Stephen Bissette's TYRANT The Original Art Edition upcoming

Just announced from new publisher Lighthouse Press is S.R. BISSETTE'S TYRANT THE ORGINAL ART EDITION, an archival collection newly scanned from the original art of Stephen Bissette's classic but short-lived 4-issue series from 1994-1996, which just scratched the surface in the life story of a Tyrannosaurus rex in the late Cretaceous period.

There will be a crowd-funding campaign for the book early next year.  You can go here right now to sign up for information once the campaign is active.

Really good news, I can't think of a modern age comic that more deserves the format, and hopefully it'll lead to more material in the future.

EC - Destruction of the Earth (Feldstein)

Destruction of the Earth
by Al Feldstein
Weird Science #14[#3] (1950)

A scientist who helped develop the atom bomb approaches some government officials to warn them about the consequences that his calculations show for their upcoming hydrogen bomb test, which you can guess from the title of the story.  They dismiss his concerns and head down to the test in the Bikini Atoll.  Does not go well.

It's a little dry but well illustrated, with some interesting scenes, and a nice little twist in the last panel.

EC - The Sounds From Another World (Kurtzman)

The Sounds From Another World
by Harvey Kurtzman
Weird Science #14[#3] (1950)

Story swiped from a 1949 Roald Dahl short story "The Sound Machine", Kurtzman does a great job bringing the story to life.  It's about a scientist who is obsessed with building a machine that detects sounds beyond the limits of human perception. Hearing mysterious screams he investigates and begins to suspect that the only source must be the suffering plant life. Some great faces on a descent into madness by Kurtzman, and also the framing sequence is an original extrapolation of the Dahl story.

EC - Split Second! (Kamen)

Split Second!
art by Jack Kamen, story by Al Feldstein
Shock SuspenStories #4 (1952)

Steve Dixon, the mean-spirited boss of a remote lumber camp marries beautiful big city singer Liz and brings her to live at the camp, even though he doesn't allow any of the lumberjacks to bring their wives to live there.  She's soon bored and starts to cause trouble, but the lumberjacks know enough to avoid her.  Ted, a new young kid joins the camp, impressing everyone with his chopping skills which they hope will win them the upcoming big lumberjacking tourney.  Liz also sets her sights on him, bringing on the wrath of her husband. This leads to the usual revenge plot from the other lumberjacks.

Pretty story with the usual sexy woman, rugged men and lush backgrounds from Kamen, but the story is a bit cruel and doesn't age too well.

EC - Old Soldiers Never Die (Wood)

Old Soldiers Never Die
art by Wallace Wood, story by Harvey Kurtzman
Two-Fisted Tales #23[#6] (1951)

A story set in France in the last few months of World War I, as veteran American soldier Pappy Davidson tries to impart some of his hard won experience on recent replacement Caruso.  Two page vignettes for each month from August to November as they withstand attacks from air, artillery and gas until they finally get to the end of the war.

Very nice story, Kurtzman and Wood were always a good combination, with good attention to detail, using silent panels and sound effects well and even adding a few touches of humour to the overall messiness of war in the trenches.

Cerebus #104 [1987] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Cerebus #104 [1987]

CEREBUS was a Canadian funny animal comic published for 298 issues from 1977 to 2004 by Dave Sim out of Kitchener through his company Aardvark-Vanaheim, featuring the wacky adventures of the titular Cerebus, an aardvark in a mostly human world.  By this point Sim had been joined by Gerhard on the bankgrounds and tones.

This issue is part of the climax to the long-running Church&State storyline (#52 to #111), where Cerebus is ascending to the moon on a tower of giant heads.  I think it made sense in context, it's been about 30 years since I read the full Church&State story, and I've only ever sampled some of the later stuff.

In the middle of all this we get a crossover with Bob Burden's character the Flaming Carrot, which had also briefly been published by Aardvark-Vanaheim back in 1984.  The Carrot shows up in the middle of Cerebus' ascension, throws around the usual string of non-sequiturs, many of them anachronisms in the context of the usual Cerebus world of the time. The art and script for the Carrot is provided by Burden and lettered by usual Carrot letterer Roxanne Starr. Towards the end of the issue we get a callback and resolution to one of the Carrot's greatest failures, from the story "The Bandit Moons" in A-V In 3-D #1 [1984].

Entertaining issue, I remembered a few parts of it quite vividly from reading it decades ago.

Cravan [2005] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Cravan [2005]

This is an original hardcover comic written and drawn by Rick Geary, co-written by Mike Richardson, about the unlikely life of Arthur Cravan.

I have to admit that I spent the first half of the book assuming Cravan was fictional, a Zelig or Gump type figure put among real historical figures of the early 20th century.  A nephew of Oscar Wilde, encountering figures like boxer Jack Johnson, pre-revolution Leon Trotsky (who Geary would return to in more depth a few years later), artist Marcel Duchamp.  It wasn't until the story got to him marrying poet Mina Loy that I began to suspect he was real, and turns out he was.  Well, that was unexpected.  Looks like this book sticks pretty close to his actual reported life, at least up to the point of his 1918 disappearance. Then it engages in a bit of speculation about connections between him and another figure with a mysterious past in the early days of Hollywood.  I'm unclear on the merits of that theory.

