Intermission

After a successful few days of book hunting in my local used book shops in Southsea, I won’t be reading any comics for the next couple of weeks. I tend to go through phases of reading books for a few weeks every once in a while and with my recent purchases, I have several new novels to read.

Highlights include:

Bran Mak Morn by Robert E Howard

The Beetle by Richard Marsh

A couple of the later Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs

A few Doc Savage that I’m yet to read

And a beautiful Tom Swift Jr. hardback (pictured)

No Fu Manchu on the shelves unfortunately.

Speaking of Fu Manchu, I had the wonderful experience of my four year old boy walking around the house this morning wearing a fake moustache and insisting on being called Fu Boy Chu. These moments are priceless.

Showcase Presents: Doc Savage by Doug Moench & Various

I do love Doc Savage. It’s possible that I may even devote a future post to some of my favourite Doc Savage pulps if time allows (yeah, right). But with this post published, I’m entirely up to date with the blogging and that doesn’t happen very often.

This volume (ISBN: 9781401231255) contains about 450 pages of black and white reprints, but the original strips were printed in a B&W magazine, so there’s no loss of colour for this book. The original magazines cover dates are between August 1975 and Spring 1977. Curiously, the original books were published by Marvel, but because Doc Savage was a licensed character and DC now have that license, this collection is published by DC. This is not a new concept (Dark Horse have been doing it for a while with Tarzan, Conan, John Carter, etc.) but it’s not common between Marvel and DC (possibly a first, but I’m not sure.)

The volume reprints the complete run of the Doc Savage magazine. The original mags included Doc Savage related articles and interviews but only the strips, covers and pin-ups are reprinted here. Each issue is a self-contained story of approximately fifty pages, written in the pulp style, which basically means that the narrative hurtles along at break neck speed, Doc Savage instantly jumps into the action and time is always of the essence.

Moench’s quite verbose style suits the pulp characters perfectly, there is a lot of narrative and dialogue, but even at 50 pages the stories are condensed to fit the page count, or at least that’s how they feel when you read them, which could well have been Moench’s intent.

Splash Page from Doc Savage #1

As the title would suggest, these are all Doc’s stories. If you’re hoping to see the good Doctors entourage expanded upon in this volume you may be disappointed. They provide a little comic relief and the odd minor assistance, but generally speaking Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, Johnny and occasionally Pat are superfluous to the plot or, at best are used as a cipher for a plot point.

The stories themselves mostly have a fantastical bent. Whether it be lost civilisations or Dieselpunk technology, the feel of the book is a slightly skewed real world, but with larger than life characters.

 Like many of the old pulp characters, when handled well, Doc transfers beautifully to the comic medium. Moench seems to have an affinity to this type of character, in his woefully underrated Aztec Ace there a several pulp tropes, but that story is on a grander scale than these self contained strips.

The artwork, the lions share of which is produced by Tony DeZuniga is solid and refined, but not, in all honesty, anything above and beyond the norm. It is certainly not poor and there are several fantastic panels and splash pages, but my enthusiasm for the highs that are reached is tempered by the general mediocrity of the main body of the art. The art seems very safe. As the magazine was a bit of an experiment for Marvel, I can understand them wanting to play it safe, but a little more dash and inventiveness would have suited the story and added to the pulpishness (I’m remembering some of the garish but incredibly eye-catching original pulp covers) of the stories.

Doc Savage #3 p.22

As I mentioned above, this volumes strength is Doug Moench. He captures the immediacy and full throttle adventure that was the bread and butter of the pulps. I was left in no doubt that the Doc Savage of this volume is the same Doc Savage that appeared in over 180 pulp adventures. His almost super-human abilities dwarf that of his colleagues and even the original pulps recognised this as many of the later stories minimised the involvement of his aides.

I’m not sure why, but although it’s a relatively recent publication, I had a little trouble getting hold of a copy. It’s well worth tracking down though. The Showcase Presents are always good value for money, especially this one, as these stories were always intended to be printed in B&W.

Heartily recommended (Yes I’m biased, but there are plenty of other Doc Savage comics that I wouldn’t recommend.) and won’t cost you the earth. What more could you ask?

Mad Thinker Reads……..

With No Regard For Anything But Justice.

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The Detective Chimp Archives

My new, finite internet project has just gone live at
DetectiveChimp.blogspot.com

The Detective Chimp Archive will be updated either once or twice a week (no less, I promise), with the original 50's adventures of Bobo, the Detective Chimp. The episodes will be posted in chronological order, with minimal comment from myself. There are around 250 pages of material from this period, all from back-up strips in Rex the Wonder Dog.

The reason for the Detective Chimp Archive is simply that I love these stories, but they haven't been repackaged and reprinted by DC. My only intention is to make them available in a single place for as many people as possible. Should they ever be reprinted I imagine that the Archive will be shut down, but until then, I hope you enjoy the charming and slightly weird world of Bobo, the Detective Chimp.

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Captain America by Jack Kirby: Part 3- Old Soldiers Never Die

Would you believe it, I’m behind in the blog department again. I read this ages ago and have had trouble finding the time to write this post. So, yet again, I’ll have to keep this short, sweet and to the point.

