Eagles Over the Western Front

This is a special treat for me.

A brilliant combination of two of my passions, comics and First World War aviation.

Originally published in Look & Learn in the early 70’s, Eagles Over the Western Front, written by Mike Butterworth and illustrated by Bill Lacey, is by far my favourite comic about WW1 flyers (not that there are that many to compare, Enemy Ace by DC and Aces High from EC are the only others that leap to mind.).

Being aimed at a young audience it’s inevitable that Eagles will be compared to the WW1 exploits of Biggles by W.E. Johns and I think that Butterworth did use the same tone as Johns when writing the strip. Both narratives flow from straight adventure stories to shocking tragedy in very short order. But I think it’s fair to say that the general flavour of this strip is action and adventure rather than brooding and tortured.

We are treated to Butterworth’s excellent use of diverse characters, from the truly heroic to the lowdown and cowardly. He takes his time building these figures and often, we see the boys grow into far different characters by the end of their inclusion in the story, but best of all, the character development actually makes sense. There are no sudden changes of heart in these pages. Each character grows as his attachment to his fellow flyers deepens, these boys soon learn that the only way to stay alive is to watch each others back, and to trust that their wingmen are watching out for them.

Lacey’s art for the strip is beautiful in places. Unfortunately, most of the instalments were a mere two pages, so don’t expect any splash pages. Each page has plenty of panels with a lot of story per page. But even with this restricted format, Lacey imbues a grand sense of scale to the air battles, even with the small panel size. I have to admit that I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to the realistic portrayal of the fighting aircraft of the Great War, but Lacey’s research and knowledge is spot-on (as was Butterworth’s knowledge in terms of what each aircraft was capable of.) Lacey did serve with the RAF and very much enjoyed drawing ‘planes, apparently he preferred WW2 era, but you wouldn’t guess it, his Sopwith’s, DH’s and Fokker’s look exactly as they should. My only quibble with Lacey is that despite his ability to draw distinctive and accurate hardware, his faces do sometimes look alike, on occasion I was wondering who it was that I was looking at. It’s certainly not a shortcoming for every character in every panel, but there were a couple of instances when I found myself pulled out of the narrative because of it.

The complete Eagles has recently been reprinted in three volumes by Bear Alley Books, with fantastic wrap-around covers by Wilf Hardy, a regular contributor to Look & Learn and himself regarded as a fine illustrator of aircraft. The reprint quality is excellent, with a large portion of the pages reprinted from the original art boards, the introduction says that the eagle eyed reader will see which pages are sourced from the originals and which are sourced from the comics, but even forearmed with this knowledge, there were no glaring drops in quality that I noticed. The price is reasonable at £10 for each of the three 80 page volumes, considering that they would have had a relatively low print run, but I was a little disappointed to find that they are saddle stitched rather than perfect bound, but it’s not a deal breaker.

So yes, there are a couple of very minor negative points in regard to Eagles, but in all honesty it’s just me being precious and pernickety because I love this strip so very much that I wanted it to be better than perfect.

In reality, it’s only damn near perfect.

You bloody well better buy this.

Here’s a link to the publishers web site where you can buy it directly-

Bear Alley Books

Mad Thinker Reads...........
Boys Killing Boys in Wood and Canvas Aircraft

Post Christmas Posts

I hope everyone has had a pleasant Christmas and I wish you all a Happy New Year.

I'm sure you'll all be pleased to know that I've received some very interesting comics this year, many of which I'm sure I'll be mentioning on this blog very soon.

As a little taste of what's to come expect to see posts relating to:
Zorro by Alex Toth
Darkie's Mob by Wagner & Western
Fighting American by Kirby & Simon
Blake & Mortimer by Edgar P. Jacobs
Future Shocks by Alan Moore
Captain America by Jack Kirby (Golden, Silver & Bronze Age)
Steve Ditko Omnibus vol 1
Century 21 by Various (inc. Frank Bellamy)

And several other bits and bobs too, but first up, to be posted in a day or two:
Eagles Over the Western Front, a fantastic WW1 Air War strip from the early 70's.

Be Seeing You,
MT

The Destructor by Steve Ditko

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The Destructor by Steve Ditko & Archie Goodwin

Published by Atlas/Seaboard

4 issues, Feb-Aug 1975

Well, I’m sure you can guess why I own this series. Yes, of course, Steve Ditko. Although, being written by Archie Goodwin is always a positive in my book.

