Golden Age Sheena: The Best Of The Queen Of The Jungle: 1

Golden Age Sheena: The Best Of The Queen Of The Jungle: volume 1 (published by Devil’s Due Publishing) collects eleven of the very early Sheena comic-strip adventures from Jumbo Comics. These adventures date from 1938 to 1946.

Before Vampirella, even before Wonder Woman, there was Sheena: The Queen Of The Jungle. She was the first-ever comic-book action heroine. She made her first appearance in 1938. She was not quite the first fictional action heroine (C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry beat her to the punch) but Sheena established the glamorous sexy action heroine as a viable commercial proposition.

Sheena later appeared in prose stories, there was a 1950s TV series and a much later TV series as well, and there was the excellent and very very underrated 1984 Sheena movie with Tanya Roberts.

Sheena was created by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger.

The comics in this collection don’t include the backstory but Sheena is of course basically a girl Tarzan. After her father’s death in the African jungle his daughter is raised by a tribal witch-doctor (rather than apes). She was just old enough at the time to have learnt fluent English and now she is steeped in the lore of the jungle. She has her own queendom.

She battles an extraordinary array of bad guys, assisted by great white hunter Bob Reynolds. The nature of their relationship is made fairly obvious - at one stage we see then putting the finishing touches to their new jungle tree-house love nest. Sheena always refers to Bob as her mate. There’s no question that they are living together as man and wife although they are not married. The 1950s TV series by contrast had to go to great lengths to convince the audience that there was no hanky-panky going on.

One thing that is a bit startling about the early Sheena comics is Sheena’s ruthlessness. She is a killer. She’s one of the good guys but if necessary she kills bad guys without a second’s hesitation or remorse. And she kills quite regularly.

It’s customary to preface a review such as this by making a grovelling apology for the material’s lack of political acceptability. I’m obviously not going to do that. Sheena would never have apologised for herself and I’m not going to insult her by doing so on her behalf. If you’re the sort of person who worries about ideological acceptability you’re not going to enjoy this book anyway.

In Slashing Fangs a notorious crook is trying to cheat a tribe out of the profits from their tobacco crop. The crook turns the tribe against Sheena and she discovers that at dinner that night she’s going to be the main item on the menu.

In Meat for the Cat-Pack Sheena and Bob discover a lost world ruled over by a rather nasty queen. Sheena will have to battle not just human enemies but both terrestrial and aquatic monsters. Considerable mayhem and bloodshed ensues.

In the next story Sheena and Bob get mixed up with town folk and circus folk, and indirectly in a murder case. The real trouble is caused by the fact that Sheena has a double. This lands her in difficulties with two of the local tribes.

In the following story Sheena encounters yet another double. This time it’s part of a villainous plan to convince the local tribes that Sheena is dead. This will allow the villains to enrich themselves.

Next up is an adventure which sees Sheena up against slavers, led by the deliciously wicked African queen Hawkina.

In Death Kraal of the Mastodons an ageing chief imparts secret to Sheena - the location of an elephant’s graveyard and immense quantities of ivory. Others, motivated by greed, want that secret. And Bob is plunged into madness by a close brush with death. There’s a wicked Bad Girl to deal with as well.

Sheena battles slavers again in The Slave Brand of Hassan Bey and there are riverboat battles as well.

In Derelict of the Slave Kings Sheena encounters a very nasty sadistic female and a young woman terrorised by her aunt and uncle. There’s a huge shipment of diamonds at stake.

Then we move on to The Beasts That Dawn Begot. It appeared in 1946. Five years later it was reprinted in Sheena, in a heavily censored form. Both versions are printed here. Sheena was a major target of those seeking to force comics to become squeaky clean. It’s amusing to see that the artwork was modified to make Sheena’s costume more modest. Those breasts of hers might have inflamed the passions of innocent young lads. It’s a fun story in its uncensored form, with some very cool monsters and a memorable villainess.

This volume also includes a couple of Sheena prose stories. Sheena and the Flaming Pyre of Doom (by Tom Alexander) is fun, with an island under a death spell ruled by a Diamond Goddess. Sheena and the Howling Horror is a rather dull story which begins with an awful howling noise in the jungle.

The Sheena comics really are so much fun. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the 1984 Sheena movie (which I adore) and the 1955 Sheena Queen of the Jungle TV series (which is worth seeing just for the amazing Irish McCalla in the title role).

The Trigan Empire

The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire was a 1960s British comic-strip written by Mike Butterworth and drawn by Don Lawrence. I’ve just finished reading the first volume of the recent reprint which includes the first thirteen stories in the series.

Don Lawrence (1928-2003) was an English comic book artist and author.

The Trigan Empire was originally published in the weekly papers Ranger and Look and Learn from 1965 to 1982. Lawrence did the artwork from 1965 to 1976. Lawrence later went on to the Storm series about a time-travelling astronaut. He also did the naughty lighthearted Carrie strip for the men’s magazine Mayfair. Carrie is a nice girl but she just can’t keep her clothes on.

The Trigan Empire is a science fiction epic set on a distant Earth-like planet, Elekton. There are quite a few different cultures, some much more technologically advanced than others. Trigo and his brothers rule a very technologically backward warrior society. Trigo can see the writing on the wall. They will inevitably be conquered by their more advanced neighbours.

Trigo is determined to transform his primitive kingdom into a modern major power. The first step is to build a city. A great city. It will be the nucleus of a great empire.

Trigo pursues his objectives through numerous wars. He makes allies. He suffers betrayals. He has narrows escapes from disaster. But his belief in the future never wavers.

All of this provides an excuse for non-stop action.

This was clearly aimed at a younger readership. There’s no hint of sex or nudity. You can be confident that the bad guys will be vanquished. But it still manages to deal with some grown-up themes (ambition, divided loyalties, betrayal). It’s more than just a kids’ comic strip. I suppose that today it would be seen as being aimed at a Young Adult market.

Trigo is an interesting hero. He’s brave of course and he’s a fine charismatic energetic leader, but his judgment in personal matters is often very poor.

One of Trigo’s brothers is smart but treacherous while the other is loyal and brave but not outstandingly bright.

Although it concerns a galactic empire it takes a long long time before the action movies to outer space. In fact it takes a long time before the Trigan Empire even gets as far as the Moon.

I think the slow build-up works. Mighty empires start small. Trigo’s petty kingdom is initially totally insignificant. It’s not going to become a global power, or on an interstellar power, overnight. In this case it happens because Trigo (despite occasional errors of judgment) has vision, determination and charisma.

He also has a very realistic understanding of power. He would have been quite happy for his little principality to be left alone but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. You either dominate or you get dominated. You either conquer your neighbours or they will conquer you.

This first volume ends with the Trigan Empire on the verge of making the major move beyond its home planet.

Don Lawrence’s artwork is lively and pretty cool.

This is entertaining stuff and I’m certainly tempted to get hold of the later volumes in the series. Recommended for space opera aficionados.

Modesty Blaise: The Iron God and The Wicked Gnomes

Two more Modesty Blaise comic-strip adventures by Peter O’Donnell from 1973 and 1974, The Wicked Gnomes and The Iron God, reprinted by Titan Books in 1989.

