graduated to more professional – and paying – venues. As his style and skills developed, he worked for Warren Publishing in Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, Comix International and outrageous adult science fiction anthology 1984/1994. He also famously coloured some strips for the revival of Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

Soon after, he was producing stunning graphic escapades for a number of companies, making animated movies, painting film posters and producing record covers such as multi-million-selling album Bat Out of Hell. He never stopped creating comics but preferred personal independent projects or working with in-tune collaborators such as Bruce Jones, Jan Strnad and Harlan Ellison.

In 1975, Corben approached French fantasy phenomenon Métal Hurlant and quickly became a fixture of its American iteration Heavy Metal, cementing his international reputation in the process. Garnering huge support and acclaim in Europe, he was been regularly collected in luxurious albums even as he seemingly fell out of favour – and print – in his own country. Through it all he never strayed far from his moss-covered roots.

Corben died in 2020.

This particular tome gathers a 2007 return to adaptations of classic literary horror canon. First published as a 3-issue limited series, it features adaptations of poems and stories by an undisputed master of supernal terror: H.P. Lovecraft. The tales are radical reworkings of the troubled author’s works, rendered in line and gray-tones, and each sequential narrative reinterpretation is accompanied by its original prose iteration.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in August 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island and his life in New England was one of gradual loss and despair. His father was institutionalised when he young, and a comfortable life of wealth ended when his grandfather died. Enduring privation, he lost his mother to another asylum in 1919. He married in 1924 after moving to New York, where his writing for Weird Tales and other pulp fiction magazines drew acclaim – and even acolytes – but little by way of commercial security.

He returned to New England in 1926 and wrote ever more fevered and chilling tales of weird science, fantasy and horror fiction. In the next 11 years he penned some of the most disturbing stories in literature, centred around his belief in Civilizational decline and Cosmicism: affirming the insignificance of humanity and its ultimate fragility and inability to endure in a harsh, unforgiving universe.

He is best remembered today for his Cthulhu Mythos: an elder god cosmology as seen in The Call of Cthulhu and other stories.

Lovecraft died in 1937 as a result of stomach cancer.

This selection of speculative meanderings opens with ‘Dagon’, as an ailing and oppressed marine researcher records how a close call with a German U-boat catapulted him onto a lost isle of monsters and ancient artefacts, and forever marked him as prey for an indescribable horror. The original prose vignette follows, after which ‘The Scar’ tells of betrayal and abandonment as a young man opts to save himself but not his companion from hellish plants: – a grisly episode eerily expanded upon from the poem ‘Recognition’ as collected in the tome Fungi from Yuggoth.

From the same book comes both the poem ‘A Memory’ and chilling icy exploration as Jack searches the desolate region that claimed his father and finds a relic that that dooms him via fatal family connection to lost and malign cultists of Shub Niggurath…

The second issue began with ‘The Music of Erich Zann’, as an impoverished student recalls how long ago he lived in a hilltop hovel where an elderly fellow boarder played bizarre melodies that shook the world and summoned arcane atrocities before – again bordered by a text version – another extract from Fungi from Yuggoth finds a flood survivor desperately searching for her lost love in the body-packed detritus of ‘The Canal’…

Sticking with the bulletins from Yuggoth, ‘The Lamp’ focuses on an unexpected and angry archaeological breakthrough that is alive and hungry after four millennia, before the final issue opens with extended scary satire ‘Arthur Jermyn’ and thereafter its primary text ‘Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family’. In a wry change of pace, it traces – via his proud descendants -the history and heritage of a gentleman explorer and anthropologist who in 1750 discovered a lost kingdom and injected some new blood into an old, old race.

Of course the miscegenation has resulted in some few throwbacks and anomalies in the hallowed English lineage since then…

Another ravening predator inhabits ‘The Well’ foolishly dug by southern farmer Seth Atwood, one using love and thirst to draw in victims, and our last glimpse of the outer dark comes through ‘The Window’ of a desolate old house as an orphan son returns to discover what took his parents 25 years ago…

A potent and evocative peep into the nastiest places in creation, this collection also includes ‘Cover Sketches’ and ‘Promotional Images’, plus a selection of inked pages prior to the application of the cloaking grey tones.

Infamous for his dark, doom-laden horror stories, Lovecraft was a pioneer of the subgenre of supernal, inescapable terror and under Corben’s imaginative scrutiny, the grim gloomy odes and yarns take on a whole new level of distressing dissonance. This compelling collection of classic chillers is a modern masterpiece of arcane abomination and inhuman horror no shock addict of mystery lover will want to miss.
© 2020 MARVEL.

