Valerian Complete Collection vol 1

The French Valérian and Laureline science fiction comic book series was written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières. The series was immensely popular and ran from 1967 to 2010. It was inspired to some extent by the success of Jean-Claude Forest's Barbarella comics, but without the erotic overtones.

The setting is the 28th century. The city of Galaxity is the capital of Earth’s galactic empire. Science and technology have created unlimited prosperity. Government is in the hands of technocrats and scientists. In 1967 that sounded utopian. Today of course the idea of rule by technocrats and scientists sounds like a recipe for a dystopian nightmare.

The overwhelming majority of people do no work at all. They spend their entire lives in artificially induced dreams. Which also sounds a bit dystopian!

Valérian and Laureline are among the tiny majority who still do useful work. They are spatio-temporal secret agents who travel through space and time and act to prevent any tampering with time and space. Like Time Lords.

Bad Dreams was the first Valérian and Laureline adventure, published in the magazine Pilote in 1967. Valérian is sent back to the 11th century to apprehend a mad scientist, Xombul, who is making use of sorcery with the intention of taking over people’s dreams. He wants to shock them out of their dream existence (which might be a good thing but might be dangerous). And of course he wants supreme power for himself (which is definitely a bad thing).

Valérian meets a cute 11th century forest girl named Laureline. In the course of the adventure she is temporarily tuned into a unicorn and since as everybody knows unicorns can read minds she now knows that the world of the 28th century exists and she knows what it’s like. This means that she can no longer be permitted to remain in the Middle Ages, so she is recruited as a spatio-temporal agent. She and Valérian will henceforth operate as a team.

This first adventure is as much fantasy as science fiction with perhaps just a hint of the French concept of le fantastique. Magic is introduced without the least embarrassment.

The City of Shifting Waters and Earth in Flames, written in 1968, form a single adventure in two parts. Valérian and Laureline are sent to New York in 1986. Nobody really knows what happened in those times, prior to the 23rd century. That time period is a dangerous forbidden zone. They find a flooded Manhattan being looted by feral hippies.

Xombul has come up with another nefarious plan which has something to do with a lost scientific library. There are two scientific geniuses is this tale, Xombul the mad scientist and Schroeder the eccentric but certainly not evil young scientist who is on the verge of discovering the secret of time travel. Given that nothing is known of this time period perhaps at some stage he really did unlock the secret.

The American setting was not chosen randomly. Christin and Mézières had spent some considerable time in the United States and had picked up a love of the American landscape.

The third story, Empire of a Thousand Planets (dating from 1971), moves us into full-blown space opera territory. The planet Sirte is the centre of an interplanetary empire but the Sirtean had never discovered spatio-temporal travel. Now their empire is decaying. The prince’s rule is fragile and perhaps mostly illusory. The Merchants’ Guild is hatching conspiracies. And then there are the mysterious Enlighteneds, possibly a priestly caste with great powers but possibly something stranger.

It’s a confusing situation with no clearcut good guys and bad guys.

The first two stories are fun but a little tentative but by the third story the series has really hit its stride. Mézières’ visual style is becoming more confident and more flamboyant and Christin’s storytelling is becoming more ambitious. This is the European approach to comic books which is quite unconcerned with genre boundaries but very concerned with aesthetic style. Highly recommended.

In 2017 Luc Besson brought Valérian and Laureline to the big screen in the underrated Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Besson drops the time travel angle (which would have added too many complications) but he captures the overall feel of the comic wonderfully well.

Peter O’Donnell's Modesty Blaise: Mister Sun

This volume contains three Modesty Blaise comic-strip adventures written by Peter O’Donnell with artwork by Jim Holdaway.

Comic strips published three frames at a time in daily newspapers were once immensely popular. It’s a format that is now more or less extinct. These were almost always aimed at kids and younger readers. What made Modesty Blaise revolutionary when the strip debuted in 1963 was that it was aimed much more at grown-ups.

In fact, as is evident in this collection, Modesty Blaise was definitely for grown-ups. It wasn’t just the occasional nudity. The tone could be quite dark and even grim. In the worlds of crime and espionage people get hurt. Good people get killed. Straightforward happy endings are not guaranteed.

