Yoko Tsuno volume 17: The Exiles of Kifa


By Roger Leloup, coloured by Studio Leonardo & translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-065-4 (Album PB)

In 1970, indomitable intellectual adventurer and “electronics engineer” Yoko Tsuno began her career in Le Journal de Spirou. She is still delighting readers and making new fans to this day in astonishing, action-packed, astoundingly accessible adventures which are amongst the most intoxicating, absorbing and broad-ranging comics thrillers ever created. The globe-girdling mysteries and space-&-time-spanning epics were devised by multitalented Belgian maestro Roger Leloup who – from 1953 – truly started his own solo career after working as a studio assistant and technical artist on Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin.

Compellingly told, superbly imaginative and – no matter how implausible the premise of any individual yarn may seem – always firmly grounded in hyper-realistic settings underpinned by authentic, unshakably believable technology and scientific principles, Leloup’s illustrated escapades were at the vanguard of a wave of strips revolutionising European comics.

That long-overdue sea-change heralded the rise of competent, clever, brave and formidably capable female protagonists taking their rightful places as heroic ideals and not romantic lures; elevating Continental comics in the process. Such endeavours are as engaging and empowering now as they ever were, none more so than the exploits of Miss Tsuno.

Her first outings (the STILL unavailable Hold-up en hi-fi, La belle et la bête and Cap 351) were mere introductory vignettes in a more cartoonish style before authenticism took hold in 1971 and the unflappable troubleshooter met valiant but lesser male comrades Pol Paris and Vic Van Steen and properly hit her stride in premier full-length saga Le trio de l’étrange (beginning in Le Journal de Spirous May 13th edition). From that point Yoko’s cases would include explosive exploits in exotic corners of our world, sinister deep-space sagas and even time-travelling jaunts. There are 30 European albums to date but only 19 translated into English thus far (ironically, none of them digitally).

First serialised in LJdS #2736-2760, Les Exilés de Kifa was crafted in 1990: a tense race against time and hidden agendas far across the universe where our terrestrial trouble-shooters toil beside the disaster-prone lethally pragmatic alien colonists of planet Vinea. Their most trusted ally is Khany: a competent, commanding single mother combing parenting her toddler Poky with saving worlds, leading her people, averting continual cosmic catastrophe and – with Yoko – trying to restore some kind of moral compass to those ancient survivors ruthlessly rebuilding their fallen civilisation and permanently undermining and gaslighting the upstarts who slept out the apocalypse on another planet…

In their initial adventure together, Yoko, Vic and Pol had discovered an enclave of dormant aliens hibernating for eons in the depths of the Earth. After saving the sleepers from robotic/AI subjugation, the humans occasionally helped the refugees (who had fled their planet two million years previously) to rebuild their lost sciences. Ultimately, they accompanied the Vineans when they returned to their own star system and presumed long-dead homeworld. In the years Vineans slept, their primary civilisation collapsed, and the world they have begun to reclaim is much changed, with isolated pockets of the former inhabitants evolved beyond recognition…

They are constantly hostile to their returned descendants. As the re-migrants gradually restore the decadent, much-debased civilisation and culture, the human trio become regular guests and helpers against sabotage and skulduggery…

On a previous visit (The Archangels of Vinea) Yoko had established a unique psychic link with robotic intelligence Queen Hegora: one granting her certain technophilic abilities. On this excursion, the humans – including Tsuno’s adopted daughter Morning Dew (The Dragon of Hong Kong) are exploring another region of the recovering orb: the non-rotating planet’s frozen northern hemisphere where they briefly encounter a derelict space probe before it is (mostly) destroyed under mysterious circumstances…

As Khany investigates a space laser planetary defence station, Yoko receives a vision from Hegora revealing the crashing probe carried a passenger who needs the humans’ help. Guided into high orbit and the upper limits of Khany’s spacecraft, they retrieve a sentient toy robot instants before station commander Balky blasts the probe remnants.

