Garth Book One: The Cloud of Balthus

by Jim Edgar, F. Bellamy (Illustrator)

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Drew Ericsson]

A superb collection. It's easy to see the faults in this format but when read daily (and, possibly, intermittently) it works. Garth is a much-forgotten pulp peer to the likes of Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Doc Savage, et al. It's a pity he's been left in limbo. Then again, he would be considered as "toxic masculinity" these days.

[Dominick]

Disappointing. Even Frank Bellamy's art is uneven--at times lush and powerful, but more frequently rushed and scratchy-looking. These four stories about the time-travelling superman certainly cover some territory--Custer's last stand, beachball aliens and communist spies, the Borgias and Arab slavers, and a werewolf--but the stories are rather shapeless and unengaging. Part of that is probably due to the inconsistencies in the concept--in one of the two time travel stories, Garth knows who he is in the past, but in the other he seems to have only a vague recollection of it--part is probably due to the generic blurring (SF, spy, and horror tropes jumble together), and part to the underplotted stories themselves. The story formula apparently allowed for one instance of female nudity per story line; by the fourth story, waiting for that moment to occur became more of a point of interest than the actual story. Not a good sign. I'd probably give it 2.5 stars, if that rating were possible, but the best I can say for it, really, is that it's okay.

[Michael P.]

I liked the strip very much when I read it in the newspaper, six on a page with a break in-between readings. GARTH does not hold up very well when reprinted as a book. What seemed satisfying in short bursts was far less so here. Beautiful art, but the stories are not really interesting or well told. One grows weary of Garth’s awesomeness.