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Deadman: Book One


By Arnold Drake, Jack Miller, Carmine Infantino, Neal Adams, George Roussos & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3116-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

As the 1960s ended, a massive superhero boom became a slow but certain bust, with formerly major successes no longer able to find enough readers to keep them alive. The taste for superheroes was diminishing in favour of more traditional genres, and one rational editorial response was to reshape costumed characters to fit evolving contemporary tastes.

Publishers swiftly changed gears and even staid, cautious DC reacted rapidly: making masked adventurers designed to fit the new landscape. Newly revised and revived costumed features included roving mystic troubleshooter The Phantom Stranger and golden age colossus The Spectre, whilst resurgent traditional genres spawned atrocity-faced WWII spy Unknown Soldier and cowboy bounty hunter Jonah Hex, spectral western avenger El Diablo and game-changing monster hero Swamp Thing, spearheading a torrent of new formats, anthologies and concepts.

Moreover, supernatural themes and horror-tinged plots were shoehorned into those superhero titles that weathered the trend-storm. Arguably, the moment of surrender and change had arrived with the creation of Boston Brand in the autumn of 1967, when venerable science fiction anthology Strange Adventures was abruptly retooled as the haunted home of an angry ghost…

Without fanfare or warning, Deadman debuted in #205 with this first collection (of five) re-presenting that origin event and thereafter, pertinent contents from #206-213: cumulatively spanning cover-dates October/November 1967 to July/August 1968. The drama is preceded by Introduction ‘How Deadman Came to Life’ by originator Arnold Drake and the Foreword – ‘A Most Unusual Character’ by Carmine Infantino – each reminiscing, recapitulating and confirming just how daring and unprecedented the new kind of hero was…

Then it’s straight into eerie action with ‘Who Has Been Lying in My Grave?’ – by Arnold Drake, Carmine Infantino & George Roussos – as we attend the funeral of high wire acrobat Boston Brand: a rough, tough, jaded performer who had seen everything and masked a decent human heart behind an obnoxious exterior and cynical demeanour.

As “Deadman”, Brand was the star attraction of Hills Circus and lover of its reluctant owner Lorna Carling, as well as a secret guardian for the misfits it employed and sheltered. That makeshift “family” includes simple-minded strongman Tiny and Asian mystic Vashnu, but also had a few bad eggs too… people like alcoholic animal trainer Heldrich and chiselling carnival Barker Leary.

The aerialist kept them in line… with his fists, whenever necessary…

One fateful night, Brand almost missed his cue because of Leary and Heldrich’ antics and also because he had to stop local cop Ramsey harassing Vashnu. It would have better if he had been late, because as soon as he started his act – 40 feet up and without a net – someone put a rifle slug into his heart…

Despite being dead before he hit the ground, Brand was scared and furious. Nobody could see or hear him screaming, and Vashnu kept babbling on that he was the chosen of Rama Kushna – “the spirit of the universe”. The hokum all came horribly true as the entity astonishingly made contact, telling Brand that he would walk among men until he found his killer…

The sentence came with some advantages: he was invisible, untouchable, immune to the laws of physics and able to take possession of the living and drive them like a car. His only clue was that witnesses in the audience claimed that a man with a hook had shot him…

Outraged, still disbelieving and seemingly stuck forever in the ghastly make-up and outfit of his performing persona, Deadman’s first posthumous act is to possess Tiny and check out the key suspects. Soon the dormant Hercules finds that the cop and Heydrich are involved in a criminal conspiracy, but they definitely are not Brand’s murderers…

Eventually, the ghost learns a shocking fact: his desperation is not worth the life of anyone else and he must not let his anger put his “vessels” in harm’s way…

Second episode ‘An Eye for An Eye!’ was scripted by Drake, and was Adams’ illustrative debut. Originally inked by Roussos, here it is rather unfairly reinked by Adams and further enhanced by modern colouring techniques. I understand how the artist should have autonomy and agency in his own work, but for the sake of chronology and authenticity, I take quite a bit of umbrage on behalf of old “Inky”, whose efforts seem unfairly judged and slighted by these revisions…

That being said, the tale is a strong one and indicates a sea change in narrative style as Deadman expedites his hunt for justice. The stories henceforth focus on those who are temporarily occupied by Brand: a string of episodic encounters that mirrored the protagonist of contemporary hit TV series The Fugitive (and by extension, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables), with an unfairly accused victim searching for personal justice all across America, to the benefit of many people in crisis.