Khany reveals how its kind were constant companions to children until the parents abruptly deemed them too smart and dangerous, subsequently banishing them to distant asteroid Kifa. Needing to know more, Yoko returns to the subsea Archangel City over her human allies’ strident warnings, where the presumed-defunct Queen secretly repairs the adorable toy creature – “Myna” – who reveals Kifa holds many more like her, and has been diverted from its orbit to crash into Vinea. The evil mastermind behind the impending cataclysm is Gobol: the ancient genius who caused so many of primordial Vinea’s woes by granting independence and sentience to robots and computing systems…

As the conference ends, Hegora also gives Yoko her own hyper-advanced deep space ship…

As Myna begs for help, her new friends learn Kifa is Balky’s next target for obliteration and her rapid response sees humans and Vineans blast off for Kifa, with betrayal, incredible scientific secrets, terror, tragedy and malign immortal intelligence Gobol awaiting them…

Once more, however, overwhelming digital malevolence proves inadequate in the face of Yoko Tsuno’s passionate humanity, bold imagination and quick thinking, but her ultimate success comes at great cost and cannot be called a triumph…

Rocket-paced, deviously twisted and terrifying plausible, this race against time and battle with bigotry is superbly mesmerising, proving once more how smarts and combat savvy are pointless without compassion. As always, the most potent asset of these edgy outer space dramas is the astonishingly authentic settings, as ever benefitting from Leloup’s diligent research and meticulous attention to detail.

The Exiles of Kifa is a magnificently wide-screen thriller, tense and compelling, and surely appealing to any fan of blockbuster action fantasy or breathtaking derring-do.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1991 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation 2022 © Cinebook Ltd.

Ms. Marvel Epic Collection volume 1: This Woman, This Warrior 1977-1978


By Gerry Conway, Chris Claremont, John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Jim Mooney, John Byrne, Keith Pollard, Carmine Infantino, George Tuska & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-1639-8 (TPB/Digital edition)

Until relatively recently American comics and especially Marvel had very little in the way of positive female role models and almost no viable solo stars. Although a woman starred in the very first comic of the Marvel Age, The Invisible Girl took decades to become a potent and independent character in her own right – or even just be called “woman”. The company’s very first starring heroine was Black Fury: a leather-clad, whip-wielding crimebuster imported from a newspaper strip created by Tarpe Mills in April 1941. The sultry sentinel was repackaged as a resized reprint for Timely’s funnybooks and renamed Miss Fury to enjoy a 4-year run (1942-1946) – although her tabloid incarnation fought on until 1952. Fury was actually predated by Silver Scorpion, who debuted in Daring Mystery Comics #7 (April 1941), but she was relegated to a minor position in the book’s line-up and endured a very short shelf-life.

Miss America premiered in anthological Marvel Mystery Comics (#49, November 1943), created by Otto Binder & artist Al Gabriele. After a few appearances, she won her own title in early 1944. Miss America Comics lasted, but the costumed cutie didn’t as – with the second issue (November1944) – the format changed, to become a combination of teen comedy, fashion feature and domestic tips magazine. Feisty take-charge superheroics were steadily squeezed out and the title is most famous now for introducing virginal evergreen teen ideal Patsy Walker. A few other woman warriors appeared immediately after the War, many as spin-offs and sidekicks of established male stars such as female Sub-Mariner Namora (debuting in Marvel Mystery Comics #82, May 1947 before graduating to her own 3-issue series in 1948).

