Fiends of the Eastern Front

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Fiends of the Eastern Front (Rebellion, 2010).



Of all the recent examples of contemporary funnybook writers paying tribute to, and rehabilitating the image of, mostly retired or deceased members of the industry, Pat Mills' talking-up of Gerry Finley-Day hasn't got a lot of press. You've got plenty of blogs and essays discussing Seth's curations of Doug Wright and John Stanley, and Eddie Campbell's defense of Vince Coletta got a lot of attention, but, as is disagreeably common, the British creators just don't get a lot of press in the American-dominated blogosphere.

The thing here is, most people aren't going to know what the heck that Finley-Day did that was allegedly worth discussing. We all like to call Pat Mills the godfather of British comics for his work on Battle Picture Weekly, Action and 2000 AD, but Mills is just as quick to cite Finley-Day as the man we should actually be praising, for his work creating and editing an apparently bleak and miserable girls' comic called Tammy, which ran from 1971-84. Mills later brought Finley-Day into Battle, where he wrote D-Day Dawson, and to 2000 AD, where he created The V.C.s, Harry Twenty on the High Rock and Rogue Trooper. The annual 100-page year-end edition of 2000 AD, available this month, features a new Finley-Day Rogue Trooper story, his first comics' work in more than twenty years.

Of course, a reputation's only worth what we can see. In the case of his heroes Wright and Stanley, Seth has the publisher Drawn & Quarterly on his side, putting out lovely editions of those artists' work. While most of his other, earlier work for IPC remains in limbo, Rebellion has repackaged most of his 2000 AD series and serials for everybody to enjoy. The most recent of these is Fiends of the Eastern Front, which ran for ten weeks in 1980, and is considered one of the downright oddest stories that appeared in 2000 AD in that decade.

Many things make Fiends stand out from its companion stories of the day, like its tone, unusual protagonist and brevity, but the real surprise is that it isn't a science fiction story at all. Of course, after more than thirty years of strips as widely divergent as Slaine and Bec & Kawl, that doesn't seem like a big deal, but an occult World War 2 thriller in which a German infantryman figures out that his Romanian allies are a company of vampires was really unusual at the time. What elevates it from curiosity to such a delightful pleasure is the twisting plot, the terrific framing device of having the tale recounted from a dead man's diary found in a present-day building site, and the great artwork by Carlos Ezquerra, done in between the first two serialized adaptations of The Stainless Steel Rat. Plus, it must be said that Captain Constanza is a truly great villain, all smiles and believably urbane charm when necessary, with a bloodthirsty streak just behind the surface.

After the serial, Fiends was retired as a lead feature for a respectable 26 years. It was reprinted a time or two - one of these coincided with a surprising one-off episode of The Scarlet Apocrypha by Ezquerra and Dan Abnett, in which the Romanians find that Russia has their own super-vampire weapon to oppose them - and found a new life in a series of four novels written by David Bishop. Bishop later collaborated with artist Colin MacNeil on a second comic story, serialized across eight issues of the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine. It's not at all bad, although it reads as a little more choppy and fragmented in places than most of these episodic installments naturally do. Bishop came up with some excellent action set pieces in this story, and a terrific, underplayed enemy for the vampires in a beautifully-designed golem with a look quite unlike any other I've seen before.

So Rebellion's latest reprint is the most complete to date. It's still pretty slim; at just over 100 pages, this is not a concept that gets run into the ground. It includes Finley-Day and Ezquerra's original story, Bishop and MacNeil's 2006 revisitation, and Abnett and Ezquerra's 2002 one-off. That's everything save a silly cameo in a silly Garth Ennis Judge Dredd epic, which wouldn't have been necessary or sensible. The only complaint that I have is that sadly, there wasn't room in the budget to revisit the lettering on the MacNeil pages. Halfway through that run, mercifully, Ellie De Ville stepped in to letter the project; previously, MacNeil had been doing it himself with less-than-stellar results.