By this time Enrique Badía Romero was well established as the Modesty Blaise artist (the original artist Jim Holdaway having passed away in 1970). Apparently O’Donnell would write the comic strips accompanied by crude stick-figure illustrations to give an idea of the action. They would then be sent to Spain where Romero would do the art work. The arrangement worked because right from the start Romero “got” Modesty Blaise. He knew exactly what O’Donnell wanted.

Romero’s style was subtly different from Holdaway’s but Romero maintained the essential feel.

The Wicked Gnomes was published in the Evening Standard from May to September 1973. Maude Tiller is a cute British spy who worked on a previous case with Modesty and Willie. Now she and Willie are having a romantic weekend together, until Maude is kidnapped by Salamander Four. Salamander Four is a freelance International espionage group, very efficient, very ruthless and totally without ethics. Modesty has crossed swords with them before. In this case the Salamander Four operatives are two very creepy killers.

Their plan is to exchange Maude for Pauline Brown, a communist spy currently serving a prison sentence in Britain. Tarrant, the British secret service chief for whom Modesty and Willie often work on a freelance basis, knows that there’s no way to stop Modesty and Willie from being involved. He assumes they’ll do the logical thing and start trying to find Maude to rescue here but Modesty has a much more unconventional plan in mind. Tarrant would not approve, so she doesn’t tell him.

Modesty ends up in a magic grotto dressed as a fairy queen. She’s done crazier things.

A good story with some nice touches and some decent action and Maude Tiller is a fun character. You don’t want to make Maude angry. She’s a sweet girl but she is after all a trained killer.

The Iron God appeared in the Evening Standard between October 1973 and February 1974. Both Modesty and Willie are in Papua where their light plane has to make a forced landing. They encounter a Papuan nurse who is in a lot of trouble. The local tribe isn’t very friendly. They’re head hunters, and they’re being led by a mad bad Irishman, O’Mara.

O’Mara is there because of the Iron God. I won’t spoil things by telling you what the Iron God is but you can see why O’Mara is so interested in it. And he has need of certain skills that Modesty and Willie possess.

Modesty and Willie have to do some quick thinking.

There’s quite a clever little plot here. If Modesty and Willie do what O’Mara wants he will then kill them so they have to play for time and that’s quite a challenge.

A very good story.

In fact they’re both fine stories. The Modesty Blaise formula was well and truly established by this time - exotic locales, colourful villains, outlandish criminal schemes, plenty of action, a hint of romance and a touch of sexiness. And plots that invariably hinge on the extraordinary communication and understanding between Modesty and Willie. Modesty Blaise fans will enjoy these tales. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed other early Modesty Blaise comic-strip collections, The Gabriel Set-Up, Warlords of Phoenix and The Black Pearl, as well as the first three novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth and I, Lucifer.

Modesty Blaise: Uncle Happy

Uncle Happy collects two Modesty Blaise comic-strip adventures, Uncle Happy from 1965 and Bad Suki from 1968.

Uncle Happy represented an interesting step for Peter O’Donnell, the creator and writer of the comic strip. His concept for the character was a woman who underwent horrific experiences in childhood but survived and came out much stronger. She put herself back together again. A crucial aspect of the character is that despite those traumatic experiences she is a fully functional woman. She is perfectly capable of having normal emotional relationships with men, and she is perfectly capable of having normal sexual relationships with men.

It was therefore important to make it clear that Modesty has a sex life. In the early strips this was implied. In Uncle Happy it’s made quite explicit. Modesty has found a new man. They have moved in together and they are most definitely sleeping together. This was quite daring in 1965, for a comic strip published in daily newspapers.

Uncle Happy is also interesting for being set partly in Las Vegas, and for the fact that there is clearly a kinky sexual element to the nastiness of the chief villainess. It also demonstrates that Peter O’Donnell was quite comfortable dealing with female evil as well as male evil.

On a skin-diving holiday Modesty meets underwater photographer Steve. Pretty soon they’re shacked up together. Everything is going great until he gets kidnapped. Modesty rescues him but he won’t call the cops. Modesty suspects he’s mixed up in something criminal. They’re both keeping secrets from each other and their love affair fizzles out.

Then Willie Garvin shows up unexpectedly. He’s investigating the possible murder of an old girlfriend but there’s an odd link with Steve - the people who kidnapped him are the very people Willie is investigating. These people are a rich philanthropist and his wife. The philanthropist has earned the nickname Uncle Happy for providing disadvantaged kids with an island playground.

There’s plenty of action in this adventure and a couple of memorable twisted villains including a very nasty lady villain with a taste for sadism. A fine adventure.

Bad Suki is interesting for other reasons. O’Donnell preferred to avoid topical subject matter and in fact he preferred to avoid anything that would make his comic strips date. Modesty’s clothes (when she’s not on a mission) are stylish and elegant but in the 60s you’ll never see her wearing the latest Carnaby Street fashions. Her look is timeless.

Bad Suki was an exception to all of these rules. It deals with a subject very topical at the time - drugs. And it deals with the emerging hippie subculture. It’s an experiment that works reasonably well, but it was an experiment that O’Donnell did not care to repeat.

Willie rescues a hippie girl having a bad acid trip. Willie is no fool. He knows you can’t help people who don’t want to be helped. But he and Modesty feel sorry for the girl. They figure if they can’t help her directly they can deal with the drug pushers.

This is yet another Modesty Blaise adventure featuring underwater action. I’m not complaining. I love underwater action scenes.

It’s also a story that displays a ruthless side to Modesty that you don’t see in most of her adventures. In general Modesty hates killing and does so only when strictly necessary. But this time she intends to kill and she intends to enjoy it. This is another experiment that O’Donnell was reluctant to repeat.

So while Bad Suki can be a bit cringe-inducing at times when dealing with the far-out groovy hippie world it is an intriguingly atypical Modesty Blaise story.

So, two comic-strip adventures, one extremely good and one flawed but interesting. Which makes this volume a worthwhile purchase.

Both adventures feature Jim Holdaway’s art.

I’ve reviewed three other early Modesty Blaise comic-strip collections, The Gabriel Set-Up, Warlords of Phoenix and The Black Pearl, as well as the first three novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth and I, Lucifer.

Chester Gould's Dick Tracy

Clover Press’s The Complete Dick Tracy Volume 1 1931-1933 collects the very earliest of Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy comic strips. The strip made its first appearance in October 1931.

Dick Tracy would become a major American pop culture icon. By the end of the 1930s there had been several movie serials. Feature films followed in the 40s and as late as 1990 the character’s iconic status remained intact, with Warren Beatty’s  excellent 1990 Dick Tracy movie being a box office success.

The early newspaper strips have a somewhat gritty realistic style. By the 40s they had become much more flamboyant with a gallery of bizarre and colourful villains. Later the strip would become known for featuring gadgetry such as the famous wristwatch radio and some science fiction elements eventually made their appearance.

But in 1931 Dick Tracy was just a police detective battling ordinary mobsters and assorted everyday criminals.

It’s worth remembering that Prohibition was still in force when the comic strip first appeared. Eliot Ness and his Untouchables were pursuing Al Capone. The hard-edged gangster movies of Hollywood’s pre-code era were hugely popular. Dick Tracy as a character owes something to Eliot Ness and the strip’s first major villain, Big Boy, was to some extent modelled on Capone.