This review is for the Captain America by Jack Kirby Omnibus, which reprints:

Captain America Annuals 3 & 4

Captain America Bicentennial Battles

Captain America 193-214

All printed in 1976 & 1977 and it weighs in at about 570 pages.

This is the first time that Kirby was left solo with Cap, he was writing and pencilling the book and that gives it a different flavour to any of his previous runs.

Throughout this volume we have, what I consider to be, Kirby at his prime. Whilst I love Silver Age Kirby, when he was working for Marvel in that period, he had a very high output of pages, as dynamic and iconic as his Silver Age work was, to my mind, it was often obvious that he had to rush through many of the pages resulting in some books that were quite sparse, particularly in the backgrounds. By the mid seventies he wasn’t putting out so many pages on a monthly schedule, so the ones that he was producing look that little bit more refined. I should also say that my first exposure to Kirby was his work done in this period, so for me, this later mature style, with all of those exaggerated Kirbyisms, is the style that I most strongly associate with him. So, yeah, I’m biased, but this is perfect Kirby for me.

Cowboy Cap from Bicentennial Battles

Kirby’s writing and dialogue is often said to be his weak point, but early in this volume we’re treated to the giant Bicentennial Battles and the time hopping adventures of Cap through American history. Whilst the story itself is a very loose affair, with Cap moving from adventure to adventure, often within a few short pages, the payoff is fantastic. Kirby really plays on the heart strings in those last few pages, it’s entirely sentimental and you see it coming from a mile off, but it works perfectly, nostalgia and hope for the future are deftly amalgamated in one of the most emotional (if slightly corny) scene’s of Kirby’s, that I’ve ever read. There’s even an appearance by a younger version of the King Himself (not Elvis) that any fan with half an eye will spot and have a knowing smile at.

CA 193, Not scanned from this volume.

Into Madbomb, and Kirby just doesn’t let you take a breath. The pacing for this run is a little off, with a fair amount devoted to a half baked love interest plot that clearly isn’t going anywhere, but the meat of the tale is so brilliantly bizarre that only Jack could have pulled it off. The story revolves around an elitist extremist attempting to take control of America, with the intention of reverting to a rigid class system. I’ve read a negative assessment of the ending for this story, but in my opinion the final scenes were quite powerful and bravely executed. Rather than the usual fisticuffs, Kirby, through Cap, exposes the pathetic cowardice of the main villain, resulting in this once seemingly powerful figure being left entirely impotent and devoid of menace, with only the most condescending of pity registering with the audience. There is no glorious defeat at the hands of the Hero, only the nerveless shell of the Villain is left.

CA 208, Not scanned from this volume

The final major arc is a real jumble of events that sees Cap bouncing from one story to another in a way that offers little sense of completion. Previously collected in a volume called Captain America & The Falcon: The Swine, which is certainly a misnomer. Initially Cap is drawn in to an investigation of a South American dictator, subjugating the population in extremely hard labour prisons, he is the Swine. But Kirby switches the action part way through, with a dramatic change that lacks resolution and we are suddenly confronted with the outlandish Arnim Zola and his inhuman creations. As the action plays out we get to the core of the story when we learn that Zola’s benefactor is (at last) The Red Skull. Kirby weaves several disparate threads together into a satisfying whole by the close of this story, I wonder if his intent with this tale was to experiment with the multi-book storytelling of the Fourth World stories, but condensed into one title following various protagonists. If that was his intent, I don’t think it worked as well as the Fourth World epic, but the off kilter story does pull itself together in the final pages, which are intentionally repulsive using the ultimate manifestation of Zola’s experiment as a literal visual device to mirror the horror contained in the Red Skull’s philosophy.

As a whole package this volume contains some superb examples of Kirby’s mature phase. I wouldn’t describe it as hit and miss, but some of the arc’s and experimentations work better than others. One thing that definitely cannot be said is that Kirby allows the stories to stagnate. Yes, there are highs and not so highs, but this volume is constantly playing with the tropes of the genre and medium. There’s the emotionally driven ending of Bicentennial Battles, the lack of a physical confrontation at the climax of Madbomb and the mid story shift of The Swine. All of which are unexpected and show a creator willing to take a chance with his audience rather than playing it safe with a tried and tested formula.

There’s no question that Kirby’s Captain America, whether it be from the Golden Age, Silver Age or Bronze Age should take up space on your bookshelf. Many have tried, but no one could do it like Kirby because not even Kirby does it like Kirby more than once.

Mad Thinker Reads..............

Three Ages of Kirby Greatness

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Captain America by Jack Kirby: Part 2- Second Phase Assault

I know I always say this, but I am really behind with this blog at the moment. As much as I enjoy writing about comics, I enjoy reading them a lot more. To be fair, I read way more comics than I blog about because I only like to write about books that are of particular interest to me. But since Christmas I have a lot of good stuff sitting on my book shelf, all killer, no filler.

And this one is a Killer.

But first, a little background. Feel free to skip the next paragraph if you’re already familiar.