She was soon joined by the Human Torch’s secretary Mary Mitchell who, as Sun Girl, helmed her own 3-issue 1948 series before becoming a wandering sidekick and guest star in Sub-Mariner and Captain America Comics. Draped in a ballgown and wearing high heels, masked detective Blonde Phantom was created by Stan Lee & Syd Shores for All Select Comics #11 (Fall 1946) whilst sort-of goddess Venus debuted in her own title in August 1948, becoming the gender’s biggest Timely-Atlas-Marvel success until the advent of the “Jungle Girl” fad in the mid-1950s. This was mostly by dint of the superb stories and art by the great Bill Everett and by ruthlessly changing genres from crime to romance to horror every five minutes…

Jann of the Jungle (by Don Rico & Jay Scott Pike) was just part of an anthology line-up in Jungle Tales #1 (September 1954), but she took over the title with the 8th issue (November 1955). Jann of the Jungle continued until June 1957 (#17), spawning a host of in-company imitators like Leopard Girl, Lorna the Jungle Queen and so on…

During the costumed hero boom of the 1960s, Marvel experimented with a title shot for Inhuman émigré Madame Medusa in Marvel Super-Heroes (#15, July 1968) and a solo series for the Black Widow in Amazing Adventures #1-8 (August 1970 to September 1971). Both were sexy, reformed villainesses, not wholesome girl-next-door heroes – and neither lasted solo for long.

When the costumed crazies craze began to subside in the 1970s, Stan Lee & Roy Thomas looked into creating a girl-friendly boutique of heroines written by women. Opening shots in this mini-liberation war were Claws of the Cat by Linda Fite, Marie Severin & Wally Wood and Night Nurse by Jean Thomas & Win Mortimer (both #1’s cover-dated November 1972).

Contemporary jungle queen Shanna the She-Devil #1 – by Carole Seuling & George Tuska – was out in December 1972; but despite impressive creative teams none of these fascinating experiments lasted beyond a fifth issue.

Red Sonja, She-Devil with a Sword, caught every one’s attention in Conan the Barbarian #23 (February 1973) and eventually won her own series, whilst The Cat mutated into Tigra, the Were-Woman in Giant-Size Creatures #1 (July 1974), but the general editorial position was “books starring chicks don’t sell”…

The company kept on plugging though, and eventually found the right mix at the right time with Ms. Marvel who launched in her own title cover-dated January 1977. She was followed by the equally copyright-protecting Spider-Woman (in Marvel Spotlight #32: February 1977), who secured her own title 15 months later) and Savage She-Hulk (#1, February 1980). She was supplemented by the music-biz sponsored Dazzler who premiered in Uncanny X-Men #130 the same month, before inevitably graduating to her own book.

Ms. Marvel was actually Carol Danvers, a US Air Force security officer first seen in Marvel Super-Heroes #13 (March 1968): the second episode of the unfolding tale of Kree warrior Mar-Vell, dispatched to Earth as a spy after the Fantastic Four repulsed the alien Kree twice in two months. In that series the immensely competent Carol seemed stalled, perpetually investigating Mar-Vell’s assumed and tenuous cover-identity of Walter Lawson for months. This was until Danvers was caught up in a devastating battle between the now-defecting alien and his nemesis Colonel Yon-Rogg in Captain Marvel #18 (November 1969).

Caught in a climactic explosion of alien technology, she pretty much vanished from sight until Gerry Conway, John Buscema & Joe Sinnott revived her in Ms. Marvel #1 (January 1977) where ‘This Woman, This Warrior!’ opened a new chapter for the company and the industry.

This sturdy economical tome collects Ms. Marvel #1-14 plus guest appearances in Marvel Team-Up #61-62 and The Defenders #57, cumulatively spanning cover-dates January 1977 – March 1978, diving straight into the ongoing mystery. The irrepressible but partially amnesiac Danvers has relocated to New York to become editor of “Woman”: a new magazine for modern misses published by Daily Bugle owner J. Jonah Jameson.