The chief villains in these very early strips were racketeer Big Boy, smooth hoodlum Stooge Viller, lady gangster Larceny Lu and the sinister tramp Steve. There’s a glamorous gangster’s moll named Texie. The crimes were fairly straightforward. Larceny Lu runs a car stealing racket. Steve gets mixed up in kidnapping. There’s an attempt to frame Tracy (and attempts were made to bribe Eliot Ness). These were the sorts of crimes that real-life criminals committed.

Junior, the orphan kid taken in by Tracy, makes his appearance. I’m sure Junior was very popular with younger readers at the time although I find him to be rather irritating.

At this stage Tracy’s girl is Tess Trueheart. She’s a likeable character although their romance has its ups and downs.

Dick Tracy is a typical square-jawed action hero for the most part but he’s not infallible. On occasions he’s a bit naïve and even inclined to lose confidence when things go against him. He has an amazing ability to get himselt framed by his hoodlum enemies. However he always picks himself up again.

There’s some hardboiled flavouring but it’s Hardboiled Lite is such a thing is possible. Given that it was aimed at a young readership and that it was published in newspapers, always sensitive to accusations of immorality or condoning lawlessness, the tone had to be kept lighthearted and optimistic. The violence is very very muted. The villains are villainous enough but not evil enough to upset the kiddies. In fact of course the kiddies would probably have loved more violence and evilness - it was the parents who would have demanded that the strip be as innocuous as possible.

This collection includes the daily strips which form extended story arcs but it also includes the Sunday strips which at that stage were standalone stories. And the Sunday strips are in colour.

The visual style is definitely iconic.

Dick Tracy is a key figure in American pop culture. The comic strip evolved over the years but it’s worth getting this volume to go right back to where it all began. The birth of a legend. Highly recommended.

Vampirella Archives, volume 4

Vampirella Archives volume 4 collects issues 22 to 28 of the Vampirella magazine. These issues were published in 1973. As usual each issue contains a Vampirella story and usually four other stories.

Esteban Maroto’s Tomb of the Gods: Orpheus is a retelling of Orpheus’s descent into the Underworld in search of Eurydice. In The Sentence we find that even the cleverest burglars do not escape justice. Cry of the Dhampir is a reasonably good tale of vampires and those who hunt them. Minra is silly hippie-dippie nonsense about the nature of evil.

Cobra Queen is an OK jungle adventure tale which needed to be developed a bit more. Call It Companionship is about a woman whose boyfriend problems are solved by her cat. You can’t trust men but you can trust your cat. The Accursed concerns a man who seeks revenge on an already dead sorcerer. In Witch’s Promise the daughter of a woman hanged for witchcraft is seduced by a handsome rake, an army officer who uses women for his pleasure. She vows to have her revenge. In Won’t Eddie Ever Learn? a drifter thinks that robbing an old farmer and his blind daughter will be easy.

Middle Am is silly moralising nonsense. Homo Superior is science fiction. A member of a top-secret research assistant has discovered something disturbing - a member of the team is not human at all but could perhaps intend to replace humans. A reasonably good story. The Choice offers an encounter between a werewolf and a vampire, with some twists. Not a bad story. Changes follows an ordinary morning in the life of an ordinary man. The only interesting thing that happens on this morning is that his wife is murdered. It’s at most mildly disturbing, a minor disruption. We soon discover that this is a world in which people are murdered regularly and it’s no big deal. It’s not as if he is actually losing his wife. An odd, unsettling and very good story.

The Haunted Child is the tale of a husband-and-wife team of psychic researchers and a house haunted by the ghost of a child. An OK story. Cold Calculations takes lace in the frozen wastes of Alaska. Could there really be a yeti in Alaska? Another OK story. Nimrod is about poachers in Africa who stumble upon a strange creature who rescues freaks. A disappointing story ruined even further by a clumsy moral message. Dead Howl at Midnight borrows elements from both The Body Snatchers and Frankenstein. A passable story.

Moonspawn is an intriguing attempt at a science fiction explanation for werewolves. Not a bad story. In Fringe Benefits a murderer thinks that a lucky accident has allowed him to escape justice. An OK story. Demon Child tells of an ageing occult investigator who has dark suspicions about his granddaughter. Another moderately entertaining story. Blood Brothers is the tale of two revolutionaries, a secret hoard of gold and a strange cult. This one is pretty good.

Clash of the Leviathans is a tale of dinosaurs, of one dinosaur in particular whose battle with a strange enemy will have momentous consequences. A clever story. Blind Man’s Guide tells of a boy who was once a guide for an old man. Now the boy is blind and has a dog to guide him. For the boy history will repeat itself. Not too bad a story. The Power and the Glory is the story of a wicked Englishman in colonial times. His rich father protects him from the consequences of his crimes. Nothing can touch the young man. A fairly decent story.

Eye Don’t Want To Die tells of an old tailor with a glass eye. He is reputed to be a rich old miser. There are those who covet his supposed riches. A pretty good story. The Other Side of Heaven is about a fisherman who meets God. Well, maybe not the God but certainly a god. A rather Cthulhu-like god. An interesting story. Old Texas Road shows what can happen when you run out of petrol on a deserted road. A nasty but effective little chiller.

The Vampirella stories

Hell From on High takes Vampirella and the Van Helsings to the Rocky Mountains where they encounter a kindly priest. They also discover that they now face a formidable new threat, the Darkling Disciples.

The Blood Queen of Bayou Parish takes Vampirella and her friends into swamp country, a setting I always love. And the men discover that finding the woman of your dreams is not necessarily a good thing.

In Into the Inferno and What Price Love Vampirella’s friend Pendragon, a broken-down stage magician, has to confront his past and there are gangsters to deal with as well. Vampirella learns to kill, under the influence of drugs. This is a horrifying experience for her. No matter how strong her craving for blood she has always in the past avoided killing.

In Demons in the Fog Vampirella needs blood. Not for herself. For another reason entirely. Pendragon’s efforts to help backfire, as they so often do, and Vampirella has to battle old enemies, but very deadly enemies.

In Return Trip Vampirella faces a new menace - a man who can control her dreams. He can give dreams of happiness, and force her to do evil.

The Curse of the MacDaemons begins with Vampirella and Pengragon holidaying in Scotland. Vampirella meets a handsome young Scottish laird but Vampirella is not going to get to enjoy the joys of love. There’s an interesting twist to a popular legend and a decidedly perverse atmosphere to this excellent story.

Final Thoughts

These Vampirella Archive reprints really are a must for comic-book enthusiasts. Vampirella is one of the great comic-book heroines and while the non-Vampirella stories are a mixed bag some are very interesting indeed. Highly recommended.

Vampirella Archives vol 3

Vampirella Archives vol 3 collects issues 15 to 21 of the original Vampirella comic book when it was still published by Warren Publications. These issues are from the early 70s. Each issue contains a reasonably lengthy Vampirella adventure plus four much shorter unrelated comic-strip stories. As always the Vampirella stories are pretty cool while the non-Vampirella stories range from awful to excellent.

Each Vampirella adventure more or less stands on its own but there are continuing story arcs so they really do need to be read in sequence. Vampirella of course is not a conventional vampire - she’s an alien from the planet Drakulon. The inhabitants of Drakulon must drink blood to survive but they don’t kill. On Earth however Vampirella would have no choice but to kill had a scientist not developed a blood-substitute serum for her. Vampirella is a heroine with a dark side.

