This article by Stephen Jewell first appeared in ComicScene Magazine. When you press the Big Red Donate Button you get access to all ComicScene Magazines in digital. Please donate £10 here
Treasury of Britain line editor Keith Richardson wasn’t familiar with Black Max before Rebellion purchased IPC’s 1970s catalogue in 2016. Written by Ken Mennell and Frank Pepper and drawn by Eric Bradbury and Alfonso Font, malevolent World War One German fighter pilot Baron Maximilien von Klorr – who was accompanied on his missions by a pair of formidable giant-sized ‘Kingbats’ – first appeared in the short-lived Thunder in 1971 before transferring to Lion after the two weeklies merged just a few months later. Now not only has his classic tales recently been collected in a new softcover editions, Black Max is also enjoying a fresh lease of undead life in all new adventures by Kek-W and Simon Coleby, which have been serialised in the two Scream & Misty Specials to date
“When we took stock of the archive, I gravitated towards Black Max straight away,” says Richardson. “The art was amazing and the concept was bonkers. He’s such a cool villain and I thought that in another life he could have easily found a home within the pages of Scream!”
As his work with John M. Burns on 2000 AD’s The Order demonstrates, Kek-W admits that,“I love playing with old school/ retro-tropes and I have a passion for British Silver Age strips,” although he was probably too old to enjoy Black Max the first time around.“To be honest, I was deep into my Bronze Age Marvels by the time Thunder came out,” he laughs. “I presumably saw or read the occasional Black Max at the time, but my memory of things I may have seen orread once almost 50 years ago is pretty vague and sketchy. So I don’t have any specific memories of Black Max, though the whole sheer, utter bonkers idea of it has obviously stuck with me down through the years. Strangely though, I have a clearer memory of reading Lion in the ‘60s, which had a great line-up with Zip Nolan, Robot Archie and The Spider,which is one of my all-time favourite strips.”
Joining Thunder’s under-rated roster of stories that also included Adam Eterno, Steel Commando and The Spooks of St Lukes, Black Max was originally created by Ken Mennell and Eric Bradbury before they passed it onto Frank Pepper and Alfonso Font. “The series was really developed by Frank Pepper and Alfonso Font, who provided us with a new cover for the collection,” says Richardson. “Alfonso seems to be very proud and protective of Black Max and he has fond memories of working on it. It certainly appears to have been the one of most successful strip that ran in Thunder, and although he was possibly not as popular as Adam Eterno, I felt that Black Max is more robust and has more appeal to modern readers.”
For his part, it was the late Eric Bradbury’s art that made the biggest impression on Kek-W, even if he wasn’t initially aware of the artist’s actual identity. “British artists weren’t generally credited back in the pre2000 AD era,” he recalls. “But even when I was a young kid, certain illustrators stuck out and you started to recognise their style, in the same way you learned to recognise the work of Americans like Jack Kirby or Wally Wood – ‘Oh,that’s the artist I like!’ Eric Bradbury was one of those guys and although I didn’t learn his name until years later – probably when he worked for 2000 AD – he had a dark, shadow-heavy, inky style that made him perfect for thrillers or spooky supernatural strips like (Smash!’s) Cursitor Doom. He was also great at action
and militaria, so he was a perfect fit for Black Max.”
With Pat Mills examining the First World War in more serious depth in Battle’s all time comic book classic Charley’s War nearly a decade later in 1979 and while its supernatural war scenario and Russian location were emulated the following year in the pages of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic by Fiends of the Eastern Front and its German main protagonist predated Action’s Hellman of Hammer Force in 1976, it could be argued that Black Max laid the groundwork for several influential stories.
“It was quite an odd strip, which was slightly ahead of its time in some ways with its darker tone and supernatural sensibility,” reasons Kek-W.“But it was also clinging to a slightly older, more
stereotypical pantomime villain ‘Drat! Curses, foiled again!’-type sensibility.
Along with DC’s Enemy Ace and Snoopy and the Red Baron, Kek-W believes that Black Max was partly inspired by similarly titled 1966 war film The Blue Max, which also centred around a German air fighter, while its horror elements were drawn by Hammer films like Dracula, which were at the height of their popularity in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.“I have no hard evidence to
back that up, but if we return to the idea of editors mining different popular trends for material then it’s vaguely plausible,” he says. “It’s certainly a unique and, err, batty pairing of genres!”
While Black Max battled British fighter pilot Tim Wilson in Thunder,Return of Black Max sees him pitted against a more unpredictable protagonist in awkward teenager Maxine, although there might be more to her than meets the eye. “Tim Wilson and the Wilson family don’t feature in the new Black Max,” teases Kek-W. “Thought they might, if we get the chance to do more of these stories and expand this particular corner of the Rebellionverse. Maxine is a descendant of a slightly more obscure pilot character from the original strip: Rick Newland. In the first tale, Von Klorr hints that she might be somehow linked to the ‘Bat People’ bloodline, and in the latest, we expand on that a little more.
There’s a far wider world of characters and strange family ties sitting beneath these two new Black Max tales – her school friends potentially have roles to play and possible links to the past, and the school itself (St Lukes Academy) is significant in UK comic strip history. We’re also bringing another classic British Silver Age character into the mix, but you’ll have to read the
darn thing to find out who!”
German World War One flying ace Baron Maximilien Von Klorr returns to the skies over the Western Front – and this time he isn’t on his own!
The third volume of Black Max is available to now!
Ace fighter pilot Baron Maximilien Von Klorr is the scourge of the skies – menacing the Allied forces during the bloodiest battles in World War One, aided by two giant, mutated kingbats who fight by his side! Von Klorr AKA Black Max is almost unstoppable and only the brave pilots of the Royal Flying Corps oppose his complete dominance of the air…
Now, evil scientific genius Doctor Gratz has formed an unholy alliance with the giant bat-controlling Baron and together the two sinister fiends have formulated a plan to destroy Paris!
Available from 18 January and available as standard paperbacks or in a limited edition hardcover with new cover by Keith Burns (Battle Action), this third instalment features the stunning artwork of Alfonso Font and marks the final adventures of the original Black Max comic strip run from the pages of Thunder.
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