Otherwise, this is a terrific little book. It's nicely-priced for British readers at £9.95, and, in what must be a first for any 2000 AD project solicited through Diamond for the American market, it's actually priced at a proper exchange rate of $14.99, without some insane markup. Let's see more of that, please! Recommended? Absolutely! Now let's get somebody to reprint more of Finley-Day's ostensibly excellent 1970s stuff so Pat Mills can call his mission accomplished!

Harry 20 on the High Rock

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Harry 20 on the High Rock (Rebellion/Simon & Schuster, 2010).



A few weeks back, I mentioned that I had already purchased several collected editions of Rogue Trooper before the latest book to reprint a big chunk of them. Now here is Harry 20 on the High Rock, another strip I have at least three times already, in its original appearance, a colorized American reprint from the late '80s, and a magazine supplement from about ten years back. It has never been collected in book form before, however, and this is the sort of thing that my collector's urge and my otherwise naked shelves need.

The serial originally ran for five months across 1982-83 in the pages of 2000 AD and was written by Gerry Finley-Day and drawn by Alan Davis in one of his earliest professional jobs. For this new edition, Davis contributes a two-page foreword explaining that it was intended that he alternate the art chores with John Watkiss, but he had to bail out, leaving Davis with a heck of a lot of design work and catching up to do. It turns out that the third episode was actually drawn first, and it was interesting to compare the pages and see how the strip's look evolved as a consequence.

At any rate, the strip is the story of Harry Thompson, a political prisoner of a corrupt regime sent to spend a twenty-year sentence on an inescapable satellite prison. It's a little ridiculous and juvenile, and the constant use of pun names for characters will make anybody who found Finley-Day's similar affectations writing Rogue Trooper put this down with a grimace. The writing is dated, boys' adventure stuff, but the artwork is just terrific throughout. Davis has since become better known for his work on Marvel Comics' superhero titles, and his many fans will probably enjoy checking out this material.

This new edition is a pretty nice collection of the comic. Along with the original adventure, there's an eight-page sketchbook section full of interesting notes by Davis about the characters' appearance, and three of the covers from its original appearance in 2000 AD. One of these, incidentally, spoils a pretty critical plot twist, so don't flip towards the back for the bonus stuff until you've read the story! For now, it's a North American exclusive, part of Simon & Schuster's line of reprints from Rebellion, and not available in England. Certainly recommended, although, considering the silly and dated story, perhaps not as loudly as some other material from the period.

Rogue Trooper: Tales of Nu-Earth Volume 1

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Rogue Trooper: Tales of Nu-Earth Volume 1 (Rebellion, 2010)



Here's a book which, honest to heaven, I did not need. I don't mind the reputation I get as one of 2000 AD's online cheerleaders, and as I have cut way, way back in buying new comics, it's only the constantly-improving, mindblowing platinum age of the Galaxy's Greatest Comic (well, and Legion of Super-Heroes) that has my ongoing interest in the medium at all these days, and it's sort of expected that I'll buy all these things the publisher releases. But Rogue Trooper is far from my favorite property in the 2000 AD world, and this is a series that has been reprinted a lot. Unfortunately for my wallet, I neglected to send an exception to my regular order at my favorite comic shop, and, well, now I have these stories for at least the fifth time.

Having said that, if you've never read Rogue Trooper before, you could certainly do a lot worse. This collects all of the character's adventures from 1981 to 1983, written by Gerry Finley-Day and illustrated, brilliantly, by the likes of Dave Gibbons, Eric Bradbury, Brett Ewins, Cam Kennedy and Colin Wilson. The artwork really is terrific. I've long lost interest in revisiting these storylines, but the artwork constantly sucks me right back in.

These are future war adventures set on a hellworld with poisonous atmosphere. The only man who can breathe in this toxic nightmare is the last of a company of genetically-engineered super-soldiers. He's accompanied by the squabbling dogtags of three of his dead buddies - "biochips" which retain personalities and memories until they can be returned for newly-grown bodies. But since our hero's company has been betrayed by a traitor general and the ironically-named Rogue has gone AWOL to track that man down, they can't be returned any time soon.