So, Marvel reintroduce Captain America into their Universe in Avengers #4 (I should re-read Kirby’s Avengers books when I have time, just for the sake of Cap completism) and of course, one of the original creators of the character, Jack Kirby, is drawing the book. The character is a success, people want to see more of him so they give him half of a split-book with Iron Man starting in Tales of Suspense #59. So far as I understand, the reason for Marvel producing a lot of split books is that, for reasons that I won’t go into, National/DC, Marvels main competitor, were the distributors of Marvels books and they limited the amount of Marvel books that they would put on the news stands, so if Marvel wanted to market more characters in solo stories they had to share books with other characters, hence the Cap/Iron Man split in Tales of Suspense (just to be clear, a split book has half the page count devoted to solo, unconnected stories of the characters, rather than a team up book which would feature the characters together in one story.). This continued from issue 59 to 99, when the comic was renamed Captain America with issue 100, and featured cover to cover Cap. Kirby’s run as artist continued unbroken from Tales of Suspense #59 until Captain America #109 and he returned for one issue, #112 and that is the entirety of Kirby’s involvement in Cap’s Silver Age solo adventures. (The Annuals from this period did have Kirby stories but they were reprints from the main title, nothing new.)

Background done. Read on, one and all.

The comics I’ll be talking about in this post are all collected in the Captain America Omnibus (2011) ISBN 9780785150787. The full compliment is Tales of Suspense 59-99 and Captain America 100-113, which includes a couple of issues not by Kirby.

The copy I have features the variant cover by Ron Garney, which looks like this:

What I wanted, but couldn’t find anywhere, was the one with the original cover of Captain America 100, by Jack Kirby, which looks like this:

I actually like Ron Garney, I have some of his Cap stories, but why would you want to see Ron Garney re-imaging a Jack Kirby cover, when you could just see the Jack Kirby cover?

It really annoyed me. Probably more than it should have, but still, Garney vs. Kirby is a no-contest for me, especially when this collection is, in essence a Jack Kirby Omnibus. Dang you Marvel.

The first thing that struck me when I was reading, bearing in mind that I read Golden Age Cap right before this, was the panel layout. As I mentioned in the last post, the Golden Age Cap layouts are very fluid and unusual in places, but these Silver Age panels are much more rigid and structured, often with a strict six panels per page format. This is purely guess work, but Kirby was producing a lot of pages per month in this period so I imagine this was one way to streamline the process, along with some relatively sparse backgrounds which also serve to speed up the pencilling but with the benefit of focusing the readers attention on the subjects, particularly for the high energy action sequences which Kirby excels at. Another possible reason for the rigid panel layout could have been the page count for the Tales of Suspense stories. Because Cap shared the book with Iron Man, the stories needed to be condensed into roughly ten pages, so the opportunity for flamboyance was perhaps limited by this. I have to say that I don’t think the stories suffered because of this, the one thing that this type of layout provides is an obvious progression from panel to panel, there is little room for ambiguity in regard to the flow of the story.

Scanned from original comic, not this volume.

One of the highlights of this run is the reintroduction of one of my favourite villains back into the Marvel Universe. Tales of Suspense #66 brings the Red Skull back into prominence as a major antagonist for Cap. This guy is just a perfect foil for Cap, he exudes evil. There’s no sympathetic element here at all, we are given an origin, but the truth is that Red Skull isn’t truly a character, Red Skull represents an idea, the most base elements of humanity distilled into an ugly avatar of hate. He doesn’t need a name, he doesn’t even need to operate in a manner that makes sense, all he needs to do is corrupt, subjugate and control and that is what we see. A totally self obsessed and arrogant embodiment of Baddyhood. Steranko says in the afterword that when he took on the book, he wanted to move away from Red Skull as he felt that the character and his ideals were dated. As much as I enjoy Steranko’s work, in this instance I have to disagree absolutely. The Red Skull and his Nazi origins are a perfect shorthand for establishing his threat to everything that Cap holds dear, he’s iconic, he’s an archetype in the Jungian sense and he’s here, in this book. Look out.

A perfect Red Skull quote:

Gruning: Was that not why we lost world war two, because we underestimated the skill and the courage of free men.

Red Skull: No! It was because the Fuehrer did not listen to me!

There is a run of stories early in this volume which are retconned tales of Cap and Bucky in WW2. As they disappeared after a few issues I can only assume that they weren’t particularly favoured by the readers at the time. Personally, I loved them, but I can understand why they may not have been too popular at the time. Readers were buying these books to see solo Cap stories and this was the only place to find them, so they possibly felt a little cheated to find that he was not interacting with the Marvel Universe in the way that pretty much every other book did at the time. As a modern reader, knowing that there are plenty of Cap stories to come that have a contemporary setting, I found these issues an interesting early experiment in retroactive continuity and satisfying stories to boot. The narrative of these stories explores the relationship between Cap and Bucky with the occasional knowing wink in regard to the audience being aware of the fate of Bucky, but, when all is said and done, these are primarily action driven tales, which is exactly what they should be.