This is a totally original and intriguing vampire mythos and then things interesting as Dracula starts to figure more often in the stories. Dracula should be totally out of place in the Vampirella Mythos but instead we get a whole new Dracula Mythos which is compatible. And it works better than you might expect.

By this time she has acquired a sidekick, a broken-down but good-natured stage illusionist named Pendragon. And she has an uneasy relationship with the van Helsing family. Conrad van Helsing believes she is an evil vampiress who must be destroyed. His son Adam’s attitude towards her is much more complicated, given that he’s in love with her. And she’s in love with him.

The Vampirella Stories

In the Resurrection of Papa Voudoo, the dictator of a Caribbean island nation (obviously a thinly disguised version of Haiti), has been assassinated. His mistress and his chief advisor are alarmed but they have a plan to revive him. It involves voodoo. Papa Voudoo’s mistress is a powerful sorceress but she will face a formidable opponent in Vampirella.

In And Be a Bride of Dracula Vampirella almost gets married, to a certain Transylvanian Count. And we find out something about Dracula’s past. It all starts when Pendragon finds himself a job, as a stage magician with Vampirella as his beautiful female assistant.

Beware, Dreamers takes place entirely in the world of dream, but it’s a dream that can kill. And Vampirella has run out of her serum. She needs blood. When that happens she becomes a ruthless huntress.

Dracula Still Lives! sees Conrad van Helsing once again deciding that Vampirella must be destroyed. Dracula is now becoming the key character in the story and the Dracula Mythos takes strange new turns involving a mysterious goddess, the Conjuress.

And in Shadow of Dracula we discover that the Conjuress has plans for Dracula. The key lies in the past, in the 19th century.

In When Wakes the Dead both Dracula and Vampirella are transported back to the year 1897 where an earlier generation of Van Helsings are seeking a cure for vampirism. Dracula wants to be cured but he makes the mistake of thinking that simply overcoming the bloodlust will solve his problem when in fact he must confront his darker desires. Vampirella has another problem - she thought she loved Adam but now she thinks she loves someone else, someone she shouldn’t love.

In Slitherers of the Sand the Conjuress sends Vampirella and Dracula to a desert planet where there is nothing but sand. And monsters who feed on sand. By accident Conrad Van Helsing and his son Adam as well as Pendragon end up there as well. The big problem is that Vampirella has no blood serum with her. She’s likely to get thirsty, for blood. Dracula faces the same problem.

The non-Vampirella Stories

Issue 15: In Quavering Shadows a man is worried about his friend Jason who lives in a castle and really seems to think he’s living in the 16th century. Very strange things seem to be going on in this castle and Jason seems to appear and disappear in impossible ways. A reasonably good creepy story. A House Is Not a Home is a nothing story about a girl whose father dabbles in black magic. In Welcome to the Witches’ Coven a young wife joins a Women’s Lib group but it’s not what she’d hoped for.

Issue 16: Purification is a brief lame attempt at out-and-out comedy. In Gorilla My Dreams an explorer in Africa rescues a girl but then has disturbing dreams. Another story that needed to be fleshed out a little. Girl on the Red Asteroid concerns an astronaut marooned on an asteroid. He thinks his luck has changed when he finds a giant egg. Lover! is an OK tale of terror and sadism from the French Revolution. Cilia is the best story so far. In the late 19th century two men survive a shipwreck. They are rescued and one of them arrives in England with a new wife of mysterious origins; the other knows nothing of how he survived. It’s a dark fantasy tale with a tragic edge and it’s very good.

Issue 17: Horus, written and drawn by Esteban Maroto, has a setting in Ancient Egypt. A young woman feigns death to be with her beloved, entombed in one of the pyramids. A rather good tale of love and death. Death in the Shadows is about a girl who is confined to a mental hospital after being found behaving very strangely in a graveyard. She is convinced that there is something she simply must do but she’s not sure what it is. A reasonably effective macabre tale.

A Man’s World takes a reporter to a women’s commune. A series of grisly murders has taken place in the area. The women are self-sufficient although how they manage that in such a desolate spot is a mystery. The reporter will find the answer to several mysteries. A grim but mediocre story. Lover of the Bayou takes place in the swamps. There’s a kind of monster reputed to live in the swamp but no-one really knows anything about it. Quite a good story. The Wedding Ring is about a man who accepts an invitation from an old flame. He hopes for a chance to rekindle that old romance, especially since her new husband isn’t around. An OK story.

Issue 18: Kali Tomb of the Gods tells how the maiden Kali became a goddess. It’s another Esteban Maroto story. I’m starting to really like his work - lush and erotic and psychedelic. Song of a Sad-Eyed Sorceress tells of a sleazy guy who meets a woman with unexpected results for both of them. It’s not bad. Won’t Get Fooled Again concerns a couple driving in the country. They run out of petrol and take refuge in a decaying mansion. There is evil afoot, but what can kind of evil? Fairly entertaining. In The Dorian Gray Syndrome a girl reporter thinks she’s found a real-life Dorian Gray but there’s a twist. A decent story.

Issue 20: Gender Bender by Esteban Maroto is an intriguing wild crazy freaked-out psychedelic trip into the unconscious. Love Is No Game is a nothing story that goes nowhere, about a young woman trying to attract a man’s attention. Eye Opener is yet another story of a sleazy guy pursuing a girl, in a creepy old house. But the old blind woman sees all. Not a bad story. Vengeance, Brother, Vengeance is a sword-and-sorcery tale of two brothers whose fates intersect in unexpected ways. It has a very clever sting in the tail. Good story.

Issue 21: Tomb of the Gods: Legend is an Esteban Maroto tale of a Norse hero who is perhaps not so heroic. An interestingly cynical take on heroes. Good stuff. Paranoia is a dream story, or rather the sort of dream that you hope is just a dream. Not a bad idea but it needed to be fleshed out a little. The twist in The Vampiress Stalks the Castle This Night is that the castle is a castle but it’s in New York.

Final Thoughts

The Vampirella comics are fun and while it’s an uneven collection Vampirella Archives vol 3 is very much worth checking out if you’re a fan of comics that are a bit more outré than superhero fare. Highly recommended.

Modesty Blaise: The Puppet Master

The Puppet Master collects three early 1970s Modesty Blaise comic-strip adventures by Peter O’Donnell. By this time Modesty Blaise was also the heroine of a very successful series of novels, also written by Peter O’Donnell. Modesty was a fairly major pop culture icon.

The Puppet Master

Modesty is kidnapped by an old foe seeking a particularly refined and cruel form of vengeance. He has a plan for revenge that will encompass both Modesty and Willie Garvin.

Brainwashing stories of various kinds were a major cultural obsession in the 1960s.

Not a bad story but the plot twists are just a little predictable. It does touch on Modesty’s psychological quirks and on the particular bond that she has with Willie.

With Love From Rufus

A burglar breaks into Modesty’s flat. He must be a very clever burglar to get past the high-tech security system Willie Garvin had installed. He doesn’t take anything but he leaves something behind. Two things in fact. A bunch of flowers and a note signed “With Love From Rufus” and Modesty has never heard of a Rufus. While some women might be alarmed by this Modesty Blaise, being Modesty Blaise, is intrigued.