Never having fully recovered from her near-death experience, Danvers left the military and drifted into writing, slowly growing in confidence until the irascible publisher makes her an offer she can’t refuse. At the same time as Carol is getting her feet under a desk, a mysterious new masked hero begins appearing and as rapidly vanishing, such as when she pitches up to battle the sinister Scorpion as he perpetrates a brutal bank raid. The villain narrowly escapes to rendezvous with Professor Kerwin Korwin of AIM (high-tech secret society Advanced Idea Mechanics). The skeevy savant has promised to increase the Scorpion’s powers and allow him to take long-delayed revenge on Jameson – whom the demented thug blames for his freakish condition…

Danvers has been having premonitions and blackouts since her involvement in the final clash between Mar-Vell and Yon-Rogg and has no idea she is transforming into Ms. Marvel. Her latest vision-flash occurs too late to save Jameson from abduction, but her “Seventh Sense” does allow her to track the villain before her unwitting new boss is injured, whilst her incredible physical powers and knowledge of Kree combat techniques enable her to easily trounce the maniac.

The second issue announced an ‘Enigma of Fear!’ in a return engagement for the Scorpion as Korwin and AIM make Ms. Marvel their new science project. As he turns himself into armoured assassin Destructor, Carol’s therapist Mike Barnett achieves an analytical breakthrough with his patient and discovers she is a masked metahuman before she does…

Although again felling the Scorpion, Ms. Marvel is ambushed by the Destructor, but awakes in #3 (written by Chris Claremont) to turn the tables in ‘The Lady’s Not for Killing!’

Travelling to Cape Canaveral to interview old friend Salia Petrie for a women-astronauts feature, Danvers is soon battling an old Silver Surfer foe on the edge of space, where all her occluded memories explosively return just in time for a final confrontation with Destructor. In the midst of the devastating bout she nearly dies after painfully realising ‘Death is the Doomsday Man!’ (with Jim Mooney taking over pencils for Sinnott to embellish).

The Vision guest-stars in #5 as Ms. Marvel crosses a ‘Bridge of No Return’. When Dr. Barnett reveals he knows her secret, Carol is forced to fight the Android Avenger after AIM tricks the artificial hero into protecting a massive, mobile “dirty” bomb. ‘…And Grotesk Shall Slay Thee!’ then pits her against a subterranean menace determined to eradicate the human race, culminating in a waking ‘Nightmare!’ when she is captured by AIM’s leader Modok and all her secrets are exposed to his malign scientific scrutiny. Grotesk strikes again in #8 as ‘The Last Sunset…?’ almost dawns for the planet, whilst ‘Call Me Death-Bird!’ (art by Keith Pollard, Sinnott & Sam Grainger) introduces a mysterious, murderous avian alien who would figure heavily in many a future X-Men and Avengers saga, but who spends her early days allied to the unrelenting forces of AIM as they attack once more in ‘Cry Murder… Cry Modok!’ (Sal Buscema & Tom Palmer).

A push to achieve greater popularity saw the neophyte in consecutive issues of Marvel Team-Up (#61-62, September & October 1977). Claremont had actually begun scripting that title with issue #57 with a succession of espionage-flavoured heroes and villains battling for possession of a mysterious clay statuette. As illustrated by John Byrne & Dave Hunt, the secret of the artefact is revealed in #61 as Human Torch Johnny Storm joins his creepy-crawly frenemy Spider-Man in battle against Super-Skrull and learns ‘Not All Thy Powers Can Save Thee!’, before the furious clash calamitously escalates to include Ms. Marvel with follow-up ‘All This and the QE2’. Here, the Kree-human hybrid uses knowledge and power she didn’t know she had and comes away in possession of an ancient, alien power crystal…

Frank Giacoia inks Sal B in Ms. Marvel #11’s ‘Day of the Dark Angel!’, wherein supernal supernatural menaces Hecate, the Witch-Queen and The Elementals (a group formerly seen fighting The Living Mummy) attack the Cape, tragically preventing Carol from rescuing Salia and her space shuttle crew from an incredible inter-dimensional disaster…

With Sinnott inking, the astonishing action continues in ‘The Warrior… and the Witch-Queen!’ before ‘Homecoming!’ (Mooney pencils) explores Carol’s blue-collar origins in Boston as she crushes a couple of marauding aliens before the all-out action and tense suspense concludes when ‘Fear Stalks Floor 40’ (illustrated by Carmine Infantino & Steve Leialoha) with the battered and weary warrior confronting her construction worker, anti-feminist dad whilst saving his business from the sinister sabotage of The Steeplejack’.