Mister Sun is a very early Modesty Blaise adventure, from 1964. A few years earlier Modesty had unofficially adopted a young Vietnamese boy named Weng and paid for his university education in Hong Kong. Now he has become involved with organised crime. It doesn’t make sense. He’s not that kind of kid. Apparently he was trying to get hold of a great deal of money very quickly, for some undisclosed purpose. But if he needed money Modesty would have given it to him gladly.

And Weng has no idea of the trouble he’s landed himself in getting involved with the sinister crime lord Mister Sun. And Mister Sun and Modesty Blaise have clashed before so Modesty suspects a particularly sinister purpose behind Mister Sun’s recruitment of Weng.

There are lots of unexpected ramifications and lots of plot twists to come. This is a rare Modesty Blaise story that involves current events (in this case the war in Vietnam), something that O’Donnell was later careful to avoid. Mister Sun is a suitably dangerous villain and he controls a vast criminal network. It’s a good story.

The Mind of Mrs Drake is unusual in having hints of the paranormal. There is a woman who earns her living as a psychic and she may or may not have some actual psychic abilities. She also happens to be a spy. Her psychic abilities make her very effective at recruiting agents - she knows their dirty little secrets and their weaknesses and their fears, all the things that can be used to manipulate them.

British counter-intelligence have sent in Modesty’s young friend Jeannie Challon as bait. This is Jeannie’s first counter-espionage assignment.

Mrs Drake has an accomplice, an osteopath, and while he lacks her special skills he is much more ruthless and much more dangerous.

The danger for Jeannie Challon is that Mrs Drake’s psychic abilities may have put her one step ahead of her adversaries. Jeannie’s cover could be blown and she would have no way of knowing it.

Modesty dislikes having to kill people but when she decides that someone really does need killing she puts her scruples to one side. This is one of the stories in which that ruthless side of Modesty is in evidence. A very good story.

The Killing Ground is a very brief story that O’Donnell and Holdaway had to produce in a hurry to fill a publication gap. It’s yet another retelling of The Most Dangerous Game. It’s OK but it is obviously a filler story.

Mister Sun and The Mind of Mrs Drake are top-tier Modesty Blaise adventures making this a very desirable purchase.

I’ve reviewed three other early Modesty Blaise comic-strip collections, The Gabriel Set-Up, Warlords of Phoenix, The Black Pearl and Uncle Happy, as well as the first five novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth, A Taste for Death, The Impossible Virgin and I, Lucifer.

Mandrake the Magician Vol 1 1934-1936

I had only very dim memories of reading a few of the Mandrake the Magician comic-strips aeons ago. I had forgotten that Mandrake is not a stage magician. He possesses actual magical powers. And he does not rely merely on hypnotism. This is a collection of the earliest strips from the mid-1930s. I believe the character changed somewhat in later strips.

One weakness here is that Mandrake’s magical powers are much too formidable. When a character has such immense powers it can encourage lazy writing - any plot problems are solved simply by utilising one of Mandrake’s countless magical powers. That weakness is partly compensated for in the first adventure by giving the villain equally extensive powers, but it would still have been more fun if Mandrake had to use his wits a bit more instead of just constantly resorting to magic.

The first story is The Cobra. The Cobra is an evil super-magician with ambitions that put most regular super-villains to shame. And he has a castle from which sunlight is banished and it has a mad scientist’s laboratory in the basement. He’s into evil science as well as evil magic.

The Coba has obtained secret documents that could plunge the world into war. Inspector Sheldon of the U.S. Secret Service, his assistant Tommy Lord and Sheldon’s daughter Barbara set sail for the Orient, their destination a small strategically vital sheikhdom. Those papers must be retrieved. Mandrake and his servant Lothar will be helping out as well.

The Cobra is a formidable opponent and his castle is protected by spells that will make Mandrake’s magic useless. It all seems hopeless but Mandrake does not give up easily. At least this story pits Mandrake against a suitably daunting adversary.

The second story, The Hawk, introduces us to the beautiful, mysterious and possibly dangerous Princess Narda. The Hawk is a master criminal. He fears that Mandrake has discovered the plot in which he is currently involved. Mandrake must therefore be eliminated.

Mandrake’s limitless magical powers are a problem in this story. The Hawk is just a regular thug. He doesn’t stand a chance against Mandrake’s powers and the result is never in doubt. Princess Narda is at least an interesting seductive bad girl but it’s otherwise a dull story.