What I wasn’t expecting to find in this volume were the original letter pages as printed in the issues. I thought this was a great addition, I’ve always enjoyed reading letter pages of older books, it’s a telling insight into how the books were received by the fans on their initial publication, which isn’t always the same outcome as when they are looked back on years later. I won’t spoil it for you but I was surprised at the number of letter writers in this volume that went on to have notable careers in the comic book industry.

In regard to the presentation of this volume, it’s nothing new in terms of Marvel. A satisfyingly heavy and solid volume, beautifully bound with a high quality printing. It is all done to a high standard (hence the price tag) but, on a purely personal level, I would rather have seen a non-glossy paper stock with a more muted colour palette. (Benday dots anyone?) But having seen some of the feedback on the DC volumes that have done exactly that, it’s obvious that Marvel are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. There’s no accounting for taste.

Mad Thinker Reads................
The Most Base Elements of Humanity Distilled Into an Ugly Avatar of Hate and Other Pretentious Musings.




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Captain America by Jack Kirby: Part 1- Initial Deployment

My next few posts will be in regard to Jack Kirby’s Captain America, spanning his three runs on the character in the 40’s, 60’s and 70’s. So here it is, first one up, Golden Age Captain America by Jack Kirby.

So this should really be “by Jack Kirby & Joe Simon” but as I’m going to be writing about his entire Captain America related output, the only constant throughout is Jack Kirby, but that doesn’t mean I’ll not be taking the writing into consideration too.

I remember the first time I read these, the first ten issues of Captain America Comics. I was, in all honesty, mildly disappointed. I’d read The Invaders and the early Silver Age stories that take place in war torn Europe and I had expected the same of the Golden Age stories, but, as those of you that have read these books already know, that isn’t the case.

But, this wasn’t the first time I’d read these and I knew that I wasn’t going to see any vistas of a bombed out London or fire gutted churches in rural France and I felt an ice cold tickle of excitement as I opened the cover of the first volume to see…….Cap Smashing Adolph in the Kaiser, I mean Kisser. Woo-Hoo. Yeah, I know we don’t actually see anything of this in the strips, but still, Cap Smashing Adolph in the Kisser is one heck of an iconic image in any medium. And that, Ladies & Gentlemen, is only the first page.

Can you tell I’m excited.

Just to back track slightly, my reprints of these comics are in Captain America: The Classic Years volumes 1 & 2. Each volume reprints five issues and the two volumes contain the complete ten issue Golden Age run of Kirby on Cap. They are also collected in the Golden Age Marvel Masterworks of Captain America Comics, but you will have to purchase three volumes of those as each volume only collects four issues.

Anyway. Smack, Adolph gets a knuckle sandwich to the face and turn the page again, we’re into a lighting quick origin of the feeble Steve Rogers being transformed into the Super-Soldier that is Captain America. I love the fact that these two Jewish lads totally subvert the Blue Eyed, Blond Haired Nazi ideal of an Aryan Uber-Mensch and turn him into a living weapon against the very rats that hold that ideal so vehemently.

In these stories Cap and Bucky operate almost exclusively in the U.S. As I mentioned earlier, on my first reading of these stories I expected them to be fighting across various theatres of conflict, but instead Cap and Bucky actually oppose Fifth Columnists that are operating within Americas shores, plus the odd purely criminal enterprise. Kirby and Simon provide a varied range of stories from pure adventure to mystery, horror and a dose of weird fiction that feels like it’s ripped straight out of the pulps, but all have an emphasis on action.

From the first issue we’re introduced to the regular supporting cast that are featured throughout the run, including Bucky of course, but also the “original” Red Skull, the almost love interest Betsy/Betty Ross and the comic relief Sgt. Duffy, who’s used to great effect by Steve Rogers to cement his image as the bumbling Pvt. Rogers at Camp Lehigh. Duffy in particular used to great effect in the scripts, the comedic moments offer a counter to the dramatic scenes and are perfectly timed to change the pace of the stories, particularly in the longer strips.

It’s no secret that there was a considerable amount of input from other artists for these strips. I don’t know that anyone has been able to completely nail down exactly who did what, particularly in regard to the Kirby/Simon split of art chores, but suffice to say that diverse hands created these ten issues. In some sections it’s obvious that it’s someone other than Kirby or Simon, in others it’s a close call to make. It can be a little jarring, but not to the point that I was fully pulled out of the story, so if that’s what it took to get these books out then so be it.

The layouts of the strips changes from rigid to fluid from page to page, on first noticing, you might be tempted to assume that it was a different artist, but in many cases I would say not. This was, after all, the very early days of the medium, so I think it has more to do with Kirby experimenting with various story telling techniques to see what will work best, he seems to get to grips with this quite quickly and changes it around depending on the content, which seems obvious now, but back then it was still an open question of fluidity or uniformity.