Wrapping up the show is another guest shot – this time from The Defenders #57 (March 1978). Crafted by Claremont, George Tuska & Dave Cockrum, ‘And Along Came… Ms. Marvel’ sees the “non-team” of outsiders and antiheroes paid a visit after Carol’s prescient senses warn her of their imminent ambush by AIM. Cue cataclysmic combat…

This comprehensive chronicle includes Ms. Prints’: Conway and David Anthony Kraft’s editorials on the hero’s origins from Ms. Marvel #1 & 2, original character sketches by John Romita Senior, a house ad, and unused cover sketches by John Buscema and Marie Severin and pages of original art by Sal Buscema, Giacoia & Sinnott and Infantino & Leialoha.

Always entertaining, frequently groundbreaking and painfully patronising (occasionally at the same time), the early Ms. Marvel, against all odds, grew into the modern Marvel icon of capable womanhood we see today in both comics and on screen as Captain Marvel. These exploits are a valuable grounding of the contemporary champion but also still stand on their own as intriguing examples of the inevitable fall of even the staunchest of male bastions: superhero sagas…
© 1977, 1978, 2018 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Axa Adult Fantasy Color Album


By Enrique “Enric” Badía Romero & Donne Avenell (Ken Pierce Books/Eclipse Comics)
ISBN: 0-912277-27-0 (TPB)

Born in 1930 Enrique “Enric” Badía Romero’s comics career began in his native Spain fifteen years later when he was apprenticed to popular creator Emilio Freixas. By 1949 – as “Badia” – he was drawing strips for Susy and other publications, and in 1953, launched his own magazine Alex, before going on to found publishers Ruiz Romero where he produced everything from westerns, sports, war stories and trading cards – mostly in conjunction with his brothers Jorge and Jordi. Their most memorable series were Cromos, Hombres de Lucha and Historia de la Guerra.

“Enric” began working for the higher-paying UK market in the 1960s, on strips such as ‘Cathy and Wendy’, ‘Isometrics’ and ‘Cassius Clay’ before successfully assuming drawing duties on the high-profile Modesty Blaise adventure-serial in 1970. He left in 1978 when an enticing new prospect appeared whilst he was simultaneously illustrating Modesty and Rahan with André Chéret for Franco-Belgian weekly Pif gadget. Even for the prolific artist something had to give…

Axa ran in The Sun Monday to Saturday from 14th July 1978 to her abrupt cancellation on November 16th 1986 – purportedly a victim of political and editorial intrigue which saw the strip cancelled in the middle of a story. Other than the First American Edition series from strip historian Ken Pierce and this colour collection, there has never been a definitive English language collection. It should be noted also that at the time of this book she was still being published with great success and to popular acclaim.

Back then in Britain it often appeared the only place where truly affirmative female role-models appeared to be taken seriously were cartoon sections, but even there the likes of Modesty Blaise, Danielle, Scarth, Amanda, Wicked Wanda and all the other capable ladies who walked all over the oppressor gender – both humorously and in straight adventure scenarios – lost clothes and shed undies repeatedly, continuously, frivolously and in the manner they always had…

Nobody complained (at least no one important or who was ever taken seriously): it was just tradition and the idiom of the medium… and besides, artists have always liked to draw bare-naked ladies as much as blokes liked to see them. It was even “educational” for the kiddies – who could buy any newspaper in any shop without interference, even if they couldn’t get into cinemas to view Staying Alive, Octopussy or Return of the Jedi without an accompanying adult…

Tough ’n’ sexy take-charge chicks (without clothes) were a comic-strip standard by the time the Star Wars phenomenon rekindled interest in science fiction, and the infallible old standby of scantily-clad, curvy amazons in post-apocalyptic realms never had greater sales-appeal than when The Sun – Britain’s sleaziest yet best-selling tabloid – hired Romero & Donne Avenell to produce a new fantasy feature for their already well-stacked cartoon section.