The Monster of Tanov Pass is more interesting. Mandrake is in central Europe and in a remote castle he encounters not a vampire but a mad scientist, and his monster. He’s been up to the usual mad scientist tricks, performing brain transplants. His monster, named Klage, is a gorilla with a human brain.

This time the bad guy gets a lucky break when Mandrake gets knocked unconscious and Lothar has to try to deal with Klage using brute force. A better story with an interesting monster.

Saki, the Clay Camel takes Mandrake to Arabia where he matches wits against a master thief, Saki. Saki, like Mandrake, is a master of disguise. The overuse of disguise is always a weakness in a story but in this case the two adversaries don’t even require skill or imagination - they just assume disguises instantaneously. Since this tale relies entirely on the use of disguise it doesn’t really provide any great interest or excitement.

The Werewolf is more promising. A pretty young woman named Lora lives with her strange old uncle and her surly cousin. The region is being terrorised by a werewolf. Lora is beside herself with fear. Mandrake is sceptical of the werewolf story from the start. This is by far the best story in the collection. Mandrake actually has to think things through. The plot has some clever and amusing twists and there’s at least some suspense.

I believe that Mandrake’s magical powers were curtailed somewhat in the later years of the strip.

Mandrake the Magician in this early form at least has some claims to being the first comic-strip superhero. If you’re a fan of superhero comic-strips then you’ll enjoy this collection a lot more than I did. If, like me, you’re not a fan of comic-book superheroes then, like me, you might be a bit underwhelmed. But this was a hugely influential comic strip and it does have historical importance. It’s just not quite my cup of tea.

Wika by Thomas Day and Olivier Ledroit

Wika is a graphic novel written by Frenchman Thomas Day and illustrated by French comics artist Olivier Ledroit. The English translation was published in 2021.

Wika is a fairy princess. Her father is murdered by Prince Oberon. Wika is lucky to escape. In order to facilitate her escape her wings are cut off. She is caught up in a vast power struggle. Oberon, now King Oberon, aims for absolute power. His destiny was to unite the entire realm but that obsession has been perverted, mainly as a result of his illicit passion for his sister Titania.

Wika finds herself leader of a vast rebellion. Wika also finds time for love. This is to some extent at least a coming-of-age story.

Day’s plot is insanely complex. He has fallen for the temptation to throw too much stuff into the mix. The basic idea of a power struggle in the realm of Faerie, a struggle complicated by jealousy, lust, betrayal and revenge, is very good. Adding elements of Norse mythology was an interesting idea. He has however added bits and pieces from so many mythologies and drawn from so many sources that it all gets very unwieldy.

There are dozens of characters most of whom do very little apart from distracting us from the main theme.

It is, surprisingly, relatively free from ideological propagandising and preaching. It doesn’t even go overboard with the Girlpower! thing. Naturally the chief villain is male and the forces of good are led by a woman but there’s no way it could possibly have been otherwise in the 2020s. It does it least have positive male characters and negative female characters.

The most startling thing is that Wika is female and she enjoys being female. And her sexual and emotional interests are directed at males. She even has a totally satisfying relationship with a male.

The main problem is that there’s too much plot, too many characters, too many battles. There’s no time to develop anything in real depth. The motives of most of the individuals and factions involved remain obscure.

There is at least an attempt to explain Oberon’s motivations as being more than just a natural inclination to evilness. And there’s some attempt to explain’s Wika’s motivations.

There’s plenty of magic but it’s fairy magic, not Secret Women’s Magic.

There’s some eroticism but it’s very very restrained. Which is I think something of a flaw. It makes the character motivations less complex and less interesting.

The strength of the book lies in Olivier Ledroit’s visual style. This in insanely baroque and extravagant. The influence of art nouveau and late 19th century Symbolist art is obvious. The steampunk elements emphasise the late 19th century feel. That’s certainly more interesting than just aiming for a traditional fairy tale aesthetic.

I don’t claim to have a vast interest in or knowledge of comic book art. My interests in comics are very specialised. I do think there’s a bit of an Esteban Maroto vibe here.