Here, that’s young Jeff  Carling, who’s fallen in with a dangerous biker gang and is set up to pay for their crimes. He’s also Lorna’s brother, which is how Deadman gets involved in the mess, after learning the cash-strapped kid had taken out a life insurance policy on the circus star just before the Hook struck…

Having saved the kid from a perfect frame, Brand resumes his search and, as Jack Miller took over scripting in #207, is forced to ask ‘What Makes a Corpse Cry? The hunt leads him to revisit the night he saved bar girl Liz Martin from a drunken assault by her boss Rocky Manzel, but when the spook checks in, he finds Liz and boyfriend Paul being terrorised by Rocky, who coldly implies he caused the death of her last protector…

Even after using his ghost gifts to disqualify Manzel, Deadman is compelled to help the young lovers, and exposes the club owner’s criminal secret, but once again almost causes the death of his human ride…

Miller & Adams were providing a very different reading experience with innovative, staggeringly powerful art, but struggled with deadlines, and ‘How Many Ways Can a Guy Die?’ was delivered in 4 parts across Strange Adventures #208 and 209. The revelatory tale introduces Brand’s trapeze artist rival Eagle, who had tried to kill him years before, and now seeks to replace him in the circus and Lorna’s bed – whether she wants him or not…

When Deadman again borrows Tiny to dissuade the brute, Eagle threatens the gentle strongman with the same thing Brand got and the ghost is convinced his quest is almost over. However, the truth is far crueller, and when Deadman uncovers his rival’s actual scheme, the cost to Tiny and alternate vessel Pete is far too high…

The hunt stalled again, Brand finally thinks to check the official police investigation in #210’s ‘Hide and Seek’ (cover-dated March 1968). To his disgust, he finds the case is cold, with assigned detective Michael Riley dishonourably discharged from the force due to the testimony of a man with a hook…

Sensing a breakthrough, Deadman possesses Riley and, visiting the other “witness” to the former cop’s reported use of excessive force, uncovers a devious plot. Sadly, despite clearing Riley’s name, Brand misses The Hook who coldly disposes of the only man who could describe him before fleeing to Mexico…

Hot on the trail, Deadman arrives in El Campo in #211, and endures a shocking surprise in ‘How Close to Me My Killer?’ as Miller’s last story introduces wayward twin brother Cleveland Brand. Flashbacks show the sibling had plenty of motive to murder his showbiz brother, but as the tale unfolds, Boston learns he has an unsuspected niece and his people-trafficking but repentant brother needs some haunted help to save smuggled “wetback” labourers from a Texan businessman looking to whitewash his criminal endeavours…

Adams took over scripting with #212 and ‘The Fatal Call of Vengeance’ sees another change of direction, adding more conventional fantasy elements to the mix as Cleveland and his daughter Lita head north to Hills Circus.

Wearing his brother’s costume, Cleve revives the Deadman act and, in Mexico, a man with a hook sees a headline and rushes back to the USA.

Faster than any jet, Boston is already there and watches helplessly as his brother makes himself a target of the unknown killer. The phantom is also completely spooked by new lion tamer Kleigman who is rude and unfriendly and is missing his right hand…

With everyone at odds, both Boston’s returned killer and the circus family set traps with disastrous results, but in the end the Hook escapes again and it’s Tiny who’s left bleeding out from a gunshot…

This first collection concludes with a dip into the madly metaphysical as ‘The Call from Beyond!’ tests Deadman’s abilities to the limit as he enters Tiny’s consciousness to promote his recovery and break a assumed-fatal coma. Following that miracle, the restless revenant repays his debt by saving the reputation and life of Tiny’s surgeon Dr. Shasti after the medical savant is duped by murderous con artist/medium Madam Pegeen…

With groundbreaking covers by Infantino, Sekowsky, Roussos & Adams and ‘Biographies’ of the creators involved, this spectral delight perfectly captures the tone of an era in transition through a delirious run of comics masterpieces no ardent art lover or fanatical fear aficionado can do without.
© 1967, 1968, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Mystery of the Meanest Teacher – a Johnny Constantine Graphic Novel


By Ryan North, Derek Charm & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0123-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Moody, Mirthful and Magical… 8/10

In recent years DC has opened up its shared superhero universe: generating Original Graphic Novels featuring its stars in stand-alone adventures for the demographic inappropriately dubbed Young Adult. To date, results have been rather hit or miss, but when they’re good, they are very good indeed. An ideal example is this cheery chiller reinterpreting the formative years of DC’s magical bad boy: particularly concentrating on his early relationship with things that go bump in the night…

You’ve either heard of John Constantine by now or you haven’t, so I’ll be brief. Created in 1985 by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, Rick Veitch & John Totleben during a groundbreaking run on Swamp Thing, the unlikeliest of heroes is a mercurial modern mage, a dissolute chancer and self-appointed mystic fixer who plays like an addict with magic – on his own terms for his own ends.