This beautifully illustrated but oddly out of kilter collection doesn’t bear much similarity in terms of tone or format to the (ostensibly) family-oriented daily strip, and features none of the regular supporting cast like long-suffering lover Matt or robotic companion Mark 10, which leads me to suspect it was created independently for a European market, perhaps as a Sunday page in Romero’s homeland or elsewhere where attitudes and mores were more liberal.

Certainly in the early 1980s Axa appeared in adult bande dessinée icon Charlie Mensuel (which reprinted many classic newspaper strips from around the world) and after that closed in Swedish publication Magnum.

Whatever their origin, the tales collected here are far stronger and more explicitly sexual in nature; occasionally coming close to being macho rape-fantasies, so please be warned as such content, no matter how winningly illustrated, will certainly offend most modern consumers.

The eponymous heroine was raised in a stultifying, antiseptic and emotionless domed city: a bastion of technological advancement in a world destroyed by war, pollution and far worse. Chafing at the constricting life of loveless living dead men, Axa broke out and, ancient sword in hand, chose to roam the shattered Earth searching for something real and true and free…

This slim oversized tome opens with Axa crossing trackless wasteland under a scorching sun until she finds a hidden grotto beneath a ruined building. The coolly sensual hidden pool is a welcome delight but harbours a ghastly monster and mutant voyeur…

Captured by a hideously scarred human degenerate Axa discovers his gentle nature but is soon abducted by his far-less sympathetic brethren who want to use her as a brood mare for their next generation. Ultimately, fate, her newfound friend and that ever-present longsword combine to effect her escape…

Resuming aimless exploration, Axa encounters a coastal village and is almost killed by wild dogs. Desperate flight takes her to a lighthouse on the promontory above the deserted town where ruggedly handsome Juame and his teenaged daughter Maria have been trapped for months. Swiftly, sexual tension between Axa and Jaume culminates in the only way it can as Maria is driven mad by jealousy she can barely comprehend. When a roving band of vicious post-apocalyptic Hell’s Angels hits town hungry for slaughter and kicks, the conflicted teen opens the tower doors for them…

The brutes casually murder her father and are intent on adding her and Axa to their string of human playthings, when a terrific storm hits and Axa breaks loose to become the bloody tool of harsh, uncompromising and final fate…

This incarnation of the warrior wanderer is certainly harder-hitting and more visceral than the British strip version and has little of the feature’s sly, dry humour, but art-lovers cannot fail to be impressed by Romero’s vibrant mixed-media illustration and imaginative, liberating page compositions.

Lush, lavish, luxurious and strictly for adventure-loving adults, Axa is long overdue for a comprehensive ethical overhaul and definitive comics collection. Is there a bold publisher out there looking for the next big thing and prepared to face a barrage of ethical vituperation?
Axa © 1985 Enrique Badia Romero. Previously © 1983, 1984 in Spanish. Express Newspapers, Ltd.

Trish Trash Rollergirl of Mars – The Collected Edition


By Jessica Abel, with Lydia Roberts & Walter various (Super Genius/Papercutz)
ISBN: 978-1-5458-0167-3 (TPB/Digital edition) 978-1-5458-0166-6 (HB)

Our fascination with Mars has never faltered and now that we’re almost within touching distance, the Red Planet’s allure and presence in our fiction has never been more broad-based and healthily imaginative. Amidst all the recent TV, movie and literary product, one of the most engaging treatments was an enthralling comics serial detailing the life of an extraordinary young woman in exceedingly trying times.