Visually the book is pretty much standard for Geary's historical fiction, which is a pretty high bar.  Everything looks well researched and is drawn with his usual precise and pleasing style.  I'm not sure if it was my confusion over the reality of the character or the co-writing of Richardson (Geary writes most of his long-form comics solo), but something seemed a bit off in the script, lacking some of the whimsy and dry humour that I associate with Geary.  I'll have to try reading it again someday knowing in advance that it's about a real historical figure.  And the Geary artwork alone is more than enough to recommend the book.

EC - Wreck of the Hesperus (Wood)

Wreck of the Hesperus
art by Wallace Wood, story by Harvey Kurtzman
Mad #16 (1954)

For this story Harvey Kurtzman went pretty far afield from his usual parody targets in the movies and comics and took on the mid-19th century narrative poem "The Wreck of the Hesperus" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  Most the the poem is presented as written by Longfellow (minus at least one overtly religious verse) as the captions, while Kurtzman and Wallace Wood treat it all with irreverence in the pictures and dialogue.

Among the highlights is the rather goofy look of the captain's daughter,  the "old sailor" being drawn as Popeye and the constant confusion of the word "billows" with "pillows".  Special mention to letterer Ben Oda, who pretty much handles a page and a half solo with mostly sound effects in the panels.

Roswell - Little Green Man #1 [1996] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre 

Roswell - Little Green Man #1 [1996]

This is the first of a six issue series created by Bill Morrison, and published by Bongo, one of a handful of non-SIMPSONS comics from the publisher.  Morrison of course had been doing a lot of work on the SIMPSONS comic book series for a few years at this point (and would continue for a long while after).  The feature debuted as a back-up in some SIMPSONS comic before getting its own series.

The lead of course is an alien in the classic LGM form. While the back-ups had him somewhat established on Earth with his supporting cast, this series starts off with an origin story of his arrival on the planet and first encounters with its strange inhabitants.

A very fun little series, it's nice to see something in Morrison's own style without the house-style of the Simpsons on top (although Bongo did a surprisingly good job of sometimes letting individual styles through for a mainstream licensed comic).  A lot of good classic retro designs and background in here.

The original back-ups and first three issues of the series were collected in a 1997 book.

THE DALGODA OMNIBUS by Fujitake & Strnad

 DALGODA was a science fiction adventure comic by Jan Strnad and Dennis Fujitake serialized for a dozen issues from 1984 to 1986, eight issues of DALGODA followed by four issues of FLESH AND BONES, published by Fantagraphics (the latter under their short-lived imprint Upshot Graphics).

It was a well regarded series, with some striking covers.  I came to it late, having heard some good things and seeing ads for it in old comics and fanzines I was buying in the early 1990s.  I can't recall now, but I also might have been interested in the Bojeffries Saga back-ups by Steve Parkhouse and Alan Moore that appear in the last five issues (an original story in DAL #8 and newly coloured reprints from WARRIOR in the second series).  Really enjoyed the first few I read, and over time got the full run.

It's a lot of fun, with Strnad writing a strong character driven piece among epic events, providing a lot of original perspective on classic pulp science fiction, a well thought out story structure and a clear understanding of his characters.  Fujitake has a striking style, mixing in a lot of European influences (most obviously Giraud and Remi among artists best known in North America) plus some classic American comics (quite a bit of Ditko and also some of the classic newspaper adventure strip artists). A very clear and pleasing style, with some great science fiction designs with sophisticated world building.

The series is the story of Dalgoda, a pilot from an alien world where the people resemble dogs and have only made brief contact with Earth. He's sent on a mission to get the help of Earth against a threat from another alien race, forcing him to deal with human politics and prejudices.

I've read the whole thing a few times over the years, and was definitely interested when I heard that About Comics had released THE DALGODA OMNIBUS, a complete collection of the series, with a striking version of the original first issue cover up front.  Re-read it in this form over the last few days, and it still works well, very much as a cohesive book with three acts, some great set-up, a few adventures and an exciting climax which wraps things up while leaving room for a continuation, which we never really got unfortunately.

The reprint is in black and white, which really does look like a whole new book from the original, which was coloured in a style then very sophisticated for American comics.

The first six issues were originally coloured by Kenneth Smith, and for those issues they drop the colours and reproduce the linework only, and it looks very sharp and fresh, really showing off Fujitake's linework better than ever.

The second half was originally coloured by Mark Wheatley and Katheryn Mayer, and for those they use a combination approach to use the colours to create greytone shading in some areas while completely suppressing the colours to leave it open for the linework in others.  It works quite well compared to many comics which are reproduced from printed comics, suffering only in comparison to the front half of the book. Some of the colour effects are more integral to the storytelling in these pages, so the pure black&white might have felt off, and it's clearly a thoughtful approach about how to handle each image rather than a blanket approach.

Also included are two short stories, one published during the original run as a promotional back-up in another book and a second (with art by Kevin Nowlan) published a few years later in an anthology and providing a brief coda to the story.  Strnad provides a three page afterword with some reflections on series forty year later and there's a gallery of a dozen pages of additional images by Fujitake from the 1980s, including fanzine covers, promotional art and more.

Highly recommended for both old fans and for anyone new to the worlds of Dalgoda.

Publisher's site

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 359 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1949996824

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949996821