This was a really good strip for Ditko to draw. Ditko recaptures the quirkiness of the early Spider-Man issues, particularly with the almost double-jointed poses of the protagonist. Lots of pure Ditko touches, some of his idioms are lost in the issues inked by Wally Wood, which is a common complaint with Wood inking Ditko, although Wood’s influence on the strip isn’t as heavy as their previous work together for Tower Comics. That being said, I do like Wood’s inks on Ditko’s pencils, they both have very recognisable styles that work well together, but it ends up as a weird hybrid, that looks great but strange if you are used to seeing Ditko ink Ditko.

The first three issues are a straight costumed hero fighting underworld crime adventure and they work very well. They move the Destructor around the country to keep the settings fresh, so it’s not all grim inner-city defender type action. But the last issue, which ends the series on a cliff-hanger (or new direction at least) is pure odd-ball and doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the series. I certainly don’t know whether it was Goodwin’s intention to mix it up like this from the start, or whether it was a change made higher up in the food chain, but I thought it was a disappointing end to a previously great strip.

All round, it’s a great comic for those first three issues. The highlight for me was issue 3, Goodwin does a great job of building the tension and provides a couple of unexpected extras, but best of all with this issue is Frank Giacoia inking Ditko. I think that this is only Ditko/Giacoia I have and I’m not sure if they have worked together before or since, but it’s a terrific pairing, they really compliment each other’s style.

Like most of the Atlas/Seaboard comics, you can pick these up pretty cheap, I’m surprised that there isn’t a publisher out there that has re-packaged these old strips into collected editions, but, if you weren’t aware, Atlas has been relaunched recently (although The Destructor wasn’t one of the characters chosen for a new series) so who knows, maybe we’ll get an Atlas Archives series in the future.

Mad Thinker Reads………………

DitkoDitkoDitkoDitkoDitko

Wild Western Action (Skywald, 1971)

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Wild Western Action: Featuring the Bravados, issues 1-3, published in 1971 by Skywald, a company better remembered by today’s readers for their horror magazines.

The reason I purchased these was because the headline feature, The Bravados, was written by Len Wein, a writer I’m a fan of due to his run on Thor, but it was also drawn by Syd Shores, which I have to say, seemed like a great combination.

These comics are about fifty pages, and I was surprised to find that only around eleven pages of each comic is the Bravados feature. The first two issues are an origin tale, bringing together the cast and pitting them against a common enemy. When the individual characters arrive separately at a small town that they have some connection to, instead of finding their friends and family waiting for them, they find the entire town and it’s inhabitants, utterly annihilated. They soon learn what has taken place and vow to work together to see justice done.

The third issue sees our heroes wandering the west and righting a wrong just for the hell of it. The Bravados was pretty good, but I was a little disappointed in the low page count of the strip in each issue. But, there was an up-side to it.

What I didn’t know, prior to my purchase, was that the remaining page count was devoted to reprints of some incredible Golden Age western strips featuring a host of great talent and iconic characters.

You’ll see classic characters such as the Durango Kid, Billy Nevada (originally Billy the Kid) & Rio Vegas brought to you by the likes of Don Heck, Mike Sekowsky and the fantastic Fred Guardineer.

This was a real treat for me, I’m a sucker for the Golden Age and who doesn’t like a shoot-out. So, yes, I was very pleasantly surprised by Wild Western Action and whilst I appreciate that Golden Age Westerns aren’t to everyone’s taste, this is a great introduction covering a range of characters and creators. And best of all, it won’t cost the earth to add it to your comic box.

Mad Thinker Reads……..

Rugged Men In Memorable Hats.

Western Action (Atlas/Seaboard, 1975)

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Atlas/Seaboard, in my opinion, was one of the most promising publishers, with some very exciting talent and characters, to pop up in the seventies. Unfortunately, it was also very short lived, with none of it’s series running for more than four issues.

There are plenty of places to go to if you’d like to learn more about this short lived “New House of Ideas” but this is a good place to start: The Atlas Archives

But back to the issue at hand, Western Action Starring Kid Cody & The Comanche Kid. You’ll often see this comic described as a one-shot, but I don’t believe that that was the intention, more likely that it was an early casualty of the Atlas explosion, with the original intent for it to continue as a series.