I've always accepted that Rogue Trooper is a great icon for merchandising and adverts - Rebellion made a good video game of him in 2006 - thanks to Gibbons' simple, but memorable design. But honestly, these stories are pretty darn juvenile, without the necessary kick that keeps them interesting for older readers. Preteen boys would eat this up before anybody else, although the artwork is a selling point on its own. Also of interest are two bonus episodes. The meat of the book reprints all of the weekly episodes from about a 19-month stretch, but among the bonus supplements are two rare episodes scripted by Alan Moore that originally appeared in the old annual hardbacks. One of them is pretty by-the-numbers; the second, with art by Jesus Redondo, is probably the best story in the book.

For those of you who've kept an eye on Rebellion's ongoing reprint program of the last six years, Tales of Nu-Earth 01 collects the entire contents of the two books released some years ago in partnership with DC, plus the Alan Moore episodes, plus the first seven episodes from the third book, which Rebellion released without DC's involvement. It's a very nice upgrade, as upgrades go, just not one that I personally needed. If readers would please excuse my lack of enthusiasm, I do recommend this for the art - there's not a page of Gibbons that shouldn't be owned by everybody who likes comic art - but really only for readers who have not bought the previous editions.

The Best of Battle

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of The Best of Battle (Titan, 2009)



Battle Picture Weekly was, of course, one of the best and most important comics ever published. It wasn't just a simply entertaining, well-written and drawn collection of great war stories, it was a critical building block in the development of modern comics. Since without it, you'd never have had a 2000 AD, I've always been interested in it, and any chance to see these terrific stories is one worth taking.

The series and serials in BPW were drawn by some of the best artists working in Britain at the time, including Eric Bradbury, Joe Colquhoun, Carlos Ezquerra, Cam Kennedy and Mike Western. Many of the stories were devised by Pat Mills and John Wagner, and while they only scripted a few themselves, they assigned others to the likes of Gerry Finley-Day and Alan Hebden. They all developed storylines, sometimes sharply different from each other in tone, with vulnerable anti-heroes, radically different from the indestructible leads in American war comics. Reading just one issue of BPW after an identikit Robert Kanigher DC adventure is the greatest breath of fresh air in the medium.

Titan Books, which has been collecting Battle's most lauded strip, Charley's War, for several years now, landed the reprint rights to several old IPC properties what seemed like an eternity ago, and late last year finally released the first of their new Battle collections. The Best of Battle is similar in feel to their two Roy of the Rovers samplers, three hundred pages of reprints in a slightly oversized format with a paperback cover. The book contains the first 3-5 episodes of eighteen different series. Each comes with an introductory page and a short blurb written by either Mills or BPW's one-time editor, Dave Hunt.

I think the format is a good one, as far as samplers go, but it looks to me like Titan was a draft or two shy of assembling something really special. The most aggravating example is Hold Hill 109, a six-part serial by Steve MacManus and Jim Watson. Four of the six episodes are included in this book, which is nice, but what are the odds that Hold Hill 109 will ever be reprinted anywhere else? Between Charley's War, Johnny Red and Darkie's Mob, there are 12-13 episodes which are either already available in Titan collections or are due for release within a few months. Couldn't eight of those pages be given up to see all of Hold Hill 109?

I'm also a little surprised that Battle Action Force isn't even mentioned in the book. Admittedly, even with the nice artwork by John Cooper, the toy line tie-in, sort of a parallel antecedent to Hasbro's G.I. Joe line of the 1980s, was the sign that the comic's brightest moments had passed, but it still has a huge number of fans. Evidently there's some rights issues at work, as Palitoy still owns those characters like Baron Buckethead or whoever it was they were fighting prior to Cobra Commander, but considering just how important the Action Force was to Battle's later days - Johnny Red and Charley's War wouldn't have made it to their ends without Action Force sales propping up the comic - I think it should have been mentioned.

