The Phantom in the Mines of Death

The Phantom #1580
September 2010
Frew Publications
“The Mines of Death”
Story: Sverre Arnes
Art: Heiner Bade

In this reprint of a Scandinavian story from 1990, The Phantom sells himself into slavery in order to break a human trafficking ring. The story is set up well with a Bengali villager who has suffered the loss of property and livelihood through a hurricane that destroys his village. In order to continue to support his family, Kenneth (a rather odd name for a Bengali villager) must take a job in a ‘sulphur mine.’ Upon being asked to ‘make his mark’ on the work contract Kenneth replies, ‘I can read and write…’ thus rebuking the racist assumption of his white overlord. He soon finds that he has been tricked into slavery in a gold mine, where his wages are held by the bosses and he is forced to work twelve hours a day and receive only the smallest amount of food. All communications with the workers’ loved ones have been cut off. Old, sick and weak miners are dropping like flies and the bosses only work them harder and without mercy.

Meanwhile The Phantom makes a visit to Kenneth Landola’s home village of Lando to survey the damage wreaked by the hurricane. Kenneth’s wife Roza asks The Phantom to investigate her husband’s situation as she has not heard from him since he took the job in the mine. (Is there a slight Scandinavian dig at the Americans as the Phantom muses, ‘I’ve heard rumours about the Americans who run this mining company before!’) The Phantom visits his old friend Luaga, President of Bengali, and they plan to make an official inspection of the mine. The mine bosses put on a good show but The Phantom, as Kit Walker, is suspicious. He returns to the mine alone, disguised as ‘John Smith’ looking for work. As The Phantom and with a little bit of help from his trusty wolf Devil, he busts open the slavery ring. President Luaga appropriates the mineral wealth of the mine and distributes the proceeds equally among the workers (is Bengali then a socialist state?). Kenneth is able to return to his family, purchase a new fishing boat and start afresh, in the final two panels enthralling his wife and children with stories of The Ghost Who Walks, who moves even ‘faster than lightning itself’ to establish justice.

The translation seems clunky at times. Surely, as an expression of mischievous laughter, “Hee Hee Hee!’ would be preferable to ‘Hi Hi Hi!’ There are problems with punctuation, including missing full stops and unwanted question marks. Here and there the lettering fits oddly into the speech balloons. It seems the Scandinavian speech balloons have been left and the English translation made to fit into the same spaces, resulting in some speech balloons having excess space and others being overly crowded. The interior art by Heiner Bade is well executed. Bade’s Phantom is particularly menacing. Strangely, though, the skull from the triangle on The Phantom’s belt is missing in most panels. The cover art by Antonio Lemos is not up to the same high standard. His front and back painted covers look amateurish and poorly rendered. Not a bad issue overall – three stars from me.

Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book

This is a meticulously researched and fascinating account of the origins of comics. It is part journalism, part social history, part biography, and part mystery. The connection between the comics, the pulps, pornography and organised crime is disturbing but like a road accident as much as it repels you, you can't look away. The human interest element lies in the tragic injustice perpetrated on Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster, the kids who created Superman and the disintegration of Seigel into old age, nursing anger and bitter resentment at the suits in the industry who ripped him off so badly. There's a screenplay hidden in here, if this could be given the kind of noir treatment found in the excellent biopic of TV Superman George Reeves, "Hollywoodland." There is some brief interesting material here on Marvel creators like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby but it's primary focus is on DC/National Comics. Once having read this it is hard to read a Golden or Silver Age comic as an innocent piece of naive entertainment. Once known, the human cost behind all that spilt ink is hard to shake off.