The Kid Cody segment is a 10 page origin story written by Larry Lieber with art by Doug Wildey. The young Tom Corbett arrives at the small town of Cody with his mother and father. The property they are legally occupying is coveted by a local rancher and blackguard named Blackwell. Meanwhile, Tom has befriended an old and booze sodden ex gun for hire, Sam Logan. After several attempts at intimidating the Corbett’s, Blackwell takes matters further and this results in the death of Ma & Pa Corbett. Tom survives and insists on Logan training him as a gunfighter. The inevitable confrontation between Tom Corbett and Blackwell takes place, but with no hard evidence to justify his deeds, Tom Corbett becomes the Outlaw known as Kid Cody.

It’s a lot of story for 10 pages. If this were done today it would probably take at least three issues to tell this story, but even with the extra pages I’m not sure that a writer would manage to squeeze any more tension and angst from the script. Lieber does a great job of balancing story and character and whilst I’ll always wish that there were more issues, these few pages we do have are fantastic.

Oh…I almost forgot the Comanche Kid. Errm…Yeah, it’s OK. The problem with the Comanche Kid is that it’s straight in to an adventure, but it cuts to a flash back sequence to offer us an origin. Frankly, at 10 pages, it should have been one or the other, not both.

Most of the Atlas comics are available for next to nothing. This is one you really should read. It’s one of the best single comics I’ve read.

Mad Thinker.

Dell Classic Monsters Re-Imagined: Dracula, Fankenstein & Werewolf

I have no idea how this bizarre concept came about, but somewhere in the Dell offices, the decision was made to update the classic Movie Monsters of Dracula, Frankenstein and the Werewolf as Super-Heroes. The printing history is a bit convoluted, particularly for the Dracula comic, but it’s well documented on other sites, so if you’re interested you should be able to figure out what was printed when and which issues have strange numberings.

First up is DRACULA (Dell, 1966)

Written by Don Seagall, Pencils by Bill Fraccio

This post covers the issues 2-4, issue 1 was an adaptation of a movie and isn’t related to the later issues.

Al Dracula is a modern day descendant of the Dracula family, who’s name has been defamed by the fictional Dracula legends. Al discovers a serum that can cure brain diseases, ironically it uses bat blood. A freak accident causes him to take an altered version of the serum only to discover that it has side effects, he now has bat radar and he can physically transform into a bat. So, using standard comic book logic, he gets himself a costume, goes to America, and hides out in a cave whilst fighting crime.

He also gets one of the most annoying side-kicks ever in Fleeta, aka B. B. Beebe, and meets some pretty wacky villains. There’s nothing here that breaks new ground, but it’s a fun and quirky read that leaves us with a new direction at the end of the last issue, but of course, it was never followed up.

You will find issues numbered 6, 7 and 8 (no issue 5 was ever printed, perhaps a reprint of the original number 1 was planned, but it didn't materialise) but they are just reprints of the issues mentioned above.

Next is FRANKENSTEIN (Dell, 1966)

Written by Don Seagall, Pencils by Tony Tallarico

Again, this post covers the issues 2-4, issue 1 was an adaptation of a movie and isn’t related to the later issues.

Of the three titles, this is the one that has the most recognisable character. In fact, the Frankenstein of the title is the original monster, with a few minor tweaks. After years of sleep, the monster, known from now on as Frank, wakes in an abandoned and crumbling castle and through a series of events, legally inherits the legacy of his creator’s wealth. Wearing a very convincing rubber mask when in his civilian identity, he quickly becomes known as the new socialite and desirable man-about-town, Frank N. Stein. But he soon becomes an invaluable aid to justice as a police sanctioned crime fighter in his role as Frankenstein.

Along the way, he picks up a particular female admirer who, from page to page, becomes convinced that she has penetrated his secret identity, only to be dissuaded again by the evidence of her eyes. Much like the Lois Lane and Clark Kent dynamic before he revealed his double life to her.

But, best of all, he has a fight with Mr. Freek’s pet Gorilla. Amazing.

Wacky villains and weird costumes abound. Why haven’t you read this yet?

Lastly, WEREWOLF (Dell, 1966)

Written by Don Seagall, Pencils by Bill Fraccio

This post covers all issues of Werewolf, numbered 1-3.

This one has absolutely no connection to any other Werewolf or Wolf-Man character. This is a straight up super spy story, with no supernatural element present.

USAF Major Wiley Wolf crashes his aircraft in the Arctic Circle and is presumed dead by the military. Suffering amnesia, he manages to win the trust of a wolf pack by rescuing one of them and continues to live and hunt as one of them for some time. The result of this is an incredibly heightened sense of the world about him and a dramatic increase in his own strength and stamina, gained from necessity of living wild. Over time his memories return and he makes his way back to civilisation accompanied by the wolf whom he saved, now named Thor.

