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Shaft: A Complicated Man


By David F. Walker, Bilquis Evely & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-757-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

For decades Black consumers of popular entertainments had far too few fictive role models. For the English-speaking world that began changing in the turbulent 1960s and truly took hold during the decade that followed. A lot of the characters developed at that time came from a cultural phenomenon called “Blaxploitation” (other spellings are available). Despite being criticised for their seedy antecedents, stereotypical situations and violence, these films and books were the first mass-market examples of minority characters in leading roles, rather than as mere fodder or flunkies.

One of the earliest movie icons of the genre was a man called Shaft.

The landmark film was scripted by journalist and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman (The French Connection; High Plains Drifter) from his own 1970 novel. He authored six more between 1972 and 1975, with his timeless urban warrior starring in numerous films and a TV series. Eighth novel Shaft’s Revenge was released in 2016, written by David F. Walker.

Amongst his many gifts Walker numbers writing comics (Occupy Avengers; Cyborg; Red Sonja and many more) and in 2014 he was invited to write a long-overdue comics iteration… Illustrated by Bilquis Evely and coloured by Daniela & Miwa (Walker lettered the series himself), the comic book took its look, settings and tone primarily from the novels rather than the Richard Roundtree films. The first 6-chapter story-arc was collected as Shaft: A Complicated Man and offers some intriguing love overdue backstory. In all the detective’s prior appearances, no mention was made of his past, but here Big John gets a proper Origin…

Following an Introduction by educator and author Shawn Taylor, the saga – which won the 2015 Glyph Comics Award for Story of the Year – begins in December 1968. John Shaft is a former marine and veteran of the Vietnam war who’s come home and is trying to find his place in the world. An indomitable fighter, he’s using boxing as his big chance, but when he refuses to throw a fight, he incurs the wrath of both local black gang boss Junius Tate and the district’s mafioso overlord Sal Venneri.

Proud and resolute, but no fool, Shaft wins his bout, and accepts brutal punishment from Tate’s conflicted leg-breaker Bamma Brooks before vanishing from the cloistered island-within-an-island known as Harlem…

Just drifting, Shaft briefly goes to college before the call of adventure finds him joining private detective agency National Investigation & Security Services. His first job is as a plainclothes guard and “undercover negro shopper” at a fancy department store…

While on duty he meets pretty Arletha Havens and finds a reason to stop drifting and start planning. Before long, he’s seeing a bright future together.

That all goes to hell when thugs bust into their apartment looking for a hooker named Marisol Dupree and her pimp Jimmy Style…

With Arletha hostage, Shaft is forced to accompany one of the abductors back to Harlem for the first time in years, hunting the missing woman and a package she’s holding: something someone really important wants back. In fact, Marisol’s mystery treasure has big city money men in a panic and all the criminal factions in Harlem at each other’s throats, but Shaft’s immediate problem is simply staying alive…

After surviving a savage gunfight dropping five bodies in an alley, he returns home to find Arletha’s body and resolves that somebody – maybe everybody – is going to pay…

All on his own again, the coldly furious avenger finds his true calling, tracking down Marisol, methodically putting the pieces together in a chilling city-wide web of graft, favours, murder and money before ensuring the guilty parties pay the ultimate price…

Comprising a devious, byzantine wasps’ nest of civic corruption, crooked cops, warring mobsters and treacherous allies, played out against a tragic backdrop of true love forever lost, Shaft’s first case is a superb crime thriller no fan of the genre should miss and comes with a bevy of bonus features. These include character designs; unused illustrations by Walker & John Jennings; script excerpts; in-production art pages and a covers and variants gallery by Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz, Ivan Nunes, Francesco Francavilla, Michael Avon Oeming, Ulises Farinas, Matt Haley, Sanford Greene, Nacho Tenorio & Sergio Mora.

It even comes with a toe-tappingly cool playlist to track down and enjoy whilst reading…
Shaft is ™ & © 2015 Ernest Tidyman. All rights reserved.

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Darwin’s Diaries volume 1-3: The Eye of the Celts, Death of a Beast & Dual Nature


By Eduardo Ocaña & Sylvain Runberg, coloured by Tariq Bellaoui, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-095-5 (v1 Album PB/Digital edition), 978-1-84918-110-5 (v2 Album PB/Digital), 978-1-84918-144-0 (v3 Album PB/Digital)

In the eternal quest to be entertained, humans have always searched far and wide. The capacity and desire to scare ourselves thus employs a vast landscape of genres and locales as well of all time and space. It also tempts us into mixing and mashing history, imagination and fanciful speculation…

Here’s a fabulously fitting idea for fantastic Scientific Romance in the grand manner of Professor Challenger, courtesy of French writer Sylvain Runberg (Conquests; Watchdogs Legion; On Mars; Orbital) and Spanish illustrator Eduardo Ocaña (Messiah Complex, Full Tilt Boogie, Les Bâtisseurs): an enthralling triptych begun in 2010 which – despite slipping off everyone’s radar – has stood the test of time.

In England, Victoria is Queen, and her mighty nation will soon be an empire. It is, however, not at peace, and former explorer and controversial naturalist Charles Darwin is asked by Prime Minister Lord Palmerston to undertake a delicate mission in the North. It is not for his current field of expertise, but rather his early – and now – classified endeavours into the field of crypto-zoology. Not long ago, Darwin had quietly looked into the existence of mythical things: Almases, Sasquatch, Werewolves and other “clawed ones”…

The region he is despatched to is the site of railway construction, but recently the navvies, their horses and even a company of soldiers have been butchered by some beast. Darwin must go there and pacify the populace whilst ruling out any possibility that the culprit is of unknown origins…

The first minister also hints that as well as the lure of fresh knowledge, the savant should also consider that local entrepreneurial grandee Sir Howard Dickinson would be grateful enough to fund any future travels Darwin might be considering…

The scientist readily accepts – but not for the reasons expected – and is soon in York, met by forthright suffragist Suzanne Dickinson and Indian manservant Rajiv. Once ensconced in the Blue Moors hotel (her father’s latest acquisition), Darwin opens his investigation, with the suspiciously curious and hands-on Miss Dickinson always in attendance.

He finds her a superb companion. Highly educated and competent, she has been schooled in medicine and business is and acquainted with prestigious thinkers like John Stuart Mill and emancipators such as Emily Davies and Barbara Leigh Smith…

Upon examining the remains of the victims, Darwin stakes his reputation on the premise that a great tiger is loose in the wooded region. Neither his sponsors nor the striking navvies give that theory much credence, and that night, a shepherd and his dog are added to the death register. Locals begin voicing opinions that the culprits must be the weird Welsh cult led by self-professed holy man Cadell Afferson. He says he’s a druid in touch with ancient forces…

Meanwhile, Darwin’s gentlemanly facade seems to slip. When returned to the Blue Moor, he sinks into depravity, getting drunk, fighting with local bullies and availing himself of local harlot Louise Stuart. As he becomes a beast, the one he’s hunting attacks again, butchering soldiers, sabotaging the work site and apparently perishing in a massive explosion.

Suzanne is unable to refrain from commenting on the scientist’s condition when she fetches him next morning, but Darwin doesn’t care after hearing that military martinet Captain Sanders has recovered the creature’s corpse…

Originally published in 2010 as Les carnets de Darwin 1 – L’oeil des celtes, this period drama ripples with suppressed tension as it sets up a classic confrontation between man and monster to delight every thriller fan.