It turns out that Modesty doesn’t have a stalker but she does have a fan. Just like a pop star. A fan who worships her. She’s flattered but worried. He wants to emulate her criminal career. He’s also landed himself in a very dangerous situation. He might be an aspiring criminal mastermind but he’s basically a good lad and Modesty doesn’t want to see him end up in the slammer, or worse.

Getting him out of the jam he’s in involves Modesty and Willie in plenty of danger.

This is a solid story but the main interest is provided by the fan-worship aspect. Modesty gets to be both motherly and a bit ruthless.

The Bluebeard Affair

The Bluebeard Affair really does concern a modern Bluebeard, Baron Rath. The Baron (whose noble lineage is non-existent) has married a series of rich but timid women. They seems to have unfortunate, and fatal, accidents. Modesty’s friend Raul (a big wheel in the French Sûreté) is worried that his niece will be the next victim. She has become Baron Rath’s fourth wife.

Modesty decides that she needs to present herself as a candidate to be the Baron’s fifth wife. She’s not used to being meek and submissive but she’s a natural actress and has no trouble getting his attention.

The basic story might not be startlingly original but it’s executed with style. We get diabolical female evilness in the persons of the baron’s frightening daughters. We get Modesty sword-fighting. And we get Chloe the elephant who lends Willie a hand (sometimes owning a circus comes in handy).

We also have Willie dealing with something much more terrifying than super-villains - a girl determined to marry him. And she has three very tough very mean brothers to make sure he does the right thing.

There’s plenty of stylish action. A fine story and the highlight of this particular collection.

Final Thoughts

A good solid collection with at least one major standout. Modesty Blaise is always worth reading, in comic-strip or in novel form. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed three other early Modesty Blaise comic-strip collections, The Gabriel Set-Up, Warlords of Phoenix and The Black Pearl, as well as the first three novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth and I, Lucifer.

Modesty Blaise: Death of a Jester

The Titan Books paperback Death of a Jester includes three Modesty Blaise comic-strip adventures, all dating from 1971. By this time Enrique Badía Romero had replaced the deceased Jim Holdaway as the strip’s artist. His drawing style is subtly different from Holdaway’s but it’s very nearly as good.

In The Green-Eyed Monster the daughter of the British envoy to the small South American republic of Cuarembo is kidnapped by guerillas. They claim to be fighting for freedom.

Modesty and the president of Cuarembo, Machado, are old acquaintances from her criminal days. Machado was a cop then, and an honest one. Machado and Modesty developed a certain mutual regard and respect. Modesty is inclined to be very sceptical of the rebels’ claims but she isn’t very interested in politics. What matters is that she does not approve of hostage-taking. In fact she disapproves very strongly.

The kidnapped girl, Diana, is the ex-girlfriend of Modesty’s current boyfriend Gil. Diana is spoilt, selfish, bad-tempered and generally a very unpleasant young lady. The first time she met her Modesty threw her into a swimming pool. But Modesty still does not approve of hostage-taking.

President Machado knows where the hostage has been taken. Any attempt to launch a military assault would certainly result in the girl’s death. On the other hand Modesty and Willie Garvin might be able to do it stealthily. Gil volunteers to act as their guide.

It’s a difficult enough mission and Diana doesn’t make it any easier.

This is a solid story and we get to see the Nailer (one of Modesty’s tricks for getting out of tight spots) used, but not by Modesty.

In Death of a Jester a couple of hippies see a court jester killed by a knight in black armour. This sort of thing doesn’t happen in 1971, but they really did see it happen.

A crazy aristocrat is reliving the Middle Ages and taking it a bit too seriously. He’s also stolen something much more high-tech and much more dangerous. There are also lions to contend with.

Modesty and Willie manage to get themselves invited to the crazy earl’s castle. The earl tries to seduce Modesty and he thinks he’ll get suspicious if she doesn’t sleep with him, so she does sleep with him. It’s all in the line of duty.

Willie learns about jousting at first hand and Modesty gets to demonstrate her skill with a rapier.

The mock-medieval setting makes this a very entertaining adventure.

As is customary in her comic-strip adventures The Stone Age Caper begins with Modesty and Willie on holiday, this time in Australia. O’Donnell loved exotic settings and in 1971 I guess Australia qualified as an exotic locale. This is the Australia of the English imagination, bearing no resemblance to the real Australia, which makes it more fun in some ways. For the English of course Australia was Bondi Beach and the Outback.

It’s in the Outback that Willie finds the girl. Her name is Judy and she’s been deliberately left to die, stranded in the desert. Willie nurses her back to health. Speaking to Modesty by radio he tells her that Judy has mentioned a nickel mine. That gets Modesty’s attention. She’s just encountered an old acquaintance in Sydney, Mr Wu Smith from Macau. They know each other from Modesty’s criminal days. He’s planning a nickel fraud. Modesty had no intention of interfering. It’s none of her business. She isn’t a cop. But she figures she should join Willie to find out a bit more.

Of course Modesty and Willie get drawn into the affair and much mayhem ensues. Since this is Australia most of the mayhem involves boomerangs.

If you’re easily offended you’ll find something in every frame of this story to offend you. It’s not exactly in tune with today’s ideologies.

It was controversial at the time for featuring Modesty topless.

It’s a crazy story but fun in its way.

Three fine comic-strip adventures with Death of a Jester being the standout. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed lots of Modesty Blaise: the novels Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth and I, Lucifer and the comic book collections The Gabriel Set-Up, The Black Pearl and The Hell-Makers.

Vampirella Archive volume 2

I of course knew of the iconic comic-strip character Vampirella but until now I had never seen an actual Vampirella comic. I’ve never been much of a comics fan. I have recently developed a taste for European comics such as Jean-Claude Forest's Barbarella and Guido Crepax’s surreal erotically charged comics (in collections such as Evil Spells) and even more recently I’ve become a major fan of the British Modesty Blaise comics. But my exposure to American comics has been limited to a couple of 90s graphic novels and my exposure to American comics of earlier periods has been totally non-existent.

So on a whim I bought one of the hardcover Vampirella Archive collections (volume 2 in fact) which includes half a dozen of the original Vampirella comic books which first appeared around 1969.

Vampirella the character was at least partly the creation of science fiction super-fan Forrest J. Ackerman. Each issue of the comic included half a dozen or so comic-strip adventures plus various other features. Disappointingly Vampirella herself only features in one story per issue. This volume begins with issue 8 of the comic. Lots of different writers and artists contributed.

There are also fairly regular sword-and-sorcery stories and they’re pretty good as well. The other stories in each comic are the problem. The stories are often just too short so although the ideas are often very good there’s no time to develop them. By the time you start getting interested they’re over. Some of the non-Vampirella stories work; some don’t.

The comic was definitely aiming to be sexy. There’s quite a bit of nudity. There seemed to be a gradual increase in the level of nudity. In the first few issues in this volume there’s nudity but with the woman’s hair always artfully concealing her nipples. The later issues are not quite so coy. The publishers had evidently figured out that by 1971 they could get away with quite a lot and so they decided to ramp up the nudity quotient. Which I think was a good move. If you’re going to do a sexy comic you might as well make it genuinely sexy.