The Preacher Special Edition

I don't really get the point of so-called "Mature Age" comics like this. Fair enough, a parent needs to be warned against giving something with this kind of filthy content to little Johnny to read. 80% of comic readers are adults anyway and we don't need to read the F word in every panel to enjoy a comic's dialogue with an adult level of sophistication. Look, it's not that I'm prudish. I can cope with strong language on the screen and in literature without getting offended. What does offend me is when Garth Ennis thinks I will be impressed if he throws in a bunch of really disgusting dialogue and that this will make me think, "Ooh a comic for my age group. How impressive." Well, no, I don't think that and no, I'm not impressed. Look I love the folks at the DC Nation; they give me a lot of reading pleasure but really, Mr. Didio, what is this "Special Edition" branding but a big cash-in on the Watchmen movie? "After Watchmen...What's Next?" Well it certainly isn't The Preacher that's for sure. Alan Moore's Watchmen is a genuine masterpiece of its type. The Preacher is not. What's the connect here? I can only assume anticipated sales. I picked this up because it was cheap ($1.95 AU with a $1.00 US cover price). DC hopes people will read this and the others in the series and then go off and buy the more expensive graphic novels in trade paperback. Well, here's one customer who won't be doing that.

So what's the story all about? The Rev. Jesse Custer is the pastor of a small Texas congregation who one day begins to act very out of character, using dirty words and such . Apparently he has been possessed by some cross-bred Angel/Demon creature called Genesis who has escaped from heaven (heaven is somewhere you want to escape?) after pulling an angel's head off. Now it's coming to earth and wants to wreak a bit of havoc down here too. So the angels call up from the dead some kind of vigilante called "the Saint of Killers" (a bit unimaginative Garth) to sort the whole thing out. I wish these guys who want to follow biblical themes (commendable) would read a bit of actual theology. It's so much more interesting than the pea soup of ideas based around the old threadbare heaven and hell/angels and demons dichotomy offered up here. This is a critically acclaimed series (first published in 1995 in DC's Vertigo inmprint), so maybe it got better as it went along, but this first issue doesn't impress I'm afraid. As for Steve Dillon's art it looks like something from the portfolio of an ambituous young artist that DC would send back with a kindly word to "keep developing your style son..." Again maybe it improved in subsequent issues but I don't think I'll be bothering to find out. Two stars from me.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Sam Mendes Gives Brief Update On 'Preacher' (screenrant.com)

Hulk 282 (April 1983) "Again, Arsenal!"

The story opens with The Leader sitting at his computer aboard Omnivac, his orbiting space station plotting ways to conquer the world now that he believes the newly intelligent Hulk, finally under the control of Bruce Banner, is no longer a threat. Back at the Empire Hotel, Tony Stark is informed by the management that Bruce Banner and his friends can no longer stay at the hotel after it was trashed in last issue's battle with the Leader. They relocate to Avengers' Mansion to avoid more civil destruction. There, Bruce Banner helps Iron Man search for Ommivac, the Leader's orbiting space station using Stark's Omnifunctional Detection Device. Banner's Krylorian lover Bereet requests permission to film scenes for a documentary she is making on the Hulk. Iron Man refuses because there is no security clearance for cameras in Avengers Mansion. Bereet storms out in a huff and meets Jennifer Walters aka the She-Hulk in the hallway. Jen tries to be friendly but Bereet gives her the brush off. Meanwhile in the Bahamas, Betty Ross is sunbaking on the beach in a bikini trying to forget Bruce Banner. Her father General Thunderbolt Ross, on the beach in full military uniform, tells her that Banner remains a monster and should be forgotten once and for all. He embraces his daughter and they both shed a tear. Meanwhile back at Avengers Mansion Bruce and his cousin the She-Hulk are in deep conversation. Bruce aske Jen for forgiveness for turning her into a monster, but she tells him that she does not consider herself a monster and likes being the She-Hulk, as she is no longer the victim she once was. Her origin is retold. A former lawyer, Jennifer Walters was gunned down and lay close to death until a gamma-radiated blood transfusion from Bruce saved her but also transformed her into the savage She-Hulk. She considers herself now "an aggressive, positive force for good"; she likes being green and fighting supervillains and only has gratitude for what Bruce did. She tells Bruce that she does not consider herself or Bruce to be monsters and reassures him of her support. Suddenly, Jarvis is heard crying out in pain. Bruce, now with the power to transform into the Hulk at will, morphs into the Hulk and heads off to see what is happening,just as Stark's Omnifunctional Detection Device locates Omnivac. Arsenal the Living Weapon has emerged from the deepest sublevels of Avengers Mansion (Arsenal was created by Howard Stark, Tony Stark's father, in the closing days of WWII, and was controlled by a computer code-named "Mistress" with the voice of Maria Stark, Howard Stark's wife. It made its first appearance in Avengers Annual #4). The She-Hulk is attacked by the Living Arsenal and she wonders whether Bruce still has the rage that the Hulk had formerly now that he has control over his transformation. That question is answered in the affirmative as Banner gets angry and fights the living Arsenal with full Hulk power, until he destroys him. Banner discovers that the fight has been set up by the She-Hulk and her fellow Avengers, who suddenly appear, to prove to him that if he fights with Hulk's heart instead of Banner's head he can still be unstoppable. Iron Man informs the Hulk that the Leader has been located and the Hulk calls the Avengers to join him and go after the mad genius. "Next Month: Follow the Leader!"