 

The suspense spectacularly escalates in second volume Death of a Beast (La mort d’une bête) as the press gets wind of the news that Mr. Darwin has discovered a creature previously unknown to science. Panic grips York, but rail construction recommences, thanks to the foreman’s unique methods of negotiation. As esteemed researcher and weary soldiers seek more evidence, Druid Cadell stirs the pot, warning that ancient gods will judge their actions…

Darwin believes his job nearly done, but as he dines with the Dickinsons, fresh tragedy sparks more bloodshed. When a little girl is found eviscerated, furious, terrified townsfolk turn on the druids and a brutal riot is only quashed by ruthless military intervention…

Far from that madding crowd, the scientist is amazed at his host’s familiarity with legends of shapeshifting creatures, and even more so by Suzanne’s other passion. She runs educational workshops for townswomen, teaching them to read and count and even honest trades. Her greatest joy is anticipating  the festival she and dowager Virginia Wilson have organised: Yorkshire’s first Feminist Convention…

Eventually Darwin and the soldiers are able to convince the citizens the child’s death is not due to a new beast or the Celts in the forest, but arrogant, affronted Afferson swears to take vengeance. He does possess some secret knowledge, but when he summons what really prowls the moors and forests, his mistaken belief that he is in control costs everyone dearly…

Meanwhile, in York, Darwin again gives in to his own beast and nearly dies due to it, but a horror has been roused to vicious action and whatever he truly is cannot hope to stand against it…

Blending socio-political intrigue with an immensely devious mystery where nothing is as it seems, this episode offers hints of far more at play and at stake than anyone previously suggested. Stay tuned for a big, big finish…

 

Closing chapter Dual Nature – formerly Les carnets de Darwin 3 – Double nature – moves from chilling canter to full galloping charge as fear and frenzy grip town and country, and mutilated bodies pile up. Captain Sanders informs Darwin that the investigation is done, and that Palmerston has decided the terror is the work of enemy agents set on destabilising the nation, and has sent further military personnel to mop up. Prudent and cautious, the PM has also despatched a renowned professional hunter, in case these sinister plotters instigators have indeed unleashed trained animals as part of their plan…

Sadly, effete dandy and aristocratic butcher Sir Rillons – and his entourage of privileged hangers-on – are merely the first to discover that what is actually loose is a pack of monstrous killers faster and stronger than any ever recorded before – and easily as smart as human beings…

In the aftermath of a bloody debacle, the drama reaches a messy crescendo as Darwin is abducted by the beasts and his own secret fully exposed. However, the ultra-macho monsters – distracted by and determined to crush the unnatural women demanding equal rights at their ridiculous convention – have not reckoned on uncanny hidden allies even the biologist himself is unaware that he has and ultimately, fang, claw and unnatural selection determines the outcome…

Murderous madcap mayhem and far from historically robust, this yarn is a crazily delicious feast of gory fun to charm every horror fan: a pure treat to gorge on and digest at your leisure.
© Editions du Lombard (Dargaud-Lombard SA) 2010 by Sylvain Runberg & Eduardo Ocaña. All rights reserved. English translation © 2011, 2012, 2013 Cinebook Ltd.

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Lydie


By Zidrou & Jordi Lafebre, translated by Mercedes Claire Gilliom (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: digital edition only

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Lyrical, Lovely, Unforgettable… 10/10

It’s the season for spirits and spectres and we all love a good, healthy scare, but it’s wise to remember that ghost stories aren’t just about revenge, unfinished business or unreasoning irrational terror. So often, what’s at play is feeling of duty and ineffable loss…

As you’d expect, our Continental cousins are exceeding adept at exploring humanity’s softer sides through the medium of comics, and Lydie is a masterclass in emotive, evocative, ruthlessly sensitive storytelling to delight our senses by quietly affirming our better natures.

Be warned though: this tale is funny, heartwarming and sad. No one (at least nobody even borderline human) will scoff or sneer if you need tissues to get you to the end.

Lydie was originally released in 2012, courtesy of empathetically enthralling scripter Zidrou (Benoît Drousie) and illustrator Jordi Lafebre. Drousie is Belgian, Brussels born in 1962 and until 1990 a school teacher – prior to quitting marking books to instead make them. His primary successes include school dunce series L’Elève Ducobu, Petit Dagobert, Scott Zombi, La Ribambelle, Le Montreur d’histoires, African Trilogy, Shi, Léonardo, a revived Ric Hochet and so many more. His most celebrated and beloved stories are the Les Beaux Étés sequence (translated by Europe Comics as Glorious Summers) – and this stand-alone saga. Both are illustrated by Spanish artist Jordi Lafebre.

The sublimely gifted illustrator and art teacher was born in Barcelona in 1979 and has been a comics professional since 2001 – initially for magazines like Mister K, where he limned Toni Font’s El Mundo de Judy. Lafebre found regular work at Le Journal de Spirou, creating the romance Always Never and collaborating with Zidrou on La vieille dame qui n’avait jamais joué au tennis et autres nouvelles qui font du bien, and La Mondaine.

Even for such gifted creators and in-tune collaborators, Lydie is something special: A combination of semi-tragic feel-good fable and genteel working class ghost story, this is a beguiling confection dealing out potent emotional punches one after another – so be braced with plenty of hankies. Nevertheless, it still manages to find the good and the laudable in us, even in the lowest moments and worst of aspects of our natures: enrobing what should be crushing tragedy in the uplifting actions of a community looking out for all of its members, no matter how flawed or forgotten they might become…

It starts sometime in the last century with a little enclave of an ordinary district in the kind of town that used to be everywhere. The crowded cul-de-sac of Baron Van Dick Court is a tiny, independent world of its own, where everyone knows everyone – and most of their personal business. However, since kids will be kids, when a little bit of mischief occurred, the place became irrevocably and foreverafter “Mustachioed Baby Court”…

The denizens live piled up on each other and are a typical bunch: hard-working, industrious, painfully practical and all eking out a living as best they can, but one night something rather extraordinary happens…

It truly started some time earlier. Down in the backyard, poor, hard-up Victor Lefort was again forced to destroy his cat’s beautiful kittens, even as upstairs Doctor “Fables” Fabian was failing to save a baby. Perhaps it was for the best. Distressed mother-to-be Camille Tirion is painfully simpleminded, and had been cruelly taken advantage of by some vile anonymous sinner, so what possibly life could her child have had?

Camille – and her poor father Augustin – were subject of much gossip in the local general store/bar. Despite being a train driver and often away overnight, he has done his best raising his afflicted daughter all on his own… at least until this…

Camille’s mother also died in childbirth and now cruel fate has struck the family again…

The event affects everyone in the Court and many parents must explain to their own children how – if not why – Camille’s baby has gone and must live in a tiny wooden box under the ground in the church graveyard…

However, once all the necessary ceremonies have taken place and life in the Court moves back towards normal, something happens. It begins when Augustin finds his bereft child crumpled under the little statue of the Madonna that’s been overlooking the court for who knows how long, and continues the next day when Camille dashes joyously into the store, ecstatically telling all inside that her baby has come back.