He is not a good guy. He is not a nice person, but all too often, he’s all there is between us and the void…

Winning his own series by clamorous popular demand, Constantine’s own series Hellblazer premiered in 1988, during the dying days of Reaganite Atrocity in the US but at the height of Thatcherite Barbarism in England. We’re pretty much singing the same songs now as back then but – with 5th rate Britain’s Got Talent cover-artist wannabes as our revolving-door leaders – that’s something little Johnny will surely get around to sorting if he gets another outing…

In 1988, creative arts and Liberal attitudes were dirty words in many quarters and the readership of Vertigo was pretty easy to profile. The long-running series started with relatively safe horror plots, introducing us to Constantine’s unpleasant nature, chequered history and odd acquaintances. Even then, discriminating fans were aware of a joyously anti-establishment political line, rebellious nature and wildly metaphorical underpinnings. Racism, Darwinian politics, gender fluidity, plague, famine, gruesome supernature and more were everywhere in the dark dystopian purview of John Constantine – a world of bleeding-edge mysticism, Cyber-shamanism and political soul-stealing.

Relax. That is not the Constantine you’re looking at here…

Courtesy of writer Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics, Adventure Time, Slaughterhouse-Five, Power Pack, Machine of Death, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, How to Invent Everything, Star Trek – Lower Decks) and illustrator Derek Charm (Jughead, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Uncle Scrooge, Jughead’s Time Police, Star Wars Adventures) – assisted by letterer Wes Abbott – we’re meeting a wily wizard in waiting: someone apparently without conscience or impulse control who bears more than a passing resemblance to juvenile parental burden Dennis the Menace – but more the malign mischief maker from The Beano than Hank Ketchum’s wayward waif…

It begins in London where a cocky kid pops into a sweetshop. Unfortunately, Archibald Junior’s Discount Confections is no ordinary purveyor of tasty treats, but then again, Johnny Constantine is no ordinary kid…

Behind a cheesy façade of fragrant gleaming bottles, jars and bags, this exotic emporium has a back room where ghosts, demons and world-devouring cosmic entities can also snatch a little snacky something. It just another eldritch secret that Johnny – who calls himself “Kid Constantine” – somehow knows. The boy has an astounding affinity for magic and has even befriended a few lesser devils, but he also has a weakness for Archibald’s magic chocolates.

Sadly, this latest shoplifting lark endangers all of Earth and, haunted by angry ghosts, the Kid has to take refuge with a pack of low-grade demons.

He’s been casually manipulating his parents for a while now, and fooling himself that he’s a wicked cool Jack the Lad, but he learns a few hard truths as he even wears out his welcome with the unholy monsters, and immediately opts to try boarding school to evade further repercussions. Best of all, the place is in America…

It’s pretty far away, but Johnny doesn’t mind. He’s always been better off alone. Just look what happened to the last friend he foolishly shared his magical gifts with…

With terrifying ease, the unaccompanied boy rocks up at The Junior Success Boarding School in Massachusetts, but his charm and roguish manner can’t help him adjust, settle in or make any friends on campus. In fact, he’s actually starting to feel a bit lonely… until a bit of lazy, labour-saving magic is spotted by fellow sixth grade outsider Anna.

The Kid is just starting to think he might have made a mistake coming to America when she comes clean and confesses that she too can make little miracles…

Our gobsmacked loner thinks long and hard before letting his guard down, but soon they are friends and co-conspirators, playing pranks and testing their limits. It seems the best of all worlds until their homeroom teacher Ms. Kayla starts behaving strangely…

Formerly the nicest adult in school, she abruptly changes, spitefully singling out Johnny and Anna for special attention and cruel psychological bullying. Before long, the supernatural students are using their gifts to learn what caused the transformation, but discover it’s far worse than they could ever have imagined…

Facing a deadly existential supernatural threat, Kid Constantine does what he always does and runs away, deserting Anna and the school, but everything changes when he hits the forests surrounding the institution and meets a potentially life-changing ally in the huge form of a witch-hunting demon called Etrigan…

Chastened and emboldened, the Kid makes a decision that will change his life: returning to school, joining Anna and the Demon in ending a monstrous menace more terrible than anyone could have imagined…

Rowdy, rousing and riotous – and sublimely stuffed with twists, shocks and enticing snippets of DC lore – the battle against unforgiving evil culminates in a clever piece of misdirection and some stellar sleight of hand as valiant Anna and duty-driven Etrigan see their bad boy come good and save everything…