The best thing about this comic is the art. Sal Buscema and Joe Sinnott are two of Marvel's greats. After reading a comic I like to just flip through the pages revisiting some of the interestig panels. Usually there are one or two worth considering again. This issue has whole pages full of great panels. The Leader never looked quite so egg-headed and malevolent as he does here. Tony Stark's eyes behind Iron Man's helmet speak volumes and the She-Hulk just leaps off the page. Bill Mantlo writes some pretty good dialogue too. Here's a sample of Sal Buscema's Hulk art, this one from three issues later - Hulk #285. Of course, it looks better in colour but this will give you an idea of his dynamism! "Get out of my way, insect!"


My rating 3 and and half stars. You can see the page I built at the Marvel database here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Is Megan Fox A She-Hulk? (screenrant.com)

Skull the Slayer #7

From the Title Banner: "JIM SCULLY - five-year Prisoner of War in 'Nam. DR. RAYMOND COREY - frustrated physicist. ANN REYNOLDS - battling to make it on her own in a world that refuses to listen to her. JEFF TURNER - a runaway from the regimentation of life. Four losers lost in the Bermuda Triangle - four losers finding a new beginning in the untouched world of the prehistoric past." The Slings and Arrows Comic Guide refers to this series disparagingly as "Bonkers example of Marvel at its hippy best" and as "Ideological Quarrels in the Land that Time Forgot." The letters page looks hopefully forward to Skull the Slayer #200. This was wishful thinking at best because the series would be cancelled with the next number (#8) and the story arc finished off in Marvel Two-in-One #35 and #36. Here's the synopsis I provided for the Marvel Comics Database:

Jim Scully and his crew arrive at the Inca City of Gold led by the guide Villac Umu. Upon arrival Umu turns on them and they are captured by Viracocha the Supreme Inca. Meanwhile back in Florida, Jeff Turner's father, Senator Stoneface Turner is extorting Scully's ex-Nam nemesis Freddy Lancer to fly into the Bermuda Triangle and bring his son back. Lancer has secured a fleet of used jet fighters from an African war and a crew of mercenaries including a mean number called Newkirk. Lancer reveals that he is not only motivated by the money Senator Turner is paying him but also has a score to settle with Scully from their days in Viet-Nam. Back in the City of Gold, Scully and his friends are led to a towering ziggurat which looks suspicuously like a good place for human sacrifice. As the sun rises a shadow is cast from the ziggurat that triggers the opening of pits that swallow up Ray, Anne and Jeff into one pit and Scully into another. The imperilled three must face a pair of chained pteranodons with just enough reach to tear their heads off. Meanwhile Scully must go up against a four ton stegosaurus. Ann Reynolds decides she will dispatch the pteranodons with a grenade retreived from the corpse of a previous victim. The belt that Scully retrieved from a dead alien a few days earlier begins to glow brightly and increases his strength giving him an advantage over the raging stegosaurus. Seeing an opportunity to stage a coup, the High Priest Villac Umu pushes Viracocha the Supreme Inca into the pit with Scully and the stegosaurus. Oddly Viracocha begins to speak in colloquial American English which raises Scully's suspicions. Scully finishes off the stegosaurus which crashes through the wall into the next pit just as Ann detonates the grenade that kills the pteranodons. Viracocha then reveals that he is in fact Captain Victor Cochran, USN, "stranded thirty-one years ago and now resident Sun-God!" Next: The Sky Riders!