Of course, little Lydie is invisible now…

Her joy is infectious, and no one wants to disabuse the poor simpleton of her fanciful notion, but things take a stranger turn after the feral and prolific delinquent Ayhard brothers brutally tease the “new mother “and her swaddled, intangible infant. When aged Madame Paris helps distraught Camille comfort the latest addition to the Court, the community rallies around, and before long even the most curmudgeonly dweller in Mustachioed Baby Court is playing along: from crusty shopkeeper Théophile Lefort to acid-tongued sot Madame Malisse. The priest is even cajoled into performing a special baptism for the unseen infant…

…And gradually, with everyone contributing to the fantastic lie for decades, it all seems to come fantastically true…

From this point on, the story takes on a life of its own too, so please for the sake of soul and all the lost joy modern life has stripped from you, find and read this glorious fable dedicated to the miraculous strength of imagination, power of love and irresistible force of humanity united in a grand cause…
© 2018 DARGAUD BENELUX (Dargaud-Lombard s.a.) – Jordi Lafebre and Zidrou. All rights reserved.

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Black Lightning volume 1


By Tony Isabella, Denny O’Neil, Trevor Von Eeden, Mike Netzer, Frank Springer, Vince Colletta & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-6071-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

Black Lightning was far from the first superhero of colour, but his mutability, iconic image and sheer tenacity have made him one of the most enduring and widely travelled. He’s been everything from outraged lone street vigilante to teacher; Presidential Secretary to perfect team player (on a succession of super-groups); sporting legend, family man and world-saving wise mentor. He’s even made the turbulent transition to star of his own television series…

Very little of that was apparent when these groundbreaking adventures were first released. Back then, the simple fact that an African-American masked hero was considered sales-worthy was the biggest leap imaginable…

Excluding a few returning characters in jungle-themed comic of the 1940s and 1950s, War comics first opened the door to black characters in the early 1960s, when Robert Kanigher & Joe Kubert created negro boxer Jackie Johnson as a stalwart of Sgt. Rock’s Easy Company in Our Army at War #113 (cover-dated December 1961).

Marvel followed suit with a black soldier in Sgt. Fury’s Howling Commandos (Gabe Jones, debuting in #1, May 1963), and pulled far ahead in the diversity stakes after introducing America’s first negro superheroes. The Black Panther premiered in Fantastic Four #52, (July 1966) and The Falcon first flew in Captain America #117 (September 1969). Luke Cage became the Hero for Hire in the spring of 1972, carrying a June cover-date…

The honour of being the nation’s first black hero to carry in his own title had already come and gone via a little-remembered (or regarded) title from Dell Comics. Created by artist Tony Tallarico & scripter D.J. Arneson, gunslinger Lobo was a vigilante of the wild west who sought out injustice just like any cowboy hero would. He first appeared in December 1965, with his second and final issue cover-dated October 1966…

Gradually, more ethnic lead characters appeared, with DC finally getting a black-skinned hero in John Stewart (Green Lantern #87, December 1971/January 1972), although his designation as a “replacement” GL might be construed as more conciliatory and insulting than revolutionary. By then, Jack Kirby had introduced teen New God Vykin the Black in Forever People #1 (March 1971) and later created enterprising “ghetto kid” Shilo Norman as a hero’s apprentice and eventual successor in Mister Miracle ##15 (August, 1973). DC’s first superhero to have his own solo title didn’t debut until 1977…

This astoundingly accessible, no-nonsense collection – comprising Black Lightning #1-11, material from Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #1 and World’s Finest Comics #260, spans April 1977 to January 1980) and bolts into action following a forthright and informative Introduction by originator Tony Isabella.

It begins as ‘Black Lightning’ (illustrated by neophyte penciller Trevor Von Eeden & veteran inker Frank Springer) sees former Olympic decathlete Jefferson Pierce return to the streets of Suicide Slum, Metropolis to teach at beleaguered inner city Garfield High School. Pierce is determined to make a difference to the troubled kids he used to be numbered amongst, but when the educator interrupts a drug buy on school grounds and sends the dealer packing, the door is opened to vengeance and tragedy…

When the mob – a crime syndicate dubbed The 100 – seek retaliation, one of Pierce’s students pays the ultimate price and the teacher realises he needs the shield of anonymity if he is to win justice and safety for his beleaguered home and charges…

Happily, tailor Peter Gambi – who sheltered Jefferson and his grieving mother after the elder Pierce was murdered – has some useful ideas and inexplicable access to pretty far-out technology…

Equipped with a strength-&-speed enhancing forcefield belt, gaudy costume, a and mask/wig unit completely changing his appearance, a fierce vigilante stalks the streets of Metropolis…

The local chapter of The 100 is run by monstrous, cunning freak Tobias Whale and once the assaults on his soldiers starts biting into profits and offer the downtrodden populace a glimmer of hope, he starts ruthless retaliation.

The sinister strategist lays many traps, culminating in hiring a lethal super-assassin who previously faced Green Arrow and the Justice League of America.

When the killer pounces, Pierce is forced into uneasy alliance with mystery woman Talia Al Ghul, but it ends as soon as bodies start piling up all over the school gym in ‘Merlyn Means Murder’…

Vince Colletta assumes the inker’s role as Black Lightning’s continued war against The 100 forces “the Whale” to fight smart, and Metro Police – led by doughty Inspector William Henderson – pursue the vigilante as vigorously as any gangster or felon. Taking seedy stoolie Two Bits Tanner into his confidence, Pierce savagely works his way up the criminal chain of command.

He eventually confronts Tobias in his inner sanctum only to find ‘Every Hand Against Him.’ As the police pounce, paranoia grips Pierce and he begins mistrusting his small team. Has someone he trusts betrayed him?

A more palatable answer seems apparent in #4 as suspicion falls on Tanner’s source – Daily Planet journalist Jimmy Olsen. When the outraged street fighter tries to force a confession from the baffled cub reporter, they are attacked by the 100’s latest super heavy in ‘Beware the Cyclotronic Man’…

Jimmy is wounded when they unite to fight off the atomic villain, and Black Lightning is suddenly confronted by the kid’s enraged and late-arriving best pal, who immediately jumps to the wrong conclusion and quickly shows why ‘Nobody Beats a Superman!’

In fact, had Cyclotron not switched attention to the true target Tobias wanted him to kill, everyone might have died, but the heroes’ misunderstandings are all forgotten when Black Lightning saves the Man of Tomorrow from nuclear meltdown, beats the bad guys and uncovers a mole in the police force…

Patience exhausted and under pressure from his own bosses, the Whale declares open season, placing an astounding bounty on Black Lightning. When deeply conflicted manhunter Syonide (and his hilarious, Marvel-baiting in-joke kung fu assistants) stalk the Saviour of Suicide Slum, their first move is to shadow and learn everything about their quarry.

When Gambi is abducted, Jefferson’s secret is finally exposed in ‘One Man’s Poison’, Syonide – afflicted with a bizarre sense of honour – hands over a helpless Black Lightning to the Whale in #7. However he cannot escape ‘The Conscience of the Killer’ and is compelled to shelter the captive tailor from the 100’s vengeance before voluntarily paying the ultimate price when ordered to kill the apparently-helpless masked hero…

Tragically, even as Black Lightning undergoes a miraculous transformation and takes out the gathered crooks and villains, he loses another innocent to the violent life he has embraced…

With the power of the 100 seemingly broken and Tobias Whale in custody, Pierce’s war should be over, but the gigantic gangster quickly breaks free and takes hostages from Police HQ.