This tale is done in one but the book also offers a lengthy excerpt from Jeffrey Brown’s Batman and Robin and Howard that is also worth some of your time and attention…

Bold, beguiling, brilliantly entertaining and deliciously uplifting, The Mystery of the Meanest Teacher is a magical rite of passage and smartly funny adventure with a twist to charm and thrill full-on fans and nervous neophytes alike: one introducing a new wondrous world with a rousing reminder that there is magic everywhere.
© 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Son of Satan Classic


By Gary Friedrich, Steve Gerber, Gerry Conway, Chris Claremont, John Warner, Bill Mantlo, Mike Friedrich, Herb Trimpe, Tom Sutton, Jim Mooney, Gene Colan, Sal Buscema, Sonny Trinidad, P Craig Russell, Ed Hannigan, Russ Heath, Jim Starlin & various (Marvel)
ISBN:  978-3029-0104-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

As the 1960s closed, American comics were in turmoil, reflecting the greater society they were being published in – the one full of reactionary establishment types, turbulent rebellious youth, black people and their multi-ethnic supporters all agitating for universal Civil Rights and impressionable kids looking for entertainment and getting an education along the way.

In that cauldron – one fully addressed and depicted in comics books as much as laws and the Comics Code would allow – dissatisfaction and the need for change permeated everyone’s mind and the desire for a new way gripped the national and international consciousness.

Superheroes had dominated for most of the decade: peaking globally with a rush of outrageously daft, “Camp” humour excess before explosively falling to ennui and overkill. Business never sleeps, however, and in their place, TV, movies and comics returned to familiar old genres like westerns, war, science fiction and especially horror stories: although these too benefitted from and were changed by expanded consciousness and enlightened social attitudes.

For Marvel, the problem must have been particularly acute: Stan Lee & Jack Kirby had rebuilt an ailing minor publisher into a close contender for the top spot, on the backs of gaudily attired mystery men, but now that the bubble seemed to have both deflated and burst… for a second time.

Since other genres were now piquing the still-presumed mostly adolescent interests of comics core readership – like the alternative “cool” vibe attached to the modern notion of disenchanted, unchained youth (and generally ones riding motorbikes) – all publishers were looking for fresh and different ways forward.

To counter the abrupt downturn in superhero sales, the Comics Code prohibition against horror stories and iconography was hastily amended to facilitate the resurrection of scary material and bolster an industry in economic freefall. With terror tales and magical situations back in a big way, a new crop of anthologies and supernatural heroes and monsters started to thrive, supplementing the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins that had been gradually infiltrating the formerly science-only scenarios of the superhero who had weathered the downturn by tackling horror themes and villains…

It should be noted that more mature scary stories had been available since the mid-60s in the monochrome publications of Jim Warren and his imitators, who had deftly sidestepped Comics Code embargos by redefining their graphic output as “magazines” not comics. Now the likes of Eerie and Creepy had some real competition…

Lifting the CCA ban sparked a mass spawning of horror titles of varying degrees of potency and excess. Whether new material or reprints from before and after the instigation of the Code, the inexorable wave of thrillers and chillers helped even more venerable costumed crusaders close their doors and – temporarily at least – bite the dust.

Almost overnight, nasty monsters became acceptable fare on four-colour pages and a parade of pre-code reprints refreshed jaded palates whilst making sound financial sense. However, the creative aspect of the contemporary fascination with supernatural themes was best catered to by adapting already-popular and well-known cultural icons (all long out of copyright) before gambling on new concepts and an untested readership.

Whereas DC quickly cornered the market in new anthology tales – in the mordantly dark vein of Poe, Lovecraft, M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce, O. Henry and more – Marvel’s attempts at new, stand-alone anthological vehicles proved less successful and they soon shifted editorial efforts to their strong suite: developing ongoing characters in a shared universe. centred

The House of Ideas combined the new trend with their established style to create dark and tragic adventure heroes and even explored having unrepentant villains – like Dracula – as chief protagonist. As always in entertainment, the watchword was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics must be adapted and incorporated into the continuity. Marvel was still reeling from Kirby’s defection to DC in 1970 (where he would conjure his own chilling legends with Spirit World and The Demon) and new Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas cannily greenlit a new character combining freewheeling, teen-friendly biker themes with the all-pervasive horror-furore…

Are you up for a bit more context before we really begin?

When proto-monster star Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (cover-dated October 1970) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel moved quickly and instituted a string of shocking super-stars. The began with a tragic wild beast and cruelly cunning predator – Werewolf by Night and The Tomb of Dracula – before chancing something truly new: a devil-haunted biker who could tap into both the motorcycling chic of movie Easy Rider and the global supernatural zeitgeist.