The Vampirella stories are very good and they’re linked which makes them more interesting. Vampirella is up against a deadly cult. She does have one advantage. She has found out how to survive without having to kill humans for their blood. Vampirella has no desire to hurt humans, unless she is forced to. She is an alien rather than a straightforward vampire and she is cast as heroine rathe than villainess.

In the lead story of issue 8 Vampirella is finding life on Earth to be rather difficult. On her home planet Drakulon blood is easy to obtain but on Earth the only way to get blood is by attacking humans. And Vampirella must have blood to survive. She ends up in a clinic where a kindly doctor tells her that he can solve this problem for her. Vampirella is not quite sure about this clinic - she’s rather suspicious of the doctor’s nurse. With good reason. Vampirella finds herself in a bizarre and terrifying nightmare world of demons. A good action-packed fun story.

In issue 9 Vampirella continues to hunt for the evil cultists but she is in turn being hunted by the Van Helsings (yes, descendants of that Van Helsing). They naturally assume that she is an ordinary vampire and therefore evil.

Vampirella is drawn to a decaying carnival in Carnival of the Damned. It’s not just decaying. There is an atmosphere of misery. And there is magic afoot, and the cult of chaos against which Vampirella has been battling may be involved. Meanwhile the Van Helsings are closing in on Vampirella. Vampirella acquires an ally, a broken-down stage magician named Pendragon who becomes a recurring character. A great story.

In Isle of the Huntress Vampirella and Pendragon are marooned on an island which is inhabited by a werewolf. Or perhaps not a werewolf. Just as Vampirella is not a conventional vampire so this werewolf is not a conventional werewolf. Vampirella could end up as either the hunted or the huntress. A good story.

Lurker in the Deep pits Vampirella and Pendragon against a very nasty aquatic demon. Fun.

As for the non-Vampirella stories, the sword-and-sorcery stories are pretty good. Gardner Fox wrote many such tales and his first story featuring the word-wielding queen Amazonia is excellent. A demon wants to claim Amazonia’s throne. He also wants to kill her but he makes a mistake that makes that impossible. He is however confident that he has neutralised her. This warrior babe is however not all that easy to neutralise. A short but entertaining tale.

War of Wizards is fairly good - a barbarian warrior is caught in a conflict between rival wizards. The barbarian wants to save himself, save his lady love and destroy the empire.

Amazonia and the Eye of Ozirios is a pretty decent sword-and-sorcery tale.

The Silver Thief and the Pharaoh’s Daughter benefits from a properly developed plot with some decent twists. The ancient Egypt setting works extremely well. A very good story.

Eye of the Beholder is the grisly tale of a medieval countess who will take any steps necessary to make herself attractive to men. Possibly inspired very vaguely by the legends surrounding Elizabeth Bathory? It’s a good story anyway.

To Kill a God takes place in Egypt. A Roman officer seeks to save a beautiful princess. She is threatened by a high priest, or perhaps the threat comes from a god. This tale plays fast and loose with both history and Egyptian mythology but it does so in a very enjoyable way.

Prisoner in the Pool is set 3,000 years in the past. A greek hero has to free a maiden confined to a pool by a magic spell. A story that just needed a bit more plot.

In The Sword of Light a beautiful young queen must defend her realm against an evil magic warrior. One man could aid her, except that he’s a coward. A good fun story with mayhem, magic and a feisty heroine.

The stories with contemporary settings and the science fiction stories are more of a mixed bag. The Curse is promising - a man without a memory meets a half-naked girl who tells him they’ve both been cursed by a witch. It’s rather good.

Snake Eyes is a decent story of a girl named Sara who looks like a reptile girl, despite which she has managed to find a boyfriend. He has plans to launch her career as a side-show attraction but he needs money for publicity. If only he could persuade her to sell that strange pendant. It turns out that there is more to Sara than meets the eye, and there’s another twist as well.

Regeneration Gap is a successful sci-fi story in which an astronaut returns to Earth to find that 128 years have passed. Whether life still survives on Earth depends on how you define life.

The Escape concerns a glamorous female jewel thief in the 26th century. Her costume is even more revealing than Vampirella’s. She’s on the run and takes a desperate chance. Not a bad idea but with an overly obvious ending.

Quest is a very short but very good story. It’s very minimalist. There’s no dialogue and we don’t know where or when it takes place. It has a nicely nasty little twist at the end.

Final Thoughts

Given that so many different writers and artists were involved it’s inevitable that this collection is very uneven. Each issue did however contain a good Vampirella and usually a couple of other very good stories. And each issue contained two or three stories that were either disappointing because they were not fully developed or complete misfires.

That’s not such a terrible success/failure ratio. On the whole I thoroughly enjoyed this collection. Recommended, and Vampirella is such an icon that you really do need to sample some of her early adventures and that’s probably enough to bump this volume up to highly recommended status.

Guido Crepax's The Story of O

The Story of O, written by Pauline Réage and published in 1954, is one of the most famous and most notorious of all erotic novels. It’s one of the select group of erotic novels that can be taken seriously as literature. It was hugely controversial in its day with the fact that it was a novel about sadomasochism written by a woman adding to the scandal.

In 1975 it was turned into an excellent movie directed by Just Jaeckin. At exactly the same moment Jaeckin was shooting his movie Guido Crepax was adapting it as a graphic novel. These two adaptations coincide so closely in time that it’s unlikely that either influenced the other.

The Story of O concerns a young woman known only as O who is taken to The Château at Roissy by her lover René. O is to be trained in the art of submission. Not just submission to whippings - she is also taught to make herself available to any man who desires her.

René’s half-brother Sir Stephen adds a complication. Does O belong to René’s or Sir Stephen? Which of these two men does she love? Which of them loves her?

O is not in any sense a prisoner or a slave. She is free. She is not sure if she wants freedom and is not quite sure what the word means. This is one of the major themes of the story. Do any of us want freedom? Is love more important than freedom? What if O makes a free choice not o be free?

This is a story about sex but it is also most definitely a story about love.

Other complications arise when Anne-Marie enters the picture.

Crepax was one of the boldest and most innovative comic book writer-illustrators of his generation. His style both conformed to and rejected the technical conventions of comics. He was equally bold both stylistically and thematically. He was also known for comics that dealt with dream states and fantasies. The Story of O is not a dream story but Crepax’s approach works well here. It is in some ways a story that takes place in a hidden world unknown to most people, the kinky sexual underworld.

Personally I think Jaeckin’s movie is better. This is partly because Jaeckin, having had enormous mainstream success with Emmanuelle, was not making a sleazy grindhouse movie. He was aiming once again at the mainstream market (and The Story of O was a major commercial hit). This meant that he had to focus mostly on creating an atmosphere of eroticism whilst making the sex scenes tasteful and not too explicit. His movie was very much softcore erotica. I think this works I the movie’s favour.

Crepax by contrast was not constrained in any way by censorship so his graphic novel is much more explicit and often crosses the line into hardcore.

The movie also has the advantage of having rather subtle performances by Corinne Cléry as O and Udo Kier as René (and yes I’m aware that I’ve just used the words Udo Kier and subtle in the same sentence but I stand by that - his performance is nicely underplayed). Those performances bring these two key characters to life in a way that Crepax doesn’t quite manage.

The graphic novel is however certainly stylish.