Determined to end the vendetta, Black Lightning tracks him down for one last duel and in the ‘Deadly Aftermath’ finds the renewed purpose to carry on his alternate lifestyle…

Now considering himself more hero than avenger, Pierce experiences ‘Fear and Loathing at Garfield High’ when his school is invaded by a maniac terrorist operating an army of robotic killers, after which a circus trip exposes ‘The Other Black Lightning’. Sadly, although this well-meaning admirer is a mostly-harmless copycat, jewel thieves and former Flash foe The Trickster provide plenty of genuine danger and menace before the big top sawdust settles…

Comics were experiencing another general sales downturn at this time, and just as Denny O’Neil took over scripting Black Lightning, it was cancelled with #11 (October 1978).

‘All They Will Call You Will Be… Deportee!’ offered hints of a new direction with the urban avenger exposing a people-trafficking ring luring South American refugees into slave jobs at a fast food chain, but for most readers that was the last sight of the hero for some time.

So abrupt was the cancellation, that for legal reasons and to secure copyrights, DC had to put out black-&-white ashcan anthology Cancelled Comics Cavalcade, printing completed but unpublished stories of Claw the Unconquered, The Deserter, The Green Team, Madame Xanadu, Firestorm and others. Also included was Black Lightning #12…

The wider world got to see that last adventure – ‘Lure of the Magnetic Menace’ by O’Neil, Mike Nasser (nee Netzer) & Colletta – a year later when the January 1980 cover-dated World’s Finest Comics #260 ran the story as a prelude to a new series of BL adventures.

This edgy yarn details how the shocking hero is attacked by costumed crazy Doctor Polaris after Jefferson Pierce investigates a possible case of child neglect and abuse involving one of his more troubled students…

Wrapping up this initial outing is a copious selection of working drawings from the ‘Black Lightning Sketchbook’ by Von Eeden, and Mike Netzer’s unfinished cover for never-seen issue #13.

Although closely interlinked to then-current DC continuity, these fast-paced Fights ‘n’ Tights thrillers are so skilfully constructed that even the freshest neophyte can settle in for the ride without any confusion and enjoy a self-contained rollicking rollercoaster of terrifically traditional superhero shenanigans.

So, go do that then…
© 1977, 1978, 1979, 2016 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Captain America – Truth


By Robert Morales, Kyle Baker & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-3427-9 (TPB/Digital Edition) 978-0785136668 (Premiere HB)

It’s never been more apparent than these days, but Truth is a Weapon. Facts, events and especially interpretations have always been manipulated to further a cause, and that simple premise was the basis of one of the most groundbreaking and controversial comic book stories of all time…

Created by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby in an era of frantic patriotic fervour, Captain America was a dynamic and highly visible response to the horrors of Nazism and the threat of Liberty’s loss. Consequently, the concept quickly lost focus and popularity after hostilities ceased. Fading away during post-war reconstruction, only to briefly reappear after the Korean War: a harder, darker sentinel ferreting out monsters, subversives and the “Reds” who lurked under every American bed.

He abruptly vanished once more, until the burgeoning Marvel Age resurrected him just in time to experience the Land of the Free’s most turbulent and culturally divisive era. Cap quickly became a mainstay of the Marvel Revolution during the Swinging Sixties, but lost his way after that, except for a politically-charged period under scripter Steve Englehart.

Despite everything, Captain America became a powerful symbol for generations of readers and his career can’t help but reflect that of the nation he stands for…

Devised in the Autumn and on newsstand by December 20th 1940, Captain America Comics #1 was cover-dated March 1941 and an instant monster, blockbuster smash-hit. The Sentinel of Liberty had boldly and bombastically launched in his own monthly title with none of the publisher’s customary caution, and instantly became the absolute and undisputed star of Timely’s top-selling “Big Three” – the other two being The Human Torch and Sub-Mariner. He was, however, one of the first to fall from popularity as the Golden Age ended.

For all that initial run, his exploits were tinged – or maybe “tainted” – by the sheer exuberant venom of appalling racial stereotyping and heady fervour of jingoism at a time when America was involved in the greatest war in world history. Nevertheless, the first 10 issues of Captain America Comics are the most exceptional comics in the fledgling company’s history…

You know the origin story as if it were your own. In ‘Meet Captain America’ Simon & Kirby revealed how scrawny, enfeebled patriot and genuinely Good Man Steven Rogers, after being continually rejected by the US Army, is recruited by the Secret Service.

Desperate to stop Nazi-sympathizing atrocity, espionage and sabotage, the passionate teen accepts the chance to become part of a clandestine experimental effort to create physically perfect super-soldiers. However, after a Nazi agent infiltrates the project and murders the pioneering scientist behind it, Rogers is left as the only successful graduate and becomes America’s not-so-secret weapon.

For decades the story has been massaged and refined, yet remained essentially intact, but in 2002 – in the wake of numerous real-world political and social scandals (like the Tuskegee Experiment/Tuskegee Syphilis Study 1932-1972) – writer Robert Morales (Vibe Magazine, Captain America) & Kyle Baker (Nat Turner, Plastic Man, The Shadow, Why I Hate Saturn) took a cynical second look at the legend through the lens of the treatment of and white attitudes towards black American citizens…

The result was Truth: Red, White & Black #1-7 (January-July 2003), initially collected as a Premiere Hardcover edition in 2009 and here in trade paperback and digital formats. This hard-hitting view of the other side of a Marvel Universe foundational myth forever changed the shape of the continuity: using the tragedy and inherent injustice of the situation to add to the pantheon more – and more challenging – heroes of colour and contemporary role models.

‘The Future’ begins at “Negro Week” of the 1940 New York World’s Fair where Isaiah Bradley and his bride Faith learn yet again they are still second class citizens, and that their rights and freedoms are conditional. December in Philadelphia sees young firebrand and workers’ rights activist Maurice Canfield painfully realise that even his father’s hard-earned wealth and position mean nothing as long as their skin is dark in America…

Cleveland in June of 1941 and negro war veteran “Black Cap” is still in the army. It’s fiercely segregated and he’s been demoted to sergeant, but Luke Evans is content to have work and purpose. Since returning from the Great War, Evans has lived through so much crap – even a year of race riots and near-revolution that threatened to wipe out his kind – that he’s content to take each day as it comes.

Everything changes for these black men and thousands like them when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941…

‘The Basics’ opens in 1942 at Camp Cathcart, Mississippi. The base is tense, and strife between partitioned white and black recruits at a perilous boiling point. Brawling between races is constant. Into the explosive situation comes oily G-Man Homer Tully and scientist Dr. Josef Reinstein who petition openly racist commander Major Brackett to give them two battalions of coloured recruits and cover up the fact that they ever existed…

Wartime secrecy is then employed to mask an appalling act of racist cynicism, as hundreds of patriotic black men are trained and callously discarded as Reinstein methodically perfects his super-soldier serum on expendable lower race guinea pigs.