Preceded by god-touched western star Red Wolf and the aforementioned Werewolf by Night a new Ghost Rider premiered in Marvel Spotlight #5 (August 1972), and in turn led to the birth of the troubled subject of this Classic collection.

The graphic grimoire gathers the earliest exploits of Daimon Hellstrom as first seen in Ghost Rider #1-2, Marvel Spotlight #13-24, and Son of Satan #1-8, plus pertinent crossovers from Marvel Team-Up #32 and Marvel Two-In-One #14. Said saga spanned September 1973 to February 1977.

And will need even more background to with your continued indulgence…

Stunt-biker Johnny Blaze sold his soul to Satan to save his adopted father-figure Crash Simpson from cancer, but was cheated by the Devil. When the Lord of Lies came to collect his due, Johnny’s devoted and virginal girlfriend Roxanne Simpson interceded and partially redeemed her man. Although her purity prevented Satan’s victory, the Devil was only temporarily thwarted and took a measure of vengeance by afflicting Blaze with a body that burned with the fiery torments of Hell every time the sun set…

Initially haunting the night and terrorising thugs and criminals, the traumatised biker soon left the city for the solitary desert, perpetually battling The Deceiver’s countless agents who were tasked with shattering Roxanne’s loving aura of protection and claiming Blaze for Hell.

As part of these adventures Blaze battled a diabolical cult led by First Nations medicine man Snake Dance who sought to sacrifice Roxanne. The Ghost Rider barely saved her and – after dodging gun-happy cops – rushed her to hospital, where he was again attacked, this time by the Medicine Man’s daughter, Linda Littletrees, who revealed her own intimate connection to the Infernal…

The confrontation culminated in a devastating eldritch assault as she revealed her hidden role as satanic siren Witch-Woman…

That epic duel opens this compendium with Ghost Rider #1 (cover-dated September 1973, by Gary Friedrich, Tom Sutton & Syd Shores), further extending the escalating war between Blaze and the Devil and using the conflict to introduce a new horror-hero who would take over the biker’s vacant slot in Spotlight: one owing much to the tone of the times and the imminent release of movie blockbuster The Exorcist…

It transpires that Linda Littletrees isn’t so much a Satan-worshipping witch as ‘A Woman Possessed!’, but when her father and her fiancé Sam Silvercloud call in a Boston-based exorcist named Daimon Hellstrom, they are utterly unprepared for the kind of assistance this demonologist offers.

A Roxanne slowly recuperates, Blaze is still on the run from the police and Ghost Rider #2 sees the bedevilled biker dragged down to Hell in ‘Shake Hands With Satan!’ (illustrated by Jim Mooney & Shores) before the tale concludes in Marvel Spotlight #12 with the official debut of ‘The Son of Satan!’, courtesy of Friedrich, Herb Trimpe & Frank Chiaramonte.

Here it is revealed that religious scholar Hellstrom has a long and painfully suppressed inner self, and that the exorcist is actually a brutal scion of the Infernal Realm eternally at war with his diabolical dad.

Unleashed and liberated, the Prince of Hell swiftly rushes to Blaze’s aid – although more to spite his sire than succour the victim – and, with his own series off to a spectacular start, continues to take the pressure off the flaming-skulled hero.

We learn that the star-crossed career of the perpetually divided champion is comprised of a war between a devout demonologist and the Prince of Pandemonium: a studious, spiritual scholar sharing one body with a rebellious, sadistically violent demonic alter ego dubbed “the Darksoul”, and the Devil’s true spawn and legacy…

Friedrich, Trimpe & Chiaramonte reveal the source of the conflict in Marvel Spotlight #13’s as ‘When Satan Walked the Earth!’ takes Hellstrom back to the house he was reared in to find and read his mother’s diary.

Victoria Hellstrom’s words describe an enigmatic, beguiling stranger who swept her off her feet and subsequent early years of wedded bliss. How she bore a son and, three years after, a daughter. The toe shifts as the writer notes her husband’s increased absences, and the day she found her man and his girl-child performing a macabre blood-oath ritual sacrifice in the cellar of the idyllic family home…

When her spouse revealed himself as Satan Incarnate, the writer went quite mad.

With his mother institutionalised, his sister taken into care and their father vanished, the grieving shellshocked son entered a seminary and studied for the priesthood.