Crepax did a series of adaptations of erotic novels such as Emmanuelle. He also adapted other novels. His version of Henry James’ famous ghost story The Turn of the Screw is superb.

Crepax’s The Story of O retains most of the spirit of the novel which is a provocative look at desire, freedom and the all-consuming desire to give oneself entirely in love. Crepax provides us with a fine example of intelligent erotica done in a graphic novel format.

I’ve reviewed Just Jaeckin’s movie The Story of O (1975) elsewhere.

I’ve also reviewed two collections of Guido Crepax’s comics, Evil Spells (which I highly recommend) and Private Life.

Modesty Blaise: The Hell-Makers

The Titan Press volume The Hell-Makers contains three of Peter O’Donnell’s fairly early Modesty Blaise comic-strip adventures. At this stage Jim Holdaway was still doing the artwork.

I’ve written at length on the subject of Modesty Blaise as a character in previous reviews. Suffice to say that I’m a major fan. Modesty Blaise was like a breath of fresh air in the world of British comics when the strip made its debut in 1963. Like its heroine it was exciting and sexy and stylish and totally in tune with the mood of Swinging London.

Modesty Blaise is in the great tradition of criminals turned amateur crime-fighters and she bears at least a passing resemblance to the greatest of all such literary characters, The Saint. As well as fighting crime Modesty dabbles in espionage and counter-espionage on a strictly freelance basis. Modesty is always her own boss.

The three adventures in this volume originally appeared in the London Evening Standard in 1968 and 1969.

The Galley Slaves

In The Galley Slaves Modesty and her crimefighting partner (but not lover) Willie Garvin are guests on a yacht in the South Pacific but they’re bored so they get themselves put ashore on a tiny island. The island is not very far from Tahiti. Willie is sure they can easily build a raft to reach Tahiti.

While taking a break from raft-building they notice something unusual heading for their island. It’s a Roman trireme filled with Roman legionaries. Of course it turns out that somebody is making a movie.

Other things are happening in this South Seas paradise. The Americans have misplaced a nuclear ballistic missile submarine. It’s a drone submarine and they think somebody stole it. Modesty and Willie know who stole it - an old friend of theirs from their criminal days. A man named Lim. And Modesty owes Lim a big favour. Modesty never forgets a debt.

The submarine was not the real prize. What Lim was after was the telemetry system which made the drone submarine operable. And that system is a lot easier to hide than a submarine. It could be hidden anywhere. It may be necessary to negotiate with Lim and the possibility of a double-cross is very real.

There’s a fine action climax on board the trireme. A good story.

The Red Gryphon

In The Red Gryphon Modesty is in Venice with her new boyfriend Max, a young Italian architect. Max is restoring a palazzo on an island for a client. The client bought he island from Count Alborini. Modesty’s chance encounter with two cute but larcenous orphan children indirectly leads to a discovery by Alborini. There is something on that island, something worth killing for. There’s a connection with a huge statue of a gryphon.

And murder does indeed soon follow. Modesty and Willie have to foil Alborini’s plans, but Alborini is ruthless and has a team of rather nasty thugs in his employ.

This story has (as usual) some fine action scenes and it makes good use of the Venetian setting. Another solid story.

The Hell-Makers

The Hell-Makers starts with Willie Garvin stopping to help a distressed young woman by the side of a highway in Montana. Willie doesn’t know it yet but he just made a big mistake. Somebody intends to use Willie as the ammunition in an attempt to blackmail Modesty as part of an espionage plot. It’s going to be a nightmare time for Willie.

Modesty makes an unlikely friend, learns a new way of climbing unclimbable cliffs, makes an unexpected visit to a naturist resort and gets some help from a couple of birds, of the feathered variety.

There’s also a great deal of gunplay, with Modesty in a ruthless mood. And Modesty faces a more personal battle as well. A very good story.

Final Thoughts

Three very fine adventures, with The Hell-Makers being particularly interesting in that it tells us a bit more about the strange relationship between Modesty and Willie. A great collection, highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed several of the Modesty Blaise novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth, I, Lucifer and Last Day In Limbo - as well as a couple of the earlier comic-strip collections - The Gabriel Set-Up and The Black Pearl.

The Black Pearl (Modesty Blaise)

The Black Pearl is a Titan Press collection of four of Modesty Blaise’s comic-strip adventures by Peter O’Donnell. They all date from the 1960s, the period when Jim Holdaway was providing the drawings.

The Black Pearl is the most interesting since it gives us some of Modesty’s backstory. The Magnified Man is also interesting, with some crazy gadgetry used by the bad guys. The Jericho Caper offers us a glimpse of Modesty’s love life, which she is always trying to keep separate from her professional life. Her boyfriends have a tendency to want to help but Modesty has no desire to allow amateurs to get in the way and endanger themselves. Modesty has a strange emotional life. She likes to keep control of her love affairs and she’s reluctant to allow them to get too serious.

Modesty likes men, but you get the feeling that the only man she really respects is Willie Garvin. And, for complicated reasons have to do with both her past and his, she and Willie can never be more than professional partners. They never sleep together. But they are professional partners with a strange intense emotional bond.

In The Black Pearl Modesty has a debt to pay, to a holy man who saved her life in the Himalayas years earlier. To repay the debt she has to find the Black Pearl and take it to where it is needed. The problem for Modesty and Willie is that they have no idea what the Black Pearl actually is. Maybe it’s an actual pearl, but apparently it’s difficult to transport so it probably isn’t an ordinary pearl.

You’ll have to read the comic to find out what it is, but it certainly comes a surprise to Modesty.

This adventure gives us a hint as to the origins of certain mental abilities possessed by both Modesty and Willie. These are not paranormal powers. They’re simply abilities that have been developed by intensive mental training. In Willie’s case it’s his uncanny ability to know when something is going to go wrong. In Modesty’s case it’s her ability to shut down parts of her mind completely in order to endure unpleasant experiences. It’s the reason she is able to endure torture.

It’s a reasonably supposition that a holy man from the Himalayans may have helped them to develop these abilities.

The adventure itself lands Modesty in the middle of a confrontation between guerrilla fighters and Chinese soldiers. It’s a fun story.

The Magnified Man is a heist story, with some slightly science fictional touches (to reveal what those touches are would constitute a spoiler).

It starts with Willie making a serious mistake. He greets an old girlfriend in a bar, but the girlfriend is an agent of the Deuxième Bureau and she’s on an operation and he’s just blown her cover.

Somehow Modesty and Willie will have to get that girl out of the mess that Willie has landed her in, and in doing so they find themselves in the middle of the operation on which she was working - which means they will have to foil a very elaborate heist conspiracy.

Willie will also have to deal emotionally with the possibly disastrous consequences of his mistake. That’s one of the interesting elements in this story - Willie rarely makes mistakes but we find out that he’s by no means infallible.

In The Jericho Caper Modesty has dropped out of circulation for a while (as she does from time to time) and she’s staying in a remote South American village, having a love affair with a blind sculptor. Everything is rosy until bandits arrive and kidnap three of the village girls. The bandits are from a neighbouring state which is a kind of bandit state.

The local priest wants to avoid bloodshed, which puts him at odds with Modesty. Modesty is not exactly an apostle of non-violence. She will have to find a way to rescue those girls and deal with the bandits without running up too high a body count.