The scene switches to Project Super Soldier (location classified) where Colonel Walker Price supervises ‘The Passage’ of the survivors from human to something else. Bradley, Canfield, Evans and the others have endured a cruel barrage of chemical interventions. Of three hundred, only a handful survive, and all are radically changed… or, more accurately, mutated. Reinstein is acutely aware that his former colleagues in Nazi Germany are just as close to solving the riddle of superhumanity and pushes on with increasing disregard for the laws of science or ethics of civilisation…

Next of kin are informed that their loved ones have been killed in training, but Faith Bradley knows the corpse in the casket is not her man and starts making waves…

Ultimately, military pragmatism supersedes scientific caution and the seven remaining negros – all immensely powerful in radically changed bodies – are pressed into action as an expendable super-suicide squad. Commanded by white supremacist Lieutenant Philip Merritt, ‘The Cut’ sees them deployed to the Black Forest with orders to destroy the rival Uber-mensch project. The mission catastrophically fails, but survivor Isaiah Bradley is coerced by Walker Price into returning to Germany on a solo suicide mission to eradicate the facility. Apparently, the “real” Captain America is unable to get there in time…

Rebellious to the end, Bradley complies, but steals and dons the flashy star-spangled uniform worn by the public – blue-eyed, blonde and exceeding white – face of America’s Super Soldier Project. It’s October 1942 and the last time the world hears from or about Bradley…

The horrors he saw and his spectacular triumph only start emerging in ‘The Math’ as – today in the Bronx – superhero Steve Rogers meets Bradley’s widow and discovers something truly astounding…

Whilst crushing domestic terrorism, Captain America had captured unrepentant mastermind Merritt and learned how the monster had been instrumental in Reinstein’s death decades previously. Further investigation uncovered ‘The Whitewash’ Merritt and his superior Walker Price instigated, and what they perpetrated after Bradley unexpectedly battled his way back to America…

Stunned to have unearthed a secret history of oppression and immorality that occurred all around him without his slightest inkling, Rogers is distraught and furious, resolved to set things right at all costs…

That mission takes him to the highest echelons of government and darkest corners of military intelligence in ‘The Blackvine’, where he learns more uncomfortable truths about his origins and the true nature of the country he loves and represents. Shellshocked and despondent, Cap returns to the Bradley’s home and gets a welcome if belated chance to salve his soul, set history straight and repay moral debts unknowingly incurred in his name…

With covers by Baker, promo art by Joe Quesada, Danny Miki & Richard Isanove, and unused cover treatments, this landmark saga is backed up with a context-laden, disturbingly informative Appendix by Robert Morales: clarifying and expanding on many previously sidelined moments of actual and black history that informed the story.

Powerful, engaging, enlightening and immensely gratifying, this is a story to enrage and enthral, and one no socially aware superfan should miss.
© 2022 MARVEL.

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Evil Emperor Penguin: Antics in Antarctica


By Laura Ellen Anderson, with Kate Brown (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-282-3 (Digest PB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Outrageous Acts and Brilliant Buffoonery… 8/10

In 2012 Oxford-based family publisher David Fickling Books launched an “old school” weekly comics anthology aimed at girls and boys between 6 and 12. It revelled in reviving the good old days of British picture-story entertainment intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in its style and content. This comprised comic strips, humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material in a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy.

In the years since its premiere, the periodical has gone from strength to strength, its pantheon of superbly engaging strips generating a line of superbly engaging graphic novel compilations, the latest of which is this riotous romp starring a gloriously malign arch-wizard of scientific wickedness to delight all readers with a profound sense of mischief and unbridled imagination…

Conceived and created by illustrator and author Laura Ellen Anderson (Kittens, Snow Babies, My Brother is a Superhero, Amelia Fang!, Rainbow Grey, I Don’t Want…), these are the revived ad remastered exploits of Evil Emperor Penguin!

He lives in a colossal fortress beneath the Antarctic, working tirelessly towards total world domination, assisted by his stylish, erudite administrative lackey Number 8 and cutely fuzzy, passionately loyal Eugene. The latter is an endlessly inventive little abominable snowman clone. EEP had whipped up a batch of 250, but none of the others are quite like Eugene…

The Penguin appointed the hairy, bizarrely inventive tyke his Top Minion, but somehow never managed to instil him with the proper degree of evilness. He is, however, a dab-hand with spaghetti hoops, so it’s not a total loss…

Following a pin-up of the ‘Fridge of Evil’ and an info-packed double-page map of the Evil Underground Headquarters disclosing all you’ll need to know, an assortment of vile vignettes begins with ‘A Stitch in Time’ wherein the cape-draped malcontent megalomaniac unleashes his Evil Emperor-bot of Icy Doom at the annual World Leaders’ Picnic.

Unfortunately, due to a totally typical cock-up with the plans by oafish underlings, the titanic tin-can terror’s ice-laser eyes have somehow been replaced by instant knitting machines…

The next nasty invention doesn’t even get out of the lab before malfunctioning. ‘Have No Fear’ finds a dire device that manifests personal terrors running amok in the lab, unleashing EEP’s domineering mother and sweet Eugene’s incredible, ghastly secret phobia before the inventors can reach the Emergency Self-Destruct Button…

‘Cat-astrophe’ introduces a terrifying rival in the Word Domination stakes who infiltrates the bad bird’s base as a cute and fluffy feline pet for Number 8…

When EEP’s giant spider robot immobilises the entire Earth in its ‘World-Wide-Web’, even Evil Cat is caught off guard, and only Eugene’s incomprehensible preoccupation with shiny, sparkly unicorns prevents total disaster.

The top-hatted, moustachioed, perfidious puss then attempts amnesty in ‘The Truce’ but the fuzzy fiend is, of course, shamming friendship. The floral gift he proffers is actually a deadly animated booby-trap which is only just defeated thanks to Eugene’s inherent ineptitude.

Would-be World Dictators are not a particularly forgiving bunch and when the fuzzy tyke accidentally unleashes the full force of EEP’s Ferocious And Really Terrible machine, ‘The Stinking Truth’ is released in a Nuclear Stench Cloud and prompting the penguin peril to fire his Top Minion. EEP’s loss is Evil Cat’s gain though, and Eugene soon settles in with a Malign Master who really appreciates him.

‘Please Alight for the Domination Station’ finds them quashing the chilly Caped Fiend’s scheme to transform Britain’s seat of government into the Houses of Penguinment (which I’m pretty sure we’d all vote for this week), but a pitched battle between super-science cat and ghastly gadget bird swiftly escalates beneath London streets before Eugene’s cuteness-filled ultimate weapon sadly takes out his new boss by mistake…

As a result of that debacle, the little snowman is briefly evaporated by Evil Cat and ends up floating wistfully over Antarctica as a ‘Head in the Clouds’ even as Evil Emperor Penguin faces his greatest challenge when his little sister Ruth – she prefers “Ruth-less” – pays a visit, sees what big bro is up to and decides that she too is going to rule the world in ‘Sibling Rivalry’…

Things get even worse after Evil Cat interferes, holding Ruth-less hostage until everybody involved has foolishly forgotten that tiny turncoat Eugene is afflicted with niceness and a powerful conscience…

The exploration of  cartoon evil and daft depravity amplifies and intensifies in an epic exploit detailing ‘The Return’ when sweet-natured Eugene’s continual bodges at last force Evil Cat to fire him with extreme prejudice. Hopeless, homeless and homesick, the shaggy savant is on his last legs when he’s adopted by jolly unicorn Keith, who nurses him back to health and flies him to Antarctica just in time for them both to become embroiled in a final fateful clash between Penguin and Cat.