If readers would forgive the regular quibbling of a Monday morning quarterback, the book is truly a fine introduction to Battle, and one which will certainly get new readers excited about the other material Titan has planned. Six volumes of Charley's War are already out, the first collection of Johnny Red should be with us by the end of the month, and a complete Darkie's Mob - all 44 episodes - is solicited in the current Previews for later in the spring. The book also promises that collections of two of my favorite Battle series, Major Eazy and Rat Pack, are on the horizon.

The only other quibble that I have is that getting accurate shipping dates and advance plans from Titan is really like pulling teeth. Most of their books seem subject to interminable delays - where the devil is the third volume of Jeff Hawke, guys?! - and so it's impossible to guess exactly when we'll get the follow-up volumes that I've been craving. It's simply bad business to serve up an appetizer as tasty as this and shy away from the main course!

(Excerpted from Reprint This!)

The VCs: You're Hit, You're Dead!

In other news, while Rebellion tends to focus on releasing collections from more recent properties or big name characters, every so often they do head back to the comic's early days and surprise everybody with a great book full of thrillpower from the past. Such is the case with this new edition of The VCs. This is the original run of 32 episodes from 1979-1980. Most of the installments are written by Gerry Finley-Day, with a couple of fill-ins by Steve MacManus. The art is principally by Cam Kennedy, who contributed the cover, and Garry Leach. Mike McMahon drew the first episode and John Richardson the last five, but everything between them is by Kennedy or Leach. Probably nobody finds that as interesting as I do.

Anyway, The VCs is a pretty standard war story, just dressed up with aliens and spaceships in it. There's the green rookie, disliked by his new crew, and ugly enemies you can neither understand nor sympathize with, and trapped-behind-enemy-lines stories, and callous officers who probably interact with our heroes more than any other company in the military. That's not to say it's at all bad, but I reread this while continuing a once-a-week reread of Battle Picture Weekly produced during the same 1979-80 period and darned if this series couldn't have been flawlessly slotted into that comic. If you enjoy this style of comic storytelling, then The VCs will certainly please you, even if it's only rarely eye-opening.

Actually, I should probably qualify that: if you're coming to this from an American background, there's a lot more to this than simply "another war comic." I grew up reading DC's Sgt. Rock and The Haunted Tank, and later Marvel's G.I. Joe, with their casts of unkillable regular characters. Compared to these, British war comics are a complete revelation, with surprising fatalities among the cast. Any new reader coming to this collection will probably be pretty surprised by this story as it progresses.

There were 32 episodes of The VCs, but this is a pretty slim book, since the episodes were an unusually short 3-4 pages a week. It runs a little light on extras, since there were so few from the period. The strip was spotlighted on 2000 AD's cover only once, and there was a single star scan of the lead cast a few weeks after it finished, and those are included, but there are no other contributions from the period from any of the creators. In lieu of blank pages filling up too much of the back, the first episode of Finley-Day's better-known future war series, Rogue Trooper is included, but honestly, I'm hard pressed to imagine anybody buying this collection who hasn't already read the first Rogue episode plenty of times already. That's not to say that I don't think potential readers are out there, and I hope you'll give it a read, just that I'm not really sure this was the best use of the pages in the back when a new interview would have been very nice.

(Excerpted from Thrillpowered Thursday.)

Invasion!

Here's how this works: I finish reading a comic collection, and I tell you about it, and I try not to go on too long.



Invasion! was a regular series for the first year (1977-78) of 2000 AD, appearing in its first 51 issues. It's about a resistance movement in occupied Britian in the far-flung future of 1999, after the Volgan Empire of Eastern Europe sweeps into power to control the oil in the North Sea. Leading the fight back is a trucker named Bill Savage and his trusty shotgun.

It's pretty damn dated, but incredibly fun, as the nigh-indestructible Savage plays a cat-and-mouse game against the bafflingly incompetent invaders. 25 years later, Pat Mills brought the character back in a more somber and realistic take on life under occupation. More on that another time, but this collection is an excellent time capsule of British comics from the late 70s, full of wild ideas and violence that don't always make the most logical sense, sometimes really straining credibility, but remain compelling and exciting. Recommended for readers familiar with the style.

(Originally posted Aug. 24 2007 at hipsterdad's LJ.)