There’s plenty to love in these volumes. The work of Simon & Kirby on this strip was truly innovative, with odd perspectives and dynamic layouts breaking new ground in the burgeoning comic book industry. The truth is that not everything in these volumes works one-hundred percent, but all of it stands head and shoulders above most other Golden Age books, and I say that as a reader that loves Golden Age comics. Like Batman and Superman, there’s a reason that Captain America is still one of the industry’s biggest selling characters, the fact that he is very much of his time has, in effect, made him timeless and somehow, Kirby and Simon have presented this character as what we would now describe as a fully formed archetype. Nothing in regard to the basic foundations of the character has needed to be changed (although it hasn’t stopped people doing so) and seventy years on, I’m pleased to say, that you won’t find many comics that are better than these.

Mad Thinker Reads………….

Adolph. Kisser. >>SMACK<<

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Darkie's Mob by John Wagner & Mike Western

Yet again, I have more to write about than I have time to write it.

This comic is about a Bastard.

It’s not that surprising when you look at who the writer was. John Wagner has created several other Bastards, Judge Dredd, Johnny Alpha and my personal favourite Harry Exton to name a few. All, in their own way, epitomes of Bastardry.

It’s established early on in the story that Darkie is not who he appears to be, (trust me on this, if you don’t know what I’m talking about don’t try to find out, just buy this book and go with it until the bitter end.) but his ability to keep this group of British Tommie’s alive whilst operating behind enemy lines is how he earns a grudging respect from his men.

Darkie appears out of nowhere just as a leaderless group of squaddies are about to be slaughtered by Japanese troops. His familiarity with the Burmese terrain and his insistence on taking the fight to the enemy drags the squaddies out of their despair and reforms them into an elite fighting unit, many faces are lost along the way and one or two are even gained, but inevitably, there’s only one way that this story can end. But it’s how we get there that’s the joy.

Darkie’s Mob act as a guerrilla strike team operating in enemy territory on their own terms, causing as much havoc and mayhem to the occupying Japanese forces as possible. Darkie clearly holds a personal vendetta against the Japs and makes no bones about the fact that he’s there to kill as many as he can, regardless of the cost. And that cost is often to himself. In one particularly memorable scene, Darkie is crucified on the roof of a Jap prison camp building and left to die in the blazing sun. Let’s not beat around the bush here, this is a very gruesome comic, in both the actions of the Japanese and in Darkie’s savage retribution which he takes as often as possible, always throwing himself head first into the slaughter and expecting the same of his men.

The thrust of the ongoing story of the book is the exploration of the characters, chiefly Captain Darkie and Private Shortland, who’s diary acts as narration for the strip. Through Shortland we see how the men’s attitude toward their dictatorial Captain changes as they begin to trust his judgement and come to realise that their lives are a secondary concern in the greater effort of the war. This of course is exactly what Darkie wants of them and it’s left to the reader to decide whether they have been deftly manipulated by Darkie or reached their own conclusions. But, like most strips published in British weekly anthologies, the overall story is told through a series of connected, shorter tales, in this book the stories are of varying lengths, each one recounting a particular mission, whether it be the freeing of prisoners from a POW camp, or the destruction of a bridge in use by the Japs. It’s interesting that some of the stories begin mid mission and throw us straight in to a fire fight, running along at break neck speed with bodies falling left and right, and not until several panels on do we learn the purpose of the battle. It keeps us as readers on our toes and as these were originally published just a few pages at a time, it gets the action going from the first panel.

 

All of the Darkie’s Mob strips were drawn by Mike Western. Western’s work is perfectly suited to black and white, it’s stark and brutal, but most importantly despite the uniforms you can tell the difference between the characters. As you can see from the images included in this post, his panels and layouts are irregular which adds a sense of chaos to the action scenes, but the broken borders pull the eye across the page with a mad energy, and it works, the combination of writing and art force you to read this strip at speed, which I’m sure was the intention, but I’d recommend you turn back now and then just to absorb Western’s incredible talent.

It’s worth mentioning that I don’t usually seek out WWII comics (I much prefer WWI aviation) but this strip kept me engrossed from start to finish. I expected a rip-roaring Boy’s Own adventure, but what I got was a much more bitter tale, one that doesn’t flinch away from playing it’s “Heroes” as flawed, severely flawed. If there was more I’d buy it, but this volume reprints the whole strip.

Mad Thinker Reads…………………

Strips Where They Don’t Like It Up ‘Em

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Alex Toth's Zorro

Here’s another blog that I’ll have to whip through (no pun intended) as I’m once again ahead on my reading and behind on my blogging. So, short and to the point it will be.

ISBN: 978-1582400907

Firstly, it’s worth a mention that this book is sold under several slightly different titles depending on where you look for it. The title from the indicia of this second edition is: The Complete Classic Alex Toth Zorro, but the cover title is “The Complete Classic Adventures of Zorro by Alex Toth” and the spine has a slightly different word order too. Normally this wouldn’t pose much of a problem, but these stories have been reprinted previously by Eclipse under a similar title, the only difference being that they were split over two volumes, so it is worth checking which edition you are looking at before purchase or you may end up with only half of the strips.