Naturally such devoted do-gooders can only get stuck in and engineer some marvellously magical reconciliation…

More nefarious nonsense unfolds in extended thriller-chiller ‘I Will Crèche You’ wherein EEP’s incredible De-Ageifying “Youth Juice” wreaks the now-customary havoc after insidious rival Evil Cat breaks into the citadel and everybody gets a rejuvenating soaking…

Undaunted, the Penguin of Perfidy attempts to increase his own stature with a growth ray but doesn’t consider that his top menial might wander in and accidentally become ‘Hugene’…

More trouble arrives when the Barmy Bird decides to digitise and upload himself into the global data net via his Super Computer of Evil. Believing supreme power is in his feathered grasp once he becomes ultimate virus ‘X-Treme Evil’, EEP is ambushed in virtual reality by digital demon virus Trojan the Hunk. Luckily, Eugene is a dab paw with computer games and comes to his master’s rescue… sort of…

Back in the physical world once again the Emperor is next subjected to a terrifying surreal assault by feathered scavengers and finds himself ‘Pigeon Holed’…

Everybody loves cute kittens, which is what Evil Cat’s cousin Debra counts on when she uses soppy Eugene to infiltrate the fortress and steal all the Spaghetti Hoops in ‘What’s New Pussycat’. With the team – even Evil Cat – trapped and helpless, they must surrender all pride and dignity and call on jolly unicorn Keith to save them…

Without their favourite food, Christmas seems drab and dreary for the entire ice-bound army but when Eugene finds ‘The One Hoop’ it unleashes a torrent of unexpected emotion to tide the Evil Emperor over, even though it ultimately leads to deprivation mania in ‘A New Hoop’…

Deranged and desperate, EEP is only saved after Eugene and Number 8 track down Debra and steal back the vast cache of spaghetti tins. Good thing too, as she wasn’t planning on eating them but needed them to power her world-destroying machine…

After all that drama, ‘Eugene’s Day Off’ is an unremitting stream of great experiences for the faithful servitor, but for the Penguin Potentate – forced to put up with substandard substitute Neill – a string of catastrophic and painful disasters. Thus, it’s no surprise and a total tragedy when EEP’s top flunky is lost on a melting ’berg after watching the pretty sunset ‘On Thin Ice’…

Happily, the unthinkable occurs as the cape-clad malcontent megalomaniac teams up with scintillating Keith the Unicorn to save Eugene from dire deep sea doom…

‘Pop Goes the Easel’ finds the putrid penguin planning an attack on world leaders through the medium of art, but sadly, turning his victims into paintings proves to be a double-edged sword with unexpected repercussions, especially after Eugene tries to help…

This gag-filled grimoire of bird-based bombast concludes in high style as a sinister scheme to flood the world with scented candles of distilled Ultimate Evil is thwarted once ‘Essence of Eugene’ is added to the wax mixer, resulting in a global outpouring of warm, fuzzy euphoria…

Rocket-paced, hilariously inventive, wickedly arch and utterly determined to be silly when it most counts, this tome of terror also has educational merit as it offers lessons on ‘How to Draw Eugene’. Evil Emperor Penguin: Antics in Antarctica is a captivating cascade of smart, witty funny adventure, which will delight readers of all ages.
Text and illustrations © Laura Ellen Anderson 2022. All rights reserved.

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Black Panther Adventures


By Jeff Parker, Marc Sumerak, Christopher Yost, Elliot Kalan, Roy Thomas, Manuel Garcia, Ig Guara, Scott Wegener, Christopher Jones, Chris Giarusso, John Buscema & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-1034-1 (Digest PB/Digital edition)

From its earliest days, Marvel always courted and accommodated young comic book consumers, often through separates titles and imprints. In 2003, the company instituted the Marvel Age line to reframe classic original tales by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and others for a fresh-faced 21st century readership.

The experiment was tweaked in 2005, becoming Marvel Adventures. The tone of all the tales was very much that of the company’s burgeoning TV animation franchises, in execution if not name. Titles bearing the Marvel Adventures brand included Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and The Avengers and ran until 2010 when they were all cancelled and replaced by new volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man.

Most of those comic book yarns have since been collected in digest-sized compilations such as this one, gathering a quartet of all-ages Black Panther tales but also including a brace of early1960s episodes from his first stint in mainstream MU series The Avengers.

Acclaimed as the first black superhero in American comics and one of the first to carry his own series, the Black Panther’s popularity and fortunes have waxed and waned since he first debuted as a character in Fantastic Four #52.

In that 1966 landmark the cat king attacked Marvel’s First Family as part of his extended scheme to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father, before eventually teaming up with them to defeat malign master of sound Klaw.

This eclectic compilation – comprising Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four #10, Marvel Adventures The Avengers #22, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes #1, Marvel Universe Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes #8, plus Silver Age epics from Avengers #52 and 62 – begins by broadly reimagining that initial FF encounter in ‘Law of the Jungle’ by Jeff Parker, Manuel Garcia & Scott Koblish (from Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four #10; May 2006) wherein the quixotic quartet are suckered into buying smuggled Vibranium.

The miracle mineral is Wakanda’s only export and the illegal sale quickly brings the duped heroes into savage conflict with a mysterious cat-garbed super-warrior. Tracking the Black Panther back to his super-scientific jungle kingdom, the team  eventually convince the king of their innocence and good intentions before teaming up to tackle the true villains…

Two years later Marvel Adventures The Avengers #22 (May 2008 and by Marc Sumerak, Ig Guara & Jay Leisten) revealed the ‘Wakanda Wild Side’ as sightings of murderous mutant Sabretooth in Africa draws Wolverine, Storm, Captain America, Spider-Man, Giant-Girl and the Hulk into an uncharted kingdom. They needn’t have bothered: Wakanda’s Panther chieftain is more than equal to the task of taking down the savage invader…

Following a page of comedic Marvel Mini Classics by Chris Giarusso, a short vignette from Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes #1 (November 2010) as Christopher Yost & Scott Wegener reveal how rival heroes T’Challa and Hawkeye work out their ‘Trust’ issues whilst battling crazed villain Whiplash.

Never the success the company hoped, the Marvel Adventures project was superseded in 2012 by specific comics tied to those Disney XD television shows designated as “Marvel Universe cartoons”, but these collected stories are still an amazingly entertaining and superbly accessible means of introducing characters and concepts to kids born sometimes three generations or more away from the originating events. They’re also pretty good fun for us old lags too…

Another short tale – this time from Marvel Universe Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes #8 (November 2012) – unites the Panther with the Hulk. Crafted by Elliott Kalan, Christopher Jones & Pond Scum, ‘Mayhem of the Madbomb!’ finds Green Goliath and Cat King furiously fighting Hydra to prevent he detonation of an insanity-inducing WMD stashed in the Empire State Building…

Wrapping up the action are a brace of classic exploits from Roy Thomas & John Buscema.

On Captain America’s recommendation the Black Panther joined the Avengers in #52’s ‘Death Calls for the Arch-Heroes!’ (May 1968, inked by Vince Colletta): a fast-paced murder mystery which also saw the advent of obsessive super-psycho The Grim Reaper who tried to frame the freshly-arrived-in-America T’Challa for the murder of Goliath, The Wasp and Hawkeye.