The diary ends with the writer’s death, but Daimon’s reawakened memories stir and he recalls how, on his 21st birthday his heritage came for him. Following an irresistible call, the student followed a disembodied voice through  portal to Hell and saw his father once more…

Offered all the twisted power and malign glory of a seat by the Devil’s side, Hellstrom rebelled, rejecting and battling his father and triggering a short-lived revolution in The Pit, before escaping with Satan’s all-powerful infernal Trident. The unique pitchfork is made of exotic mineral Netheranium: the only substance (other than prayer, piety, devotion and that other holy stuff) that can weaken the Devil. Best remember this is a comic book, and notionally an all-ages one at that…

Thus, after an untold age suppressing his own dark passenger, Daimon Hellstrom reaches an accommodation with his other self and prepares to take the war to the father they both despise…

At this time, Steve Gerber was Marvel’s undisputed Wizard of Weird: a brilliant, erudite, sensitive and ingenious writer who could make almost any off-the-wall concept accessible to readers – everything from Man-Thing to Howard the Duck, Daredevil to Sub-Mariner, Marvel Two-In-One to Iron Man.

He assumed the writer’s reins with Marvel Spotlight #14, joining artists Mooney & Sal Trapani in lying out a career path for the infernal antihero. It began with ‘Ice and Hellfire’ as the demonologist relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, at the request of Gateway University parapsychologist Dr. Katherine Reynolds. She has been terrorised and terrified by a string of bizarre apparitions and periodic poltergeist phenomena plaguing the campus…

Hellstrom soon uncovers an infestation of Ikthalon ice demons, and that these vile visitors and frozen furies are not invaders but have been summoned. In order to defeat them he takes Reynolds into his confidence and is enraged but unsurprised when she fails him…

Resorting to his father’s tactics to repulse the demons, Hellstrom sticks around for reasons he cannot fathom, and #15 (an all-Mooney art job) sees him endure a sinister physical change as a monstrous – possibly prophetic – dream propels him into a state of permanent chaos as his divergent natures fully merge into one eternally warring personality.

Accepting a lecturer’s position at Gateway, Hellstrom then disrupts an undergraduate ‘Black Sabbath’ and clashes again with his father – in his demonic iteration Baphomet – to save the souls of some stupidly curios students…

Trapani inked #16 as ‘4000 Holes in Forest Park!’ lure the exorcist into a very public media circus when a mysterious overnight event entices every kind of whacko out of the woodwork… as well as far less harmless loons like Christian End-Timers and a depraved Legion of Nihilists…

Inevitably the park explodes into a religion-fuelled riot, and when the Son of Satan intervenes, his supernal hellfire gimmick only exacerbates matters, igniting the scattered holes to form a colossal blazing pictogram. When the image then materialises into physical life, Dr. Reynolds and Divinity student Byron Hyatt are hurled back in time to the days before Atlantis sank, resulting in a shattering confrontation and startling glimpse at how magic reshaped the world in MS #17’s ‘In the Shadow of the Serpent!’ Schooled by legendary sorceress Zhered-Na, Hellstrom learns the necessity of catastrophe and the cosmic purpose of disaster, as well as his true role in existence before returning to the present with his fellow voyagers.

Gene Colan stepped in with #18, and – inked by Chiaramonte – takes the exorcist into a ‘Madhouse!’ when Katherine drags Daimon to a party attended by faculty and fellow parapsychologists only to find the festivities befouled by an act of animal cruelty.

The next morning Hellstrom learns that the house burned down after he left, and – curiosity aroused – investigates the ruins and detects psychic evil of tremendous potency. The fresh trail leads to young Melissa who has become the new home of truly ancient evil…

However, even after seemingly banishing ghastly Allatou back to damnation, the rescue mission continues as #19 (inked by Mike Esposito) then pits the exorcist against the girl’s fully-occupied parents in ‘Demon, Demon, Who’s Got the Demon?’: a brutal struggle that only ends when Daimon abandons holy lore and crushes his opponent with the Devil’s despised power and tactics…

Sal Buscema & Al McWilliams limned #20 as ‘The Fool’s Path!’ sees Satan’s Son targeted by a bizarre tarot reader and attacked by her animated cards. Three covers from previous SoS collections then offer a brief pause before #21 concludes the manic mystery in ‘Mourning at Dawn!’ with Joe Giella inks – exposing Madame Swabada’s incredible true nature… The battle concludes in the Bob McLeod inked ‘Journey into Himself!’ with Daimon corporeally confronting his past and a legion of demons and – ultimately – the true cause of all his woes…