On his return, Wolf finds himself legally deceased and is quickly recruited by a CIA like group for undercover espionage work. He agrees, on the condition that Thor can accompany him whenever possible. Wolf is trained in all areas of espionage, including how to use the muscles in his face to alter his appearance. He’s given a host of gadgets including a chip which allows him to communicate with Thor and a super-suit, which is bullet proof and a self contained breathing apparatus. Given the codename Werewolf, Major Wiley Wolf and Thor are sent out to battle the Red Menace wherever it raises it’s wonky-eyed and crooked-toothed head.

This one is a fun read, and I say that as someone that doesn’t normally read spy stories. There’s a lot of story in these three issues, the pacing is off in places, but the brisk pace makes up for that. It felt pretty fresh to me, but maybe that’s because spy comics aren’t something that I read very often.

There you go. Nine pretty weird and reasonably obscure comics from the Silver-Age. They are what they are, I’ve never read anything else like them.

Mad Thinker Reads………..

Whatever.

Judge Colt

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Judge Colt is one of the best Western comics I’ve ever read. If only there had been more than these four issues from Gold Key.

Colt is a Civil War veteran turned circuit Judge, wandering the West, sometimes acting as law enforcement, judge and executioner. An exceptionally thoughtful and philosophical character, his very final judgements are, he feels, necessary to tame the influence of the Badmen and generally protect the growing society of the West.

Throughout the four issues we are slowly exposed to the character’s back story and motivations and this guy really does have a compelling “origin” and one that actually makes sense of the man that he is.

This is a story filled with love, treachery, death and tears, and it’s all the more interesting that some of those tears are shed by the Judge himself.

I bought these comics cold, so to speak. Having no idea of the content, but they were cheap and looked interesting. I’m very pleased with myself (smug, really) because these are unknown gems that I can’t recommend highly enough.

Mad Thinker Reads…….

Comics Where the Badmen Aren’t the Only One’s Wearing Black Hats.

Captain Venture & the Land Beneath the Sea

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Captain Venture and the Land Beneath the Sea 1 & 2, published by Gold Key in 1968.

The first issue reprints back-up strips from Space Family Robinson with slight alterations, the second issue is an original story.

Captain Rex Venture and Scotty McKay are shipwrecked on an uncharted planet and the two issues are their adventures in the Land Beneath the Sea. Fantastic animals and cultures are encountered and the lives of beautiful princesses are saved.

Rip-Roaring comic book adventure in the style of some of the better TV Sci-Fi of the era. Dan Spiegle’s art pushes the overall quality of the book up a notch or two, but it’s certainly helped by the brilliant Gaylord DuBois with his script for the second issue.

One of the most memorable aspects of Gold Key comics for me is the wonderfully painted covers that they were given. Unfortunately, I can’t provide a cover credit for the first issue, but issue 2 was painted by George Wilson.

Mad Thinker Reads…….

Pulped Up Comics.

Captain Johner & The Aliens

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This review is for Captain Johner and The Aliens, published by Valiant in May 1995.

Originally appearing as a back-up strip in Dell Comics Magnus Robot Fighter, these short strips, around 4 pages, were produced by Russ Manning and tell the story of Man’s first encounter with intelligent alien life.

After the Human and Alien ship meet by chance in space, the crews agree to swap some of their members, so Captain Johner heads home with some of the Aliens on his vessel.

What follows is a parable of tolerance toward different races and cultures. The two reprint issues from Valiant offer fourteen of these strips, the complete run of the strip was 28 issues but the last half of the run is yet to be reprinted.

These reprints by Valiant are nicely packaged, but a common bug-bear with me is the addition of modern colouring techniques. Simply put, I don’t get it, I think it looks terrible.

I’d still recommend this reprint as a great example of Manning’s clean and simple style, that focuses on storytelling rather than showmanship.

Mad Thinker Reads………..

Half of a Great Run.

The (Almost) Complete Marvel Sinbad

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The reason that this is almost complete is because it doesn’t include the Marvel Classics issue that adapts the Sinbad stories from Arabian Nights. I don’t really know why I’ve chosen not to include that issue, it just didn’t seem to fit with the others.