I liked Bill Mantlo's work on Rom and The Incredible Hulk, and this series seems to display more of his creativity. This is my first read of Skull and I give this issue 3 stars.

Latest eBay purchase

Hulk 112 January 1969 "The Brute Battles On", with HULK fighting for his life on an alien planet (shades of Planet Hulk) with Stan Lee script and Herb Trimpe art. The cover is relatively flat, good gloss, indents, a couple of creases and some wear on the right hand edge. The staples are tight and the inside pages are all fine. The overall grade a solid Very Good- (VG-) I'll write up a review later.

Iron Man

Forget the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises, the one to watch for is Marvel's next release - Iron Man. The use of Black Sabbath's classic "Iron Man" metal riff in the trailer, when the prototype grey suit makes its first appearance, is just perfect but hang in there for the final version of the suit. All my misgiving about the casting of Robert Downy Jr. as Tony Stark are laid to rest - he's perfect in the role. The relocation from Vietnam to Afghanistan is clever and gives the project a contemporary resonance where it would otherwise be a period piece. This movie will make you hate yourself for throwing away all of those old Iron Man comics. Check out the trailer here

And The Winner Is...

Well, the results are in and the winner of The Great Batman Cover Artist Competition and worthy reciepent of Action Comics Annual #10 is...
anniemareerose with the following scintillating entry that hovers on the brink of decision several times and then finally arrives at Detective Comics #355 (Sept 1966) by Carmine Infantino and Mike Giella. Those stingy tightwads at Marvel send out No Prizes but we send the real thing and it's winging it's way to our winner as I speak. Here is Annie's winning entry. To see the cover images she discusses click here.

"I must agree with Ross, both the Wagner covers do great representations of batman, the monster men (06) cover, batman atop the building/roof etc, wing like cape cropped so the ends are just cut out, perfect, particularly the way it folds over...

The 2nd wagner in the post, the colors are brilliant, they meld perfectly, the gold in the buildings and the belt, just a few colors, but striking nonetheless, excellent use of color. its tough to choose between this and the other standout red and black cover done by Kubert, however his portrayal is too sinister for my liking, I prefer him composed, with the air of being able to snap into those 'sinister' moments but this wagner has him staunch, so stoic - great, great framing...

however, a strange one, initially dismissed, however, over the last few days, it has lingered in my mind, this time i differ with ross, lets look at the 1966 cover (#355 [pictured left] Now the graphics aren't particularly detailed, as in, demanding attention, they are a bit 'thin' even, yet, theres something special about the manner in which batman dangles there, hes almost 'faking', as if at the crucial moment he will surprise us all and give the hooded hangman all his worth, there's life in his eyes, i like it. I think thats my no.1 tough with the wagner 2 and the 07 cover, but something, just wins me over.

annie's top 4.

#1 (355)
#2 (627)
#3 (665)
#4 (825)"

So there it is , the much maligned (by the readers of this blog anyway) Silver Age work of Infantino and Giella is deemed the best depiction of the Caped Crusader on display here. Old school wins the day.

Calvinist Romance

The Great Batman Cover Artist Competition

A lot of talented and some not-so-talented artists have taken it upon themselves to draw my Bat-visage. For your chance to win a great prize from the Batcave's comics vault (Action Comics Annual #10 in NM condition see image at the end of this post) have your say on what you think is the best of the following eight covers. I'm not going to just give the prize away however. I will award the prize to the person whose comment shows the most highly refined art appreciation (Ross will love that part) and knowledge of my personal history as the Caped Crusader.