Whilst I’ve admired Toth from a distance for some time the combination of my income versus expenditure and the recent trend of repackaging the slightly more obscure Ditko and Kirby strips has kept me from buying any Toth reprints. But I always like to mention why a particular book has ended up on my bookshelf and in this instance, it was about sixty percent character to forty percent creator. I’m an unabashed fan of Zorro. Don’t get me wrong, I’m far from a fanboy, I’m the first to admit that there have been several absolutely awful adaptations of the Fox, but the original pulp serial, The Curse of Capistrano and the first talkie film, The Mark of Zorro (1940) starring Tyrone Power are what Zorro is all about for me.

So it was primarily my love of the character coupled with an interest in seeing more of Toth’s work that inspired me to get a copy of this book. (I also just love comics from this era, pre superhero, late 50’s, etc.)

I wasn’t disappointed.

From the opening pages I was pulled in to the over the top drama and swashbucklery of the strip. It’s pure adventure from beginning to end. Many of the villains and story lines are peculiar to the Disney series from the late 1950’s, however even if you aren’t familiar with the Disney series they are still satisfying strips without any prior knowledge of the TV series.

In terms of Toth’s style I found it reminiscent of Ditko, not in form but in the artists intent. Both Toth and Ditko have an unwavering devotion to tell the story in the most succinct way possible. On the page at least, Toth’s ego is non-existent. There’s no grandstanding or undeserved splash pages. Everything on the page is there to further the story rather than to highlight the artists ability. Toth’s lines are quite loose and almost impressionistic in places, with several silhouette panels that work perfectly with the subject matter. With some artists this might give an impression of laziness, but Toth uses it as part of the composition of panel, as a way to highlight the relevant aspect without the panel looking cluttered or confusing. There is one particularly beautiful panel, which unfortunately I can’t provide a scan of, where two characters are standing in the shadow of a tree, it would have been perfectly acceptable for Toth to have drawn the subjects in silhouette, but instead the characters are defined with the individual shadows of the trees branches falling on them. After seeing this and a few other panels I was convinced that some of the strips were produced at short notice, where as with other episodes Toth had a little more time to compose the strips before publication.

Another strong point in regard to Toth’s line work is his ability to draw recognisable emotion on his characters without it looking like pantomime. This is something that I’ve mentioned on this blog before as a particular bug-bear of mine, few comic book artists, even some of the greats, have struggled with this. But Toth, in this volume accomplishes it with a minimum of fuss and a economical use of lines. There are only a few artists that I think have mastered this and seeing Toth’s ability in this book, I would include him in that woefully short list.

 

Toth tells us in his introduction that the cape is an element of Zorro’s costume that he did not enjoy drawing. There’s a certain irony there, because, like faces, few comic artists are proficient at drawing drapery, which, considering how many characters wear cloaks is damning really. Toth’s use of the cloak as a dramatic element is fantastic, there are things you can get a cloak to do in a comic that would never be satisfactorily described in prose and would be impossible to capture on film. Toth clearly appreciated this and even though he found it a pain in the arse to draw, he makes great use of it in several scenes. So, yes Toth’s understanding of and ability to draw drapery is up there with Jerry Robinson and Steve Ditko.

In short, these two-hundred or so pages have more than adequately shown me why Toth is held in such high regard and I’m pretty sure that you’ll be reading more blogs about whatever Toth comics I can get hold of in the not too distant future.

Mad Thinker Reads…………

The Amazing Adventures of Don Diego De La Vega.

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Century 21: Classic Comic Strips From the Worlds of Gerry Anderson

Volume 1, Adventure In The 21^st Century ISBN: 9781905287932

Volume 2, Invasion In The 21^st Century ISBN: 9781905287949

Volume 3, Escape From Aquatraz ISBN: 9781904674085

Volume 4, Above & Beyond ISBN: 9781904674153

The first thing I need to mention before this post gets going is my absolute ignorance of all things Anderson. I don’t recall ever seeing a single episode of any of the puppet shows and in broad terms, the premise of the shows were not known to me.

So the obvious question is: Why would I buy these four volumes if I have no interest in the Anderson Universe?

The short answer is: Frank Bellamy. But there is a little more to it than that. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of British comics from the 50s to the 70s and the talent that was involved in these strips in incredible. The Anderson shows were a huge phenomenon in the 60s, so it makes sense that the talent employed to further these characters adventures in a comic strip was the cream of the crop. In these pages you’ll find strips from Ron Embleton, Mike Noble, Don Harley and of course, Frank Bellamy to name a few. But, getting back to that short answer, for me at least, Frank Bellamy is the deal clincher.

Again, it’s no secret that I’m totally in love with Bellamy’s art. Regardless of the other strips reprinted I’d still want to own the few pages of his strips that are in each volume. Bellamy worked on the Thunderbirds strips and these are well represented in these books and they are an absolute joy to behold. I believe that these strips highlight some of Bellamy’s best work and any one interested in his art should really take a look at these books.



Frank Bellamy Thunderbirds strip. Scan from original comic. Bellamy draws the best explosions I've ever seen.