Ledroit goes for jewel-like detail and complexity. Every single panel is a visual tour-de-force. It’s overwhelming and hallucinogenic but it works for me. And the style is nothing if not distinctive.

Even if it is a trifle over-complicated it’s an entertaining and ambitious story and it does achieve an epic feel.

If you’re a fan of European comics (which to my mind are mostly much more interesting than American comics) then Wika is well worth worth seeking out.

Eric Stanton's The Return of Gwendoline

The Return of Gwendoline and Other Bizarre Art published by Vintage Fetish Classics and edited by Richard Pérez Seves includes two comic strip stories by Eric Stanton, The Return of Gwendoline (dating from 1965) and Deborah (dating from 1957), plus some of Stanton’s other drawings.

Eric Stanton (1926-1999) was an American fetish artist. His early work was heavily influenced by John Willie. His later work became seriously weird and disturbing, much much too much so for my tastes. But The Return of Gwendoline is still in the John Willie mould and in fact it’s a tale featuring WiIlie’s most famous creation, Sweet Gwendoline.

What made John Willie’s The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline so great is that it’s so good-natured. Poor Gwendoline gets herself into all kinds of scrapes (which invariably involve her being tied up) but nothing really bad ever happens to her. The chief villain Sir Dystic d’Arcy is more of a bungler than anything else, a figure out of melodrama or even farce, than a truly menacing figure. The emphasis is on cheerfully naughty fun.

Stanton captures at least some of that innocent feel in The Return of Gwendoline but it doesn’t quite have the same charm. And Stanton lacks Willie’s ability to come up with goofy outrageous storylines. There isn’t really much of a story here at all, whereas with Willie there was always an actual story.

There’s nothing wrong with Stanton’s drawings but again they don’t quite have the charm of Willie’s work. They’re more overtly erotic, but they lack just a little of the necessary spark.

Deborah on the other hand has an actual plot of sorts, about a young woman who is kidnapped because she is in possession of a key in the form of a pendant. It’s more engaging than The Return of Gwendoline. In fact it’s quite entertaining. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

This is fairly innocuous stuff. Unless you’re really sensitive to this kind of material you’re more likely to be amused than offended. It is supposed to be fun, and it is.

While I don’t think Stanton is as good an artist as John Willie I don’t want to sound like I’m judging him harshly. On the whole I like his artwork here.

This publisher has issued a lot of this sort of fairly mild S&M-tinged erotica (including other work by Eric Stanton) in very nicely presented editions.

Richard Pérez Seves has also written an excellent an exhaustively detailed biography of John Willie which I recommend very highly.

The work of people such as John Willie and Eric Stanton has had a considerable influence on pop culture in fields such as comics and especially underground comics. They’ve also has a certain influence on movies, notably Just Jaeckin’s delightful kinky adventure romp Gwendoline. And they’ve had a definite influence within the world of fashion.

The Return of Gwendoline is reasonably good fun. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed John Willie’s The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline which I recommend very highly even if you don’t share his erotic interests.

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.

Masamune Shirow's Black Magic

Black Magic is a very early manga by Masamune Shirow. It dates from 1983 so he was in his early twenties at the time. He hadn’t yet developed his mature style but he was already playing around with lots of cool ideas.

This is cyberpunk but very early cyberpunk. The genre was only starting to emerge at this time. Black Magic predates William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, the novel that really established a firm framework for the genre. The Japanese could be described as early adopters of cyberpunk.

There are seven sections to the book, some described as chapters and some as prologues. This is a world of AIs, bioroids and combat robots. The dividing line between computers, humans, bioroids and robots can be very blurred.

The setting is Venus, the only planet in the solar system in which intelligent life is to be found. The Venusians have built an artificial sun on Earth’s Moon. There is life on Earth but it hasn’t amounted to much. The Venusians have started to establish colonies on some of the other planets.

While it lacks the depth and complexity of his later mangas such as Ghost in the Shell this is very much a Masamune Shirow manga. His trademark interests and obsessions are all here. And he gives us lots of fast-moving violent mayhem.

The first prologue, Black Magic, introduces us to a cute girl who has magical powers. Very heavy-duty magical powers. There’s a super-computer than has created other super-computer. Some of these computers are mere machines, some appear to have consciousness. They’re all named after figures in Greek mythology. The cute magical girl, Duna Typhon, was created by one of these artificial intelligences. To what extent is she human? Are her powers magical or super high tech? These entities are not exactly gods. They are not worshipped as gods. But they are god-like and they do behave like goods.