Here’s what it does include, in order of release date:

Worlds Unknown 7 & 8. These two issues adapt the film “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” and they are my favourite Marvel Sinbad comics. The story was adapted by Len Wein with the art of George Tuska. I remember, as a kid, going to a comic mart and picking up some Thor issues by Wein and some Iron Man by Tuska, I fell in love with them instantly so this is a great combination of talent for me. Well paced over the two issues. An all round good egg.

Marvel Spotlight 25. One issue adaptation of “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” film by John Warner and Sonny Trinidad. This one’s not so good. The story is told in about 18 pages and it’s a hell of condensed tale. Warner & Trinidad use illustrated text panel to cram as much as possible into the low page count, but I found their choices of what to include as text rather than standard story panels odd. It’s difficult to lay the blame at the feet of the creative team because of the restricted number of pages, but it was still no as good as I’d hoped for.

Finally there’s The Fantastic 4^th Voyage of Sinbad. An original story by Chris Claremont & Pascal Ferry. I was expecting a reasonably straight forward time travel story, something comparable to Fantastic Four #5, where Ben gets to be a pirate. I was way off the mark with this one. Claremont & Ferry present us with a dimension hopping caper, with Ben reminiscing about his childhood heroes, but there’s not a great deal of Sinbad featured. Still, Sinbad is in it and it’s a pretty good read.

So, there you go. A lightning quick appraisal of The (Almost) Complete Marvel Sinbad.

Gotta Have It.

Mad Thinker.

Steve Ditko Archives, Vols. 1 & 2

Steve Ditko Archives

Vol. 1, Strange Suspense (ISBN 1606992899)

Vol. 2, Unexplored Worlds (ISBN 1606993801)

Published by Fantagraphics. Compiled by Blake Bell

Is it really worth me writing a lengthy piece in regard to these two Steve Ditko collections?

The truth is, that just knowing that these volumes collect the earliest work from Ditko will either turn you on so much that you have to own it, or you won’t give a squat.

Seriously though, they’re amazing.

Volume 1, subtitled Strange Suspense, reprints every strip from the first two years of Ditko’s career in the order that Ditko produced them, which is much more revealing in terms of the artists growth, than reprinting them in the order that they were actually published. The vast majority of these tales were created for Charlton Comics, who would let their creators do pretty much anything, they were noted for the almost complete lack of editorial censorship. Combine that with the fact that these are all Pre-Code too and you have some pretty gruesome stuff.

It is mostly horror, but you’ll also see some science-fiction, crime, some quite risque romance for the time and the odd western too. The quality of Ditko’s penmanship is evident from the very start of his career, as too are his influences. EC published Haunt of Fear 15 in 1950, in it there was a Harvey Kurtzman strip titled “House of Horror”. Ditko produce a story called “Die Laughing” which was published in The Thing 13 in April 1954, which is essentially a “remake” of the original EC strip.

In Volume 2, Unexplored Worlds, Ditko’s art improves dramatically. He begins to lay out the page as a whole rather than just the individual panels and his ability to tell an incredibly concise story with a minimal page count is extraordinary. Between the work presented in volumes one and two, Ditko was seriously ill with tuberculosis, I can only imagine that during his recuperation, which lasted near a year, he was constantly improving on his panel and page designs.

Whilst the art improves in this volume, unfortunately the stories are not up to the first volume’s standard. During the time in which Ditko was recovering, the Comics Code was introduced, this essentially de-fanged the genre of horror comics. Within a few years of the Code’s introduction many of the industry’s more creative writers found ways around the Code’s restriction. But in the early days, writers were still struggling to find the type of story that was acceptable to the censor’s and entertaining to the audience. There are several satisfying tales in this volume, but the general feeling is one of uncertainty in regard to how far the stories can go.

Both of these volumes are beautifully presented. The colouring of the originals has been preserved, so there’s no digital enhancement or blending. It looks and feels like a ‘50’s comic.

There really is no reason that they shouldn’t be in your collection.

Mad Thinker.

Lots to Write About

I’ve read lots of comics recently, so much so that I haven’t had time to write about them yet. Over the next few days I’ll be making several posts hopefully. But in order to catch up they’ll be pretty short and snappy.

Most of the comics I’ve been reading are some of the oddities in my collection, that run to just 3 or 4 issues. I wanted to mention them because a lot of people may not know that they exist. The quality is variable but they are all of interest (to me at least) in their own way.

I hope it may inspire one or two people to pick them up and give them a read, none of them are particularly expensive, but they might be a pain to find copies of. But then, that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?