But the other strips don’t fall short either. I was particularly impressed by Mike Noble’s contributions, but every strip has merits. It’s to be expected, these strips aren’t reproduced in any particular order, they’re essentially cherry picked by Chris Bentley, the editor, from either the best or generally most interesting strips that appeared over the run of the original comic. In most instances the reading order is unimportant, but there are a couple of moments, particularly with the Fireball XL5 strip, when it’s obvious that a story printed in volume four takes place directly before a story reprinted in volume two. It’s not a big deal though, even for a reader like myself, who has no previous knowledge of any of the strips or characters, the writers are able to put enough subtle back story into the strips that you feel you have a grasp of the characters and situations almost instantly.

In the introduction for the first volume written by Chris Bentley, we’re told that a considerable amount of the original art was available for these reprint editions. Whilst all of the pages are reproduced to a high standard, there was one instance when, mid way through a strip, I found myself flipping back to the contents page to see who the second artist on a particular strip was. I was surprised to see that the credits listed only one artist. When I flipped back to the strip I realised that I wasn’t looking at a different artist, I was actually seeing pages that had been reprinted from the original boards, whereas the first few pages of the strip had been reproduced from a copy of the comic because the original art was not available. The difference was incredible. The level of detail that was strikingly obvious in the art board pages was non-existent in the comic pages. I think this speaks volumes for the care and attention taken by the publisher in reprinting the strips to the highest possible standards whenever possible.

There is one glitch with reprinting these strips in this format. Some instalments were printed in the centre spread of the comic. In a floppy comic without a spine, there was no problem printing panels that ran from one page, across the break and onto the opposite page. But because of the spine in these reprints this format doesn’t print in a reader friendly layout. To be honest, there’s not much that can be done about this. The only reasonable options are to artificially create a unprinted strip down the centre of the art to allow the minds eye to patch the parts together, or, as in this case, to create an overlap, so that each page prints a little over half the full image which allows the art to be viewed in spite of the spine crease. It’s a difficult call to make and one that is never going to please everyone. Personally, I’d have rather seen the former option, but it does come down to personal taste.

Unfortunately, the overall quality of the books is a fraction below standard. As I said above, the printing is fantastic, but the paperback editions feel very flimsy (I believe that there are hardback editions available, but my copies and the ISBN’s above are paperback), with lightweight card covers that I’ve protected with plastic covers as you would see on library paperbacks (available from www.bookprotectors.com if you’re interested). I imagine that this decision was made in order to keep the costs down, but I saw a copy on a shelf in Waterstones a while back that looked incredibly worn, so I’d be aware that they won’t stand up to wear and tear too well. This is a shame because the content is fantastic but the package leaves something to be desired.

As ever, there are a couple of down points with these volumes, but I’m sure you’ve noticed that they are all related to the package as opposed to the content. The content is superb, with some of the finest British artists to ever have worked in the medium represented in these books. Anyone interested in a master class of story telling should give these books a go. Recommended.

So this was another one of my purchases that I was unsure of before I started reading it. But all things considered, it’s worked out quite well I think.

Mad Thinker Reads…………..

FAB, SIG, PWOR and any other TLA’s that come to mind.



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Steve Ditko Omnibus Vol. 1

Collects Shade, the Changing Man 1-8, Stalker 1-4 & shorts from Strange Adventures, Plop, House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Weird War Tales, Secrets of Haunted House, Tales of the Unexpected, Time Warp, Ghosts and Mystery In Space.

With an introduction by Jonathan Ross.

A year or so back, I very nearly purchased a couple of Ditko series from DC, namely Shade: The Changing Man and Stalker. For some reason that I can’t remember now, I ended up buying the ACG books that Ditko contributed to from the 60’s. In retrospect it worked out quite well, because there’s nothing in this volume that I already own, but I have to say that I’m not entirely satisfied.

In terms of Ditko’s input for this omnibus edition, his art is fantastic. If The Creeper was Ditko & DC’s attempt to recapture the kookiness of Spider-Man, then, visually, Shade is this volumes Dr. Strange. There are lots of motifs and design elements from the Dr. Strange strip that crop up again and again in the panels of Shade. Most obviously there is the unusual window pattern seen on Strange’s Bleeker Street residence that is repeated, in very similar circumstances in Shade. But there’s also the similarity in the unearthly dimensions that our hero travels through. Pure Ditko design. There are several examples of Ditko’s excellent visual style, but where this series falls short is in the narrative.



Shade #4 pg.7, Scanned from original comic

 Unfortunately, Shade, which is plotted by Ditko and written by Michael Fleisher, has quite a confusing plot, with characters jumping in and out of the story and what is meant to convey a sense of mystery only lends itself to perplexity. Perhaps perplexity is too strong a word, but it certainly had me turning back the pages to figure out who was who, but worst of all, trying to work out how we got from point A to point B.

Having said that, the basic plot itself is intriguing, Rac Shade, a government operative from another reality which borders our own, is wrongly convicted of treason and ends up on Earth with the secret technology of the M-Vest, which projects force-fields and distorts the perception of antagonists. The action moves between Earth and Shade’s home world freely as Shade discovers plots within plots. I’ll admit that my knowledge of the modern DC Universe is seriously incomplete, but I’m surprised that Shade’s world hasn’t been incorporated into it in the same way that Kirby’s Fourth World has. DC you’re missing a trick.