The first chapter Bowman deals with interplanetary colonisation by the Venusians. The story takes place on one their colonies. A young female investigator named Pandora takes control of a new nuclear submarine. But why would anyone have constructed a ballistic missile submarine on a colony planet?

There’s a second prologue and then we move on to the second chapter, Booby Trap. The MA-66 is an advanced combat robot. Four of them are out of control. They will need to be destroyed. The MA-77 is even more formidable. It has advanced decision-making capabilities. An MA-77 has gone rogue as well. There’s lots of high-octane action in this chapter.

City Light moves the action to Saturn’s moon Titan, or at least to a spaceship on its way there and finding itself in trouble. There are people aboard the spaceship who should not be there. Sabotage may be afoot.

The Epilogue is perhaps unexpected although there have been plenty of clues pointing in this direction.

I always love Masamune Shirow’s footnotes. We don’t get many of those where but we do get some cool endnotes explaining the tech stuff. I love the guy’s playful tongue-in-cheek approach to these. You can tell he has fun doing these mangas.

Masamune Shirow was later slightly embarrassed by the old-fashioned graphic style of this early work. It is a bit old-fashioned but it’s lively.

If there’s a fault here it might be that the author is throwing a few too many ideas into the mix. It’s never quite clear where the magic fits in. He would later move to a more pure cyberpunk style with Appleseed and with Ghost in the Shell he produced one of the towering cyberpunk classics. And he was still in his twenties.

Black Magic’s flaws are actually its strengths. It’s wild and offbeat and surprising. And it’s great fun. Highly recommended.

The Booby Trap chapter was the basis for the 1987 anime OVA Black Magic M-66.

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.

Ghost In The Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor

Ghost In The Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor was the third of Masamune Shirow’s Ghost In The Shell mangas to be published (in 2003) but should be read before Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface (published in 2001).

Human-Error Processor is not so much a graphic novel as a group of short stories, but with some connecting tissue.

Fat Cat dates from 1991. Dead people are being used as cyber-zombies, manipulated by remote control. A young woman fears this fate may have befallen her father although she cannot (or will not) believe he is really dead.

Drive Slave dates from 1992. Azuma and Togusa have to keep a witness alive. The witness’s brain may have been infiltrated by micro-machines. This could be linked to a push to allow prefectural governments access to the very top secret data stored in Pandora. Not everyone is happy with this plan which has the potential to be a major security risk.

The Major has another priority - rescuing the kidnapped girlfriend of a top scientist.

Mines of Mind starts with a series of brutal murders. Several of the victims have tattoos, which seem to be military tattoos. There’s some link to a military prison, and to arms dealing.

Section 9 will have to work with military intelligence on this case. One thing that crops up again and again in the Ghost in the Shell universe is that when you have multiple intelligence agencies they are more likely to work against each other than with each other. There is no trust or goodwill between these agencies.

There’s an added factor - the military has assigned a guy named Kim to the case. Kim and Batou know each other and they do not like each other one little bit.

Lost Past is a hunt for a sniper. It would help if Section 9 knew the identity of the target, but they don’t.

These stories were written in between the publication of the two major Ghost in the Shell mangas and they are much less ambitious. These are routine Section 9 cases, although of course nothing that Section 9 does can really be described as routine.

Public Security Section 9 is a mythical counter-intelligence counter-terrorism unit. It tends to be a bit of a law unto itself. Mr Aramaki, who runs Section 9, doesn’t really take orders from anyone other than the prime minister.

In the original manga the focus was very much on Major Motoko Kusanagi, the female cyborg in charge of Section 9’s field operations. The Major makes appearances in Human-Error Processor but she’s a bit more in the background. Perhaps the intention was to flesh out the other members of the team a bit more, to show that guys like Togusa and Azuma are quite capable of handling routine assignments without need the Major to hold their hands.

There’s also a bit more of a police procedural feel, with an interesting mix of cyberpunk tech and old-fashioned police work (footprint evidence, interviewing witnesses).

They’re good solid stories and they have plenty of the paranoia that is so much a feature of the Ghost in the Shell universe.