She solves the problem using some biblical inspiration. First she has to lure the bad guys into an old Inca fortress, then find a way to make the walls come a-tumbling down just like the walls of Jericho. As you might expect, knowing Modesty Blaise, her solution is not entirely non-violent. Modesty isn’t bloodthirsty but she can be ruthless when she feels it’s appropriate.

The fourth adventure, The Killing Ground, is an oddity. It’s a very short adventure O’Donnell had to whip up to keep Scottish newspapers supplied with Modesty Blaise adventures while the series was on hiatus in England due to a printer’s strike. It’s another variation on Richard Connell’s famous 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game, with Modesty and Blaise finding themselves the hunted rather than the hunters. O’Donnell later adapted this comic into a novella which was included in the final Modesty Blaise short story collection The Cobra Trap.

I’ve been a fan of O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise novels for quite a while and I’m now becoming a serious fan of the comics as well. They’re stylish grown-up comics and they’re extraordinarily entertaining.

The Black Pearl is highly recommended.

Guido Crepax's Private Life

Private Life is the fourth volume in the superb Complete Crepax series from Fantagraphics. The series aims to collect all of Guido Crepax’s comics. The comics in this volume were written between the mid-60s and the mid-80s.

Guido Crepax was the name used by Milan-Born Guido Crepas (1933-2003). Exciting things were happening in the world of European comics by the 1960s, beginning with the first appearance of Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella in the French V Magazine in 1962. European comics of the 60s bore no resemblance to American comics. European comics were aimed at grown-ups. They were sexy and sophisticated, they were witty and wildly imaginative and they were stylistically adventurous.

Crepax would push all of these elements very far indeed. He would attract immediate attention when his first comic adventure, The Lesmo Curve, appeared in Linus magazine in 1965. This was also the first appearance of his most famous creation, the fashion photographer Valentina. Valentina would appear in countless Crepax comics. Her adventures often involved elements of science fiction and fantasy, plentiful hallucinogenic dream sequences, espionage, crime and general weirdness. Plus a great deal of eroticism.

Private Life focuses, as the title suggests, on comics that tell us about Valentina’s emotional life and her relationship with her lover, art critic Phil Rembrandt. As a result there’s not quite as much of the outrageousness, bizarre inventiveness and stylistic flamboyance that you’ll find in Valentina’s other adventures. Crepax however still manages to give us some trippy dream sequences and these comics are by no means totally lacking in delirious weirdness.

Unlike almost every other comic book heroine Valentina ages over the course of her many adventures. At the beginning she is a carefree 22-year-old. She will find a stable emotional relationship with Phil Rembrandt and they will have a child. By the time you get to her final adventures she’s rapidly closing in on middle age.

Another unusual feature is that, in between their extraordinary surreal adventures, she and Phil have a normal family life. The baby has to have his bath. The dishes have to be washed. The laundry has to be done. And while Valentina and Phil both have glamorous jobs they do have to work for a living. This contrast between perfectly normal domesticity and bizarre adventures gives these comics a distinctive flavour.

Crepax’s original intention was to write a comic about an art critic named Phil Rembrandt who has a double life. He is also a superhero named Neutron. He has only one superpower but it’s pretty impressive. He can temporarily paralyse people with his eyes. Crepax soon realised that he wasn’t all that interested in doing a conventional superhero comic and that aspect started to fade into the background. At the same time Crepax’s focus shifted more towards Phil’s fashion photographer girlfriend Valentina.

Crepax’s comics became gradually more surreal and experimental. Reality and dream become hopelessly intertwined. It is never possible to be sure how many of Valentina’s adventures are real, and it could be argued that Valentina’s real life takes place in her dreams.

The Comics

The Lesmo Curve introduces us to Valentina. And it introduces Valentina to Phil Rembrandt, who will become her husband and the great love of her life. Phil is also the superhero Neutron. Valentina and Phil will go on to share all kinds of bizarre adventures.

In The Lesmo Curve beautiful girls are marrying rich men, and the rich men keep meeting with fatal accidents. The latest intended victim is a racing car driver. At this stage Crepax was still finding his feet and this story isn’t as outrageous or bizarre as many of the subsequent stories. But it’s an entertaining story.

Ciao, Valentina involves a photograph taken by Valentina. People are prepared to go to drastic lengths to get their hands on it even though it seems like a remarkably innocent photo. There has to be some key in that photograph, and of course there is.

This is obviously another early story and it still has an at least vaguely conventional thriller plot. The plot is an intriguing anticipation of Antonioni’s Blow-Up. It's fun.

That all changes and things take a turn for the weird with the next stories in this collection. Funny Valentine, Filippo and Valentina, Fearless Paper Doll Valentina and Valentina the Fearless are odd little snippets and also offer glimpses of Valentina’s childhood.

Valentina’s Baby is a series of strange dreams that Valentina has while in labour with her son Mattia. And Valentina’s dreams are very strange indeed.

Manuscript Found in a Stroller is a whimsical little throwaway story about a very strange discovery our heroine makes when she checks her washing machine.

In Fallen Angels Valentina seems to be contemplating having an affair, with a man named Arno. There’s definitely something between these two but Valentina is hanging back. There’s also some cool falling statuary.

In The Empress’s New Clothes Valentina finds herself all alone on a blank page, patiently waiting for Crepax to turn up to create a story for her. Not wildly original (Chuck Jones had been playing with such ideas in Daffy Duck cartoons for years) but it’s a whimsical little throwaway story. It’s also a bit disturbing since, no matter how bizarre and unlikely her adventures, we’ve never before been confronted so starkly with the idea that Valentina is just a comic-book character. It’s Crepax being playful, but it is disturbing.

Le Zattere, Venice is just Crepax reminiscing about his own childhood and it’s a bit dull.

Peitro Giacomo Rogeri is much more interesting. A girl leaves a ’cello in Valentina’s studio and then disappears. She claims the instrument is 250 years old. In fact it was owned at one time by Paganini. Several groups and individuals want to get their hands on that ’cello. There are apparently secret documents concealed in the instrument.

With Anthropology we move into authentically weird Crepax territory. How much of the story is a dream is uncertain. Valentina encounters the Subterraneans, strange human-like but non-human creatures which figure in many of Valentina’s adventures. And Louise Brooks makes an appearance, although maybe it’s not Louise Brooks or maybe it’s Louise Brooks getting mixed up with other women in Valentina’s dream.

Private Life is a slightly older Valentina reminiscing about her past adventures (and wondering how many of them were real). It’s Crepax saying farewell to Valentina, and perhaps Valentina saying farewell to herself. Although the ending didn’t necessarily entirely close off the possibility of further Valentina adventures it’s obvious that Crepax felt that he’d gone as far with the character as he could.

Final Thoughts

Although this volume includes the earliest Valentina comics my personal view is that if you have never encountered Valentina before you’re better off starting with the third of the Fantagraphics Complete Crepax volumes, Evil Spells. I think it’s a better introduction to Valentina’s world and a better illustration of the reasons she became such an important pop culture icon. And on the whole Evil Spells is a stronger collection.

Once you become obsessed with Valentina then you’ll certainly want to pick up Private Life to find out more about what makes her tick. So Private Life is highly recommended, but grab Evil Spells first.