Batman #226 (Nov 1970) by Neal Adams and Dick Giordano



Batman #665 (July 2006) by Andy Kubert



Batman and the Monster Men # 1 (August 2006) by Matt Wagner



Batman #627 (July 2004) by Matt Wagner



Detective Comics #355 (Sept 1966) by Carmine Infantino and Mike Giella



Detective Comics (Oct 1967) by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson



Detective Comics #625 (Jan 1991) by Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo



Detective Comics #825 (Jan 2007) by Simone Bianchi

And to motivate you here is the cover of your great prize which I will post to the winner bagged and boarded and postage free- Action Comics Annual #10 (March 2007) a 48 page Giant!featuring a whole bunch of stories about that other guy over in Metropolis - you know the one with the blue suit. The stories are: The Many Deaths of Superman; Who is Clark Kent's Big Brother?; Mystery Under the Blue Sun; The Criminals of Krypton; The Deadliest Forms of Kryptonite; Secrets of the Fortress of Solitude; Superman's Top 10 Most Wanted and the writers and artists include Geoff Johns, Richard Donner, Art Adams, Eric Wright, Joe Kubert, Rags Morales, Mark Farmer, Gary Frank, Jonathan Sibel, Phil Jimenez, Andy Lanning, and Tony Daniel. Get commenting folks - this is the big one!

The Riddler Strikes

Entering my office door recently I found a Birthday card with my Bat-likeness on it, and the following cryptic missive:

No Batman it's not your birthday It's time to explain your theology.

Is Robin the son? Is Alfred the father?

Are you moving in the Spirit, Batman? What motivates you to save the city?

Is your cosmos confined to Gotham City? Are you a Southern Baptist in disguise?

Here is an easy one Batman:

WHO AMI?

I am three yet I am one
For theologians I'm a sum
One makes three and three makes one
(To Freud and Jung I am none)
Most explanations are unsatisfactory
Nicene defines me as homoousion to patri
Unless you answer simple and plain I'll tell the world that you are... Bruce Wayne!

The Riddler

?

Holy conundrums Boy Wonder! Let's see what comes out if we run it through the Bat Computer. The first four lines refer to the Trinity, but from then on it seems to be the Son who is in view ("homoousion to patri" meaning "the same as (in the sense of being of one essence with) the Father. As for the identity of the Riddler (aka Edward [E.] Nigma) I thought at first it was one of my Introduction to Theology students but the reference to Freud and Jung makes me wonder if it might be one of my Apologetics students instead. Hmmm, the plot thickens.

The Superhero Test

I took the Superhero test and much to my surprise I am not after all Batman! This is a major identity crisis for me. I am experiencing profound cognitive dissonance because my blog is called "The Batcave" and my display image is the Dark Knight, and yet I have tested as that irradiated arachnid, that pesky Peter Parker. I am going to need some extended time in the Batcave to sort this out. No - wait...I'm not Batman so where do I go to sort things out? My bedroom at Aunt May's house? Oh pu-lease! That doesn't sound one tenth as cool as "the Batcave." Maybe I can be a new superhero - Spiderbat! Mmmm. maybe not..

You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 80% Superman 80% Supergirl 55% Green Lantern 45% Iron Man 40% Robin 35% Hulk 35% Wonder Woman 30% Catwoman 30% Batman 30% The Flash 20%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

The Theology of the Superheroes I: The Incredible Hulk

Before Ang Lee made gay cowboy movies he made such chop-socky delights as Wo Hu Cang Long (that's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon to most of you), and the much misunderstood and maligned Hulk. A lot of reviewers canned this movie as being either too long, not true enough to the original Marvel character, or too filled with pop psychology for its own good. Empire even had an article in a recent issue entitled "Hulk: What Went Wrong?" Well, I loved the movie, primarily because it captured for me most of the key themes of the Silver Age Hulk comics I enjoyed as a kid and still enjoy reading. (Like Hulk #120 shown further down in this entry which I recently bought on eBay). There was the setting in the American South-West, a gruff General Thunderbolt Ross, overly protective but at the same time distant from his beautiful daughter Betty, who alone could pacify the Hulk, attempts to contain the Hulk (from which of course he spectacularly escapes), and lots of tossing around of tanks and generally destructive mayhem. Even the updates were true to the spirit, if not the period, of the 60s comic. There were still gamma rays involved but the experiments were updated from nuclear testing to nanomed technology (and they still managed a mushroom cloud in a flashback sequence).