I always love Masamune Shirow’s footnotes - they’re full of esoteric technical stuff but they’re also chatty and whimsical.

Don’t expect Ghost In The Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor to be quite on the level of the first manga. It’s just a lot less ambitious and low-key, but this is still top-grade cyberpunk. Highly recommended.

Kodansha have published this manga in an English translation (in the original right-to-left format).

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.

Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell is a 1989-90 cyberpunk manga (Japanese comic-book) by Masamune Shirow. This is very much a manga for grown-ups.

Cyberpunk emerged as a science fiction sub-genre in the 80s, with the movie Blade Runner in 1982 establishing the aesthetic and William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer and the Bruce Sterling-edited anthology Mirrorshades establishing the thematic framework. Cyberpunk was science fiction focused on the effects of computer technology on human society on Earth rather than on spaceships, photon cannons and aliens.

By the end of the 80s the Japanese were embracing this new sub-genre. In Japan cyberpunk made its appearance in manga and anime rather than in novels and live-action films. This made sense. The Japanese did not have the western prejudice against comic-book and animated movies aimed at adult. And manga and anime were the ideal formats for cyberpunk. There were not particularly restricted by technological or budgetary concerns. The only limitation was the creator’s imagination and the creators of manga and anime had plenty of that.

The anima OVA Cyber City Oedo 808 in 1991 was fully-fledged cyberpunk. The Ghost in the Shell manga was most definitely fully-fledged cyberpunk and would spawn further mangas, several anime feature films (including Mamoru Oshii’s superb 1995 Ghost in the Shell) and an excellent anime TV series.

Major Motoko Kusanagi works for Public Security, Section 9. She leads a top-secret elite squad. Their main brief is counter-terrorist work but in this future world terrorism has become very high-tech and tends to involve hackers, cyborgs, robots and AIs.

The Major herself is a cyborg. She has a human brain and spinal column but everything else is prosthetic. She looks like a normal woman. In this cyberpunk world humans, cyborgs and robots all look human.

Are cyborgs still human? Do robots have rights? Can an AI be alive? These are themes that run right through this manga. These questions are of some personal concern to the Major. Is she a woman or a machine? She feels that she is a woman. She has a woman’s emotions and a woman’s sexual urges. Her body is entirely prosthetic (although it’s fully functional sexually). What matters is the ghost. The body (human or prosthetic) is the shell. The ghost is what makes us alive and makes human.

One of my favourite things about this manga is that Masamune Shirow has provided copious footnotes. Some give fascinating background technical details of this future world. Some provide philosophical musings (this is a manga with a heavy philosophical content). The most interesting offer insight what how the author sees the ghost. The ghost is not quite the soul, at least not in the way we conceive of the soul in countries with a tradition of Christianity. But it’s somewhat akin to a soul. Major Kusanagi is human because she has a ghost. But can an AI have a ghost?

That’s a question that becomes important when she encounters the Puppeteer. It’s not clear what the Puppeteer is but it seems to be a rogue AI. It may have a ghost. This becomes important for Section 9 when it claims political asylum.

The Puppeteer is not confined to a particular body (or shell). But then nor is the Major. She has several spare bodies. Her closest friend and professional colleague Batou has spare bodies as well.

AIs of course are confined to a particular location or body. The Tachikomas, the combat robots used in large numbers by Section 9, are a single AI. Which does not have a ghost. Or at least that’s been the assumption.

Shirow has little or no interest in politics as such but he is interested in power relationships, and politics in this future world is all about power. Mostly however he is interested in philosophical questions (this is a very cerebral manga) which can have a spiritual dimension. In particular he’s fascinated by the philosophical dilemmas that will inevitably arise if and when AIs become self-aware.

The cases Section 9 deals with (the structure of the manga is episodic) mostly hinge on the need to resolve such dilemmas.

It might be cerebral but there’s plenty of action and excitement as well. The Japanese have no problems with the idea of combining big ideas with enjoyable mayhem.

The Major is also interesting because unlike most kickass action heroines she is in a command position. If she makes an incorrect decision people die. Being an action heroine is not a game for her.

Ghost in the Shell really is great stuff - intelligent, provocative, mind-bending, sexy and fun. Very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell movie elsewhere, as well as the first season of the Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex TV series.