Then ‘The Monarch and the Man-Ape!’ (Avengers #62, March 1969, and inked by George Klein) offered Marvel fans the first real view of hidden Wakanda – and a brutal exploration of T’Challa’s history and rivals – as his trusted regent seeks to usurp the kingdom and overturn the state religion after declaring himself to be ‘M’Baku the Man-Ape!’…

Augmented by a cover gallery from Carlo Pagulayan & Chris Sotomayor, Leonard Kirk & Val Staples, Scott Wegener & Jean- François Beaulieu, Khoi Pham & Edgar Delgado and John Buscema, these ferociously enthralling riotous mini-epics are extremely enjoyable and engaging, but parents should note that some of the themes and certainly the level of violence might not be what everybody considers “All-Ages Super Hero Action”…
© 2017 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Rork: The Ghosts


By Andreas, coloured by Isa Cochet and translated by Montana Kane (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: digital edition

Born in January 1951, Andreas Martens is an incredibly versatile artist from East Germany (and from a time when that meant another country, not a different location). He trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf and the Saint-Luc Institute/comics school in Brussels. His work appeared in college magazine Le 9e Rêve, À suivre, Heavy Metal and Le Journal de Tintin where – in conjunction with his teacher Eddie Paape – he created the seminal Udolfo.

Relocating to France, Andreas adapted the works of Francois Rivière (collected in 1980 as Révélations Posthumes) and produced a graphic edition of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre for Je Bouquine.

Stand-alone works include La Caverne du Souvenir, Coutoo, Dérives and Aztèques, but his reptation was earned through gripping original series such as Raffington Detective, Cyrrus, Arq and others. His entire oeuvre is steeped in classical style, draped in period glamour and drenched in visual tension. Many are thematically linked. However, before all these, he created one of the most stylish and memorable “Challengers of The Unknown” in horror fiction: enigmatic psychic savant Rork.

His pale and moody period hero, (who first appeared in Le Journal de Tintin in 1978) draws on the tone, time and sometimes even “homaged” content of dark-fantasists August Derleth, H. P. Lovecraft and especially the Carnacki stories of William Hope Hodgson. Spiritual nomad Rork wanders the world and great beyond, unravelling mysteries and discovering startling wonders, not for fame or glory, but because he must…

In the early 1990s Dark Horse Comics serialized his adventures in their superb anthology of European comics Cheval Noir, and those translations formed the basis of a little seen or remarked upon series of albums from NBM.

After too long in absentia – that’s past Neverland, a little to the left of Narnia but not as far as The House on the Borderland – the mystic marvel returned in 2017, courtesy of digital-only publishing collective Europe Comics who kicked off what I still hope will be a complete revival by translating into English the final book in the sequence.

Released in 2012, Les fantômes is a prequel tale, regarded by devotees as volume #0, despite its being preceded by seven spooky tomes and crossovers with other Andreas concepts…

By this time, readers had learned that the snowy-haired enigma was a wizard from another dimension, compelled to solve supernatural mysteries even as he sought the secret of his own origins: twin quests that carried him all over creation and into scary battles beside many of the author’s other uncanny warriors of justice…

In this tale – vividly coloured by Isa Cochet (and I make this point as most Rork exploits have appeared in starkly stunning monochrome, in the manner and style of visual pioneers Bernie Wrightson and Jim Starlin) – the wanderer is consulted by Samuel, who has been the channel by which unquiet spirits informed the living of missing (and ultimately dead) persons…

Somehow linked to trees and forests, phantoms came to him ,and Samuel made his living helping others until the day he met Daphne and her son Cary. These living seekers’ search for a husband and father was for greed, not love or closure, and soured the diviner’s relationship with his ghosts. Now decades later, Samuel convinces Rork to intercede for him…

It’s not all altruism, though. The haughty, stubborn finder has been compelled to seek aid since ruthless treasure hunter Tryan has begun to threaten torture and worse unless Samuel uses his gifts to unearth hidden wealth. However, when the white wizard uses his own ability to converse with the departed, he hears a subtly different story and realizes he’s being played for a fool…

Andreas is fascinated by levels of reality and states of comprehension, so Rork tales always come layered with allegorical symbolism, abstract interpretation and trenchant pictorial clues pointing towards deeper meaning. As this story progresses, the mage draws Samuel into verbal duels whilst gradually removing him from the arcadian forests that harbour his ghosts: leading them to an arid desert of the American west where a godlike being offers hints to a greater truth, and where sinister pursuer Tryan falls into a cunning trap…

Ultimately, Rork divines the truth beneath strata of lies and self-deception and the mystery of Samuel is revealed for all to see…

For me, a great comic strip begins with the simple line. The greatest drawing is always about the power of black against white. Colour enhances but it seldom creates in our business. Andreas is one of the best line artists in the modern business so I’m delighted to confirm that there’s a stunning ‘Rork Gallery’ of seven breathtaking images closing his book.

Exotic, eccentric, chilling and lyrically beguiling, the traditional mysticism and otherworldly dread of these tales is a heady and captivating brew, especially with the intense, linear illustration and stark design of Andreas to mesmerize and shock your widened eyes.

Come see for yourselves why this series should be at the top of the list of books to re-release…
© 2017 ÉDITIONS DU LOMBARD (DARGAUD-LOMBARD S. A.) – ANDREAS. All rights reserved.

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Walt Disney’s Donald Duck and the Ghost of the Grotto


By Carl Barks (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-779-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: The Utter Acme of All-Ages Entertainment… 10/10

Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon in 1901. He grew up in rural areas of the West during some of the leanest times in American history. He tried his hand at many jobs before settling into the profession that chose him. His early life is well-documented elsewhere if you need detail, but briefly, Barks worked as an animator at Disney’s studio before quitting in 1942 to work in the new-fangled field of comic books.

With cartoon studio partner Jack Hannah (another occasional strip illustrator) Barks adapted a Bob Karp script for an animated short into the comic book Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold. Published as Dell Four Color Comics Series II #9 in October of that year – and although not his first published comics work – it was the story that shaped the rest of Barks’ career.

From then until his first official retirement in the mid-1960s, Barks worked in self-imposed seclusion, writing and drawing and devising a vast array of adventure comedies, gags, yarns and covers that gelled into a Duck Universe of memorable, highly bankable characters. These included Gladstone Gander (1948), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Magica De Spell (1961) and the nefarious Beagle Boys (1951), all supplementing Disney’s stable of cartoon actors. His greatest creation was undoubtedly curmudgeonly, energetic, paternalistic, money-mad giga-gazillionaire Scrooge McDuck: the World’s wealthiest winged nonagenarian…

Although producing all that landmark material Barks was just a working guy, generating cover art, illustrating other people’s scripts when asked and contributing stories to the burgeoning canon of Duck Lore. Only after Gladstone Publishing began re-packaging Barks material – and a selection of other Disney strips – in the 1980s, did he discover the well-earned appreciation he never imagined existed…

So potent were his creations that they inevitably fed back into Disney’s animation output itself, even though his brilliant comic work was done for licensing company Dell/Gold Key, and not directly for the studio. The greatest tribute was undoubtedly the animated series Duck Tales: heavily based on his works.

Barks was a fan of wholesome action, unsolved mysteries, rationality-based fantasy and epics of exploration. This led to him perfecting the art and technique of the blockbuster quest tale: blending wit, history, plucky bravado and wide-eyed wonder into rollicking rollercoaster romps to utterly captivate readers of every type and vintage. Without the Barks expeditions, there would never have been Indiana Jones…

Throughout his working life Barks was blissfully unaware that his work (uncredited by official policy like all Disney’s cartoon and comic book output) had been singled out by a rabid and discerning public as being by “the Good Duck Artist”. When some of his most dedicated fans finally tracked him down, his belated celebrity began.