Stalker #2, p14. Scan from original comic not this volume.

 The other series reprinted in this volume is Stalker from 1975, written by Paul Levitz. Wally Wood provided inks for these issues and as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Wood’s inks on Ditko’s pencils produce unusual results. They look great, but they don’t look like any other Ditko work. Having said that, Ditko’s greatest strength is his panel composition and layout, essentially the way he tells the story rather than the rendering of figures and backgrounds, and this is still Ditko laying it out before us. Levitz takes his time telling this tale and the story feels like it’s just about to start on it’s main thrust before it was cancelled on #4. It opens with what appears to be a straight sword & sorcery story, but there are plenty of visual hints that we are going to be heading in a different direction, but the cancellation of the title meant that any further development failed to happen.

The rest of the page count (there are about 450 pages in total) is taken up with short stories anywhere between two to twelve pages from the titles mentioned above. They cover a range of genres from horror and sci-fi to comedy. It’s roughly half of the page count that is taken up with these short, one off strips and I’m surprised to say that these were the high point of this volume for me. Having bought this book primarily for the Shade and Stalker stories I enjoyed seeing Ditko bring his incredibly accomplished visual story telling back to his starting point in 1953 with these condensed tales. There are lots in here, accomplished with varying degrees of success depending on the writer, but they are all masterfully laid down by Ditko, with a couple of real gems scattered in, which I’m not going to name because I want you to experience to same surprise that I did whilst reading through.

In comparison to the other mainstream collections of Ditko that have been released over the last few years, I have to say that I found this to be the weakest. If you enjoy short and sharp Horror tales I’d recommend the first volume of the Steve Ditko Archives, Strange Suspense from Fantagraphics, if you prefer super-hero fare there’s always the first 38 issues of Spider-Man, or my personal favourite, volume 2 of the Action Heroes Archives featuring Blue Beetle II, The Question and Captain Atom.

But, if you’re already familiar with Ditko, there’s plenty here to like, just be aware that it will fall short of most of his earlier work.

Mad Thinker Reads…………………………

His Christmas Presents Quicker Than He Writes About Them.

Fighting American by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby

Publisher: Titan

ISBN: 9780857681157

Paperback, 200 pages

I’ll have to keep this post short and sweet. I’m reading comics quicker than I have opportunity to write about them at the moment. So, at lightning speed, a quick rundown of Fighting American by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby.

This is the paperback volume printed by Titan Books in 2011. There was an earlier hardback printed by Marvel in the 90’s, but you’ll pay considerably more for that one and as far as I’m aware, it reprints the same material.

This reprint collects the original seven issue run of Fighting American, published by Prize Comics starting in 1954 and the two issues commissioned by Harvey Comics in 1966, of which only the first issue saw print.

The general package is very good, including a brief introduction by Joe Simon that puts the Fighting American’s origin in context. I was particularly happy with the colour retouching. It’s not too bold, it’s basically been cleaned up and realigned.

For anyone unfamiliar with the Fighting American, the character is a riff on Captain America, complete with his own Bucky called Speed Boy. The first couple of issues of the comic are pretty typical super-hero fare, inspired by Marvel’s short lived relaunch of Captain America in the 50’s. Marvel’s Captain America soon folded, but Fighting American managed to keep afloat for about a year (the issues were published on a bi-monthly schedule.) So why did two characters that were so similar fare so differently?

Well, the obvious answer is that Captain America didn’t have Simon & Kirby producing it. But there is a little more to it than that. I mentioned above that the first couple of issues were standard super-hero adventure, but as the series progressed the tone of the strip changed dramatically by becoming less dramatic. By the time the stories found their feet they were making their mark by poking fun at Fighting American and super-hero books in general. Speed Boy becomes much more than just a sidekick, in many of the stories he plays the straight man, saving the oblivious F.A. from certain doom on more than one occasion. The villains are ridiculously over the top stereotypes of Red Menace threats with names like Poison Ivan and Hotsky Trotski, which I suppose aren’t too dissimilar to the names used in his later Fourth World stories (Big Barda, Granny Goodness, Lashina.) and the stories range from Commie smashing to racket busting to extraterrestrial threats. Yes, the whole field is covered, with tongue firmly in cheek for the majority.

Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t similar Kirby work out there, but if there is anything comparable, I haven’t come across it. In very broad terms I’d describe it as Captain America crossed with The Spirit.

By the end of the book we move on to the Harvey Comics issues. Whilst I’m happy at the inclusion of these comics, they don’t have the sparkle that the original run did. From the look of the stories I would say that the involvement of Simon & Kirby was minimal for these issues. But, being a bit of a completist, it’s great that they are reprinted here.

For more detailed information regarding the creation and credits for the Prize issues, plus some other interesting bits, I’d recommend that you have a look at these and related pages at Kirby Museum: Fighting American.  

So there you go a (nearly) short and snappy post of a great curiosity from the Simon & Kirby library. It’s certainly worth owning and it’s available at a reasonable price.

Mad Thinker Reads………………….

Our Dear Departed Grandpa Jack & Uncle Joe.