A lot of people complained about the CGI Hulk. But, hey how exactly do you depict ol' green skin accurately? A guy in a rubber suit? It certainly looked better to me than Lou Ferrigno (at left) jumping around in purple shorts in the TV series. Then there was all the pop psychology and the cosmic sequence at the end when Bruce's father David morphed into this weird creature in a final slugout with his son Bruce/Hulk. If you read a Silver Age Marvel comic however you find both these elements are quite common - after all it was Marvel who reinvented comics by focusing on the inner demons of their characters who, like us, were real people with real problems. As for far-fetched cosmic battle sequences, in which impossible to believe pseudo-science thinly explained the most way out happenings, these were in every issue of The Incredible Hulk. Listen naysayers, Ang Lee got it right! By the way, the Hulk himself agrees with me, according to his piece in The Onion, "Why No One Want Make Hulk2?"

Stan Lee says that when he and Jack Kirby invented the Hulk in 1962 he had two literary characters in mind - the monster from Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, and Robert Louis Stevenson's story, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He is created by science (Frankenstein) but he can't control his transformation from mild mannered research scientist Bruce Banner into he who "smash puny humans" (Mr. Hyde). Hulk also serves as an interesting metaphor for the sinful nature. There is something inside of us which we can't control, something that has infected our nature, not something we were created with but the result of something having gone wrong in our creator's design. As hard as Bruce Banner tries to control his hideous transformation it lies beyond his ability to eliminate. "Don't make me angry," he warns, "you won't like me when I'm angry!" For a while there was an articulate Hulk who retained all of the intellectual powers of Bruce Banner. Fans argued back and forth over whether they preferred this Hulk or the one who said things like "Hulk smash!" and "Why puny humans hate Hulk?" or simply "Aaaarrrrggghhh!" The following letter is a good example of how intellectualized comic books became in the 1960's. It comes from a 357-member strong "Hulk Cult" at the University of Syracuse, New York, and was published on the letters page of Tales to Astonish #74 (Dec. 1965). "You have just ended the most prolific era in American literature by giving the Hulk a human brain...By inculcating a rational mind into Hulk's primordial psyche, you caused the downfall of Hulk's entire reason d etre. Your recent issue can be termed a resounding victory of Schopenhauer's will to live over the forces of human nature...What you have done is merely desecrate one of the most forceful genres in modern art - the mindless Hulk. Shame, shame, that's as bad as calling Spinoza a pragmatist...We are even considering switching our loyalties to John Paul Sartre..."

In terms of the metaphor I'm proposing both dumb Hulk and articulate Hulk are appropriate incarnations. Our sinful impulses can be blind, irrational, instinctive and overtly violent. On the other hand they can be wily, crafty, clever, and sophisticated. There is only one way to reach Hulk and to tame his wild and destructive impulses. The love of Betty Ross is all that can reach him. What US government tanks cannot do; what no supervillain has been able to defeat; what no superhero who has tried to take the Hulk down has been able to achieve (most often attempted by the Fantastic Four's Thing), is achieved by the influence of love. So it is with us - the love of God alone can heal our "Hulkiness," can tame the savage breast and restore us to the state our creator intended for us. Only the grace of God can conquer the beast within us all.

Here is a close up of the Eric Bana CGI Hulk, which is actually a composite of the faces of Bana, Ang Lee, and Jennifer Connelly who played Betty Ross in the film. One of the best Hulk sites is The Hulk Library. By the way the Hulk has his own blog. Check it out!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Disney Buys Marvel: Designing 3D Brands (blogs.harvardbusiness.org)

"Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November"

I saw V For Vendetta last night with the Boy Wonder and Wisdom88. It's a corker. Best film I've seen this year no contest. How can the Warchowski brothers write two such great screenplays as The Matrix and this and churn out two absolute duds in between? Maybe it was the Aussie director on V that made the difference. It's Orwell, it's Brave New World, it's Bush's America, it's Thatcher's (and Blair's) England, it's the English Revolution, it's Anarchy in the UK, it's Zorro, it's the Phantom of the Opera and it's all rolled into one two and a half hour cinematic bundle. Why the original author of the graphic novel doesn't like it, I'll never know (it's way better than the last attempt to film one of his creations - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). OK, so it's propaganda for the Left but hey, haven't we been swamped with enough from the other side? Do yourself a favour and go see it.