In 2013 Fantagraphics Books began collecting Barks’ Duck Stuff in wonderful, carefully curated archival volumes, tracing his output year-by-year in hardback tomes and digital editions that finally do justice to the quiet creator. These will eventually comprise the Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. The publisher also placed some of the most engaging (How to choose? How to choose?) in three accessible landscape paperback collections. At 185 by 140 mm, they are the perfect size to introduce kids to the master’s masterpieces. They’re all available in digital formats, and this particular tome has a spooky Halloween vibe to further entice you…

The majority of inclusions here come from 1947, so please be aware that – despite Bark’s diligent research and careful, sensitive storytelling – modern readers might be upset by some depictions crafted over seven decades ago…

It begins eponymously on a nautical note: ‘Donald Duck and the Ghost of the Grotto’ is an early masterpiece originating in Four Color #159 (August 1947), with Donald and the rowdy, know-it-all nephews who live with him currently residing in the West Indies, running a kelp boat and harvesting seaweed from the abundant oceans. Here, Huey, Dewey and Louie are the sensible ones in a risky, get-rich-quick venture. Although prime catalysts of comedic chaos in other situations when the mallard miser was around, in Barks’ comics the devilishly downy ducklings’ usual assigned roles were as smartly sensible, precocious and a just a bit snotty kid-counterfoils to their “unca”, whose inescapably irascible nature caused him to act like an overgrown brat most of the time. Nevertheless, all too often the kids fell into temptation, reverted to type and fell prey to a perpetual temptation to raise a ruckus…

When a freak accident temporarily strands them on an isolated reef, Donald and the lads discover a long-lost, shipwrecked galleon, encounter an ongoing abduction mystery dating back centuries, battle genuine monsters, confound a particularly persistent phantom and win and lose again a fabulous treasure in a  thrilling romp and supremely beguiling mystery that has never dated…

Originally from Four Color #147 (May), ‘If the Hat Fits’ is an 7-panel gag split over two of these landscape pages, detailing chapeau japery, and precedes ‘Fashion in Flight’ (FC#178, December), exposing hot-headed Donald’s views on car culture.

Thanks to the nephews and some imprudent bee-keeping, a potty scheme to make more cash becomes another painful and humiliating experience as the bellicose bird tries growing blooms commercially in his garden in ‘Donald’s Posy Patch’ (Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #80, May 1947), after which ‘Turn for the Worse’ (Four Color #178 again) reveals just how annoying – and violent – people looking for directions can become…

From the same issue, ‘Machine Mixup’ sees kitchen confusion for Donald as he experiences the downside of modern white goods, before ‘Donald Mines his Own Business’ (WDC&S #81 June) finds the loco parent-ish duck and his boys prospecting in New Mexico. It’s barely moments before they all fall foul of America’s post-war arms rush and missile-race, with devastating and spectacular consequences…

From FC #189 (June 1948) ‘Bird Watching’ exposes the hidden perils of the gentle hobby before  superstition is painfully debunked in ‘Horseshoe Luck’. The fluffy fun finally finishes with an epic farrago – first seen in WDC&S #86 (January 1947) – as telling tale exposes the rise and fall of ‘Fireman Donald’ whose smug hubris ultimately deprives him of a job he’s actually good at!

Carl Barks’ efforts are readily accessible through a number of publications and outlets and every one of his stories is a treasure beyond price. If you’re new to his work and have never experienced his captivating magic, Walt Disney’s Donald Duck and the Ghost of the Grotto is a perfect introduction. No matter what your age or temperament, you can discover “the Hans Christian Andersen of Comics” simply by applying yourself and your credit cards to any search engine.

Always remember, a fan’s got to do what a fan’s got to do and treasure is out there just waiting to be unearthed…
© 2014 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

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El Mestizo


By Alan Hebden & Carlos Ezquerra (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-657-5 (HB/Digital edition)

Carlos Sanchez Ezquerra was born in Aragon on November 12th 1947. Growing up in Ibdes, in the Province of Zaragoza, he began his career illustrating war stories and westerns for Spain’s large but poorly-paying indigenous comics industry. In 1973 he got a British agent (Barry Coker: a former sub-editor on Super Detective Library who formed Bardon Press Features with Spanish artist Jorge Macabich): joining a growing army of European and South American illustrators providing content for British weeklies, Specials and Annuals.

Like so many superbly talented newcomers, Ezquerra initially worked on Girls’ Periodicals  – like Valentine and Mirabelle – and more cowboys for Pocket Western Library as well as assorted adventure strips for DC Thomson’s The Wizard. The work proved so regular that the Ezquerras upped sticks and migrated to Croydon…

In 1974, Pat Mills & John Wagner tapped him to work on IPCs new Battle Picture Weekly, where he drew (Gerry Finley-Day’s) Rat Pack, and later, Major Eazy scripted by Alan Hebden. Three years later he was asked to design a new character called Judge Dredd for a proposed science fiction anthology. Due to creative disputes, Carlos left the project and went back to Battle to draw instead a gritty western entitled El Mestizo…

As we all know, Carlos did return to 2000AD, illustrating Dredd, dozens of spin-offs such as Al’s Baby, Strontium Dog (1978), Fiends of the Eastern Front (1980), adaptations of Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat and key Dredd storylines such as the epic Apocalypse War and Necropolis.

Soon after, Ezquerra was “discovered” by America…

El Mestizo debuted amidst a plethora of British-based war features and didn’t last long – June 4th to September 17th 1977 – with author Alan Hebden giving you his take on why in a concise Introduction before the action begins.

Born in Bristol in 1950, Hebden is a second generation comics scripter, having followed his dad into the profession. The lad began his career writing Commando Picture Library stories for DC Thomson – and he still does – and also contributed to the company’s adventure titles Hornet and Victor.

For Fleetway he co-created Major Eazy, and scripted Rat Pack for Battle; The Angry Planet for Tornado; Comrade Bronski, The Fifth Horseman and The Tower King for Eagle; Holocaust and Mind Wars for Starlord and – for 2000 AD – M.A.C.H. One, Mean Team, Death Planet, Meltdown Man, Future Shocks, amongst many others.

Heavily leaning on Sergio Leone “spaghetti westerns”, the first starkly monochrome Mestizo episode – of 16 – introduces a half-black, half-Mexican bounty-hunting gunfighter who offers his formidable services to both the Union and Confederate sides in the early days of the War between the States.

Proficient with blades, pistols, long guns and a deadly bola, El Mestizo plays both sides while hunting truly evil men, whether they be Southern raiders, rogue Northern marauders, treacherous Indian scouts, army deserters from both sides organised by a crazy, vengeful femme fatale, or even a demented physician seeking to end the war by releasing plague in Washington DC.

Along the way, the mercenary even finds time to pay off a few old scores from his days as a starved and beaten plantation slave…

Sadly, the feature was always a fish out of water and was killed off before it could truly develop, but the artwork is staggeringly powerful and the stories deliver the kind of cathartic punch that never gets old.

This stunning package is another nostalgia-triumph from Battle, collecting a truly seminal experience, and hopefully forging a new, untrodden path for fans of grittily compelling fare and sampling a typically quirky British comics experience.

This gem is one of the most memorable and enjoyable exploits in British comics: acerbic, action-packed and potently rendered: another superb example of what British and European sensibilities do best. Try it and see…
© 1977 & 2018 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.