Marvel Team-Up #32 – by Gerry Conway, Buscema & Vince Colletta – then offered a fiery collaboration between Human Torch Johnny Storm and Hellstrom. The exorcist inflicts ‘All the Fires in Hell…!’ on a demon possessing Johnny’s best pal Wyatt Wingfoot and assorted fellow members of his Native American Keewazi tribe. An era ended in Marvel Spotlight #23, as Gerber, Mike Friedrich, Sal B & Dan Green declare ‘In this Light, Darkness!’ with Hellstrom looking to conclude his unfinished business with the Legion of Nihilists before leaving St. Louis. The task is delayed when aged sage Father Darklyte seeks to test the scholar, only to be exposed for the menace he is…

The inheritor of Hell ended his tenure in Spotlight with #24 (October 1975) as Chris Claremont, Buscema & McLeod made him ‘Walk the Darkling Road!’ after mortal satanist Gloria Hefford summons Kthara, the Mother of Demons. Travelling to Los Angeles, Daimon seeks to save her, but is manipulated into clashing with his despised younger sister Satana: a girl after her daddy’s heart…

Even after uniting to stop Kthara, no bridges are built or fences mended between the infernal siblings…

The dispossessed Dauphin of Darkness moved into his own place as – cover-dated December 1975 – The Son of Satan #1 proclaimed ‘The Homecoming!’ as scripter John Warner, splash page artist Jim Starlin and story illustrator Jim Mooney took the eccentric exorcist into strange new territory as Hellstrom returned to the family house only to find it defiled. By invading Hell, he then learns that civil war has come to the pit as his father struggles against a usurper called The Possessor: a human who can control demons…

The war spreads, enveloping a well-meaning Navajo shaman in ‘The Possession!’ – illustrated by Sonny Trinidad – and emptying his village of living souls. As Hellstrom probes the history of the Possessor his inquiries take him back to Hell where the deranged super-psychic has his tool Nightfire lead ensorcelled tribesmen in an attack on the infernal hierarchy that the exorcist is barely able to stop in concluding clash ‘Demon’s Head’…

Another brief diversion takes us to Marvel Two-In-One #14 where Bill Mantlo, Trimpe & John Tartaglione take Ben Grimm to a western ‘Ghost Town!’ for a spooky encounter with spectres and demons. The notoriously superstitious Thing thought he was on a mission of mercy, but needed much merciful magical assistance from exorcist Daimon Hellstrom to escape the deadly grip of sinister spectre Jedediah Ravenstorm…

The final days of Daimon begin in SoS #4 as Warner, P. Craig Russell & Trinidad form a ‘Cloud of Witness!’ when the scholar returns to academia and meets Georgetown (that’s Washington DC) educator Saripha Thames. He believes he’s a specialist researcher, but is unaware that a hidden mastermind is actually studying him under laboratory conditions…

As always, plagued by incomprehensible dreams, Hellstrom gets an inkling of what’s in play when he’s accosted by higher being the Celestial Fool and challenged over his dual nature…

The mental and spiritual assault intensifies in ‘Assassin’s Mind’, with Daimon apparently unable to control his powers or Darksoul, even as new nemesis Mindstar ups the cosmic stakes before #6 begins pulling the strands together in ‘House of Elements!’ (pencilled by Ed Hannigan).and the mystery is explosively resolved in #7’s ‘Mirror of Judgement!’ by Warner & Trinidad.

The series concluded on an artistic high with #8 as Mantlo and Russ Heath – with additional art from John Romita – offered a treatise on temptation as a disturbing phantom begs ‘…Dance with the Devil My Red-Eyed Son!’. By dragging the Son of Satan through the inferno and history’s greatest flashpoints, someone attempts to seduce and soil his soul. Ultimately however, who can say who tempts whom?

This bombastic broadside of metaphysical mastery also includes the Son of Satan Preview article from Monsters Unleashed #3; Comics Code rejected pages, art from Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries and a selection of reprint covers to complete a superb journey to Comics’ darkest side.

One final note: backwriting and retcons notwithstanding, Christian boycotts and moral crusades of a later decade compelled increasingly criticism-averse controversy-shy, commercially astute Corporate Marvel to “translate” the biblical Satan of these tales into watered-down generic and apparently more palatable demonic analogues like Mephisto, Satannish, Marduk Kurios and other equally-naff downgrades. Never forget, however, that the original intent of Ghost Rider, spin-offs Daimon Hellstrom and Satana was to tap into the era’s global fascination with supernature and satanism, which had begun with epochal films and novels like Rosemary’s Baby. Please remember these aren’t your modern and feeble Hell-Lite horrors, but concern the real-deal Infernal Realm (as much as the Comics Code would allow) and reflect good people struggling to save their souls from bad breaks and Faustian bargains, so brace yourselves, hold steady and accept no supernal substitutes…
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