After Earth collapses in an ecological and economic meltdown, recently arrived first settlers on Mars were trapped under an increasingly burdensome fixed economic structure and oppressive corporate plutocracy. Two centuries later, an entire class of indentured servants eke out a fraught existence, harvesting water and food with machines rented from Arex (“we’re the air that you breathe”). The air they don’t breathe is meagre, toxic, dust-filled and a bit radioactive…

On Mars, everything belongs to The Company, and people usually live from cradle to grave in crippling debt. There is, ostensibly, a chance to escape: mandatory offworld mining missions to the asteroid belt. These Temporary Labor Assignments, however, are regarded as a quick ticket to certain death.

All tyrannies need bread and circuses though. On Mars that’s Hoverderby…

Based on an ancient Earth entertainment, teams of women race around a hover track in flying boots, scoring points by beating each other up. It’s the planet’s most popular spectator sport and Arex own that too…

Trish Nupindu is seven-and-a-half (on Mars. In Earth terms she’s 15): a smart, recently-orphaned kid who’s really good with engines and most mechanical systems. Stuck on her aunt’s water farm, Trish dreams of becoming a Hoverderby star and is utterly discontented with the state of her existence. All “Marty” reel from the force of crushing, inescapable poverty and Trish totally believes her only chance of getting out from under a system stacked from the get-go against ordinary people is to become a media star of the great game.

Bold and impatient, one day she sneaks off to join the local team and is suckered into a binding intern’s contract, even though she’s under-age…

Trish doesn’t even get to play: the team manager wants her because she’s good at fixing the hoverboots continually malfunctioning due to the all-pervasive dust. Her world turns upside down after she and avowed-revolutionary/pal Marq discover a native Martian. Recalled from near-death, the mythical creature opens their eyes to a whole new world, and “her” secrets will change forever not just the way Hoverderby is played but also the very economic balance of power on the Red Planet – if the ruthless upper echelons of Arex don’t stop them first…

The inspirational drama is backed up by extensive supplemental features such as the rules of Hoverderby; Derby Gear: Then and Now; illustrated specifications for Radsuits; fact-features on The Homestead Debate, Native Martians, Ares Collective Statement of Debt (ACSOD), TLAs and Asteroid Mining all delivered in the manner of wiki pages. Also on show are data bursts on legendary water miner Ismail Khan, faux kids’ comics “True Tales of the Early Colonists” and a complete Timeline of Mars Colonization.

Jessica Abel has been wowing readers and winning prizes since 1997 when she took both the Harvey and Lulu awards for Best New Talent. Previous graphic delights include the fabulous Artbabe, Growing Gills, Life Sucks, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, collections Soundtrack and Mirror, Window plus the Harvey-winning La Perdida.

Trish Trash began gradually unfolding in 2016: a sublime blend of subversive human drama and hard science fiction thriller with a supremely human and believable lead taking charge and changing the world. After three album releases, the entire saga was made available in this oversized (218 x 284 mm) hardback, plus paperback and eBook editions, at least one of which you really must see ASAP.
© Jessica Abel and Dargaud. All rights reserved. All other editorial material © 2018 by Super Genius.

Deathlok: The Living Nightmare of Michael Collins


By Dwayne McDuffie, Gregory Wright, Jackson Guice, Denys Cowan, Scott Williams, Rick Magyar, Kyle Baker, Mike DeCarlo & Friends, Paul Mounts, Brad Vancata, Richard Starkings, Joe Rosen & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5988-9 (HB/Digital edition)

As created by Rich Buckler and originally scripted by Doug Moench in 1974, Deathlok the Demolisher was an honourable soldier condemned to an horrific fate in a dystopian alternate future. It’s his 50th anniversary this year and we’ll get around to the time-tossed travails of Manning another day. This book is not about him.

As you’d expect of a character who was designed as a bio-mechanised weapon, Deathlok is a complex concept with a lot of backstory and many later models. Most of that and those also belong in different reviews. Here we’re concentrating on the most successful iteration of the cyborg: a black man enduring living hell, subjugation and slavery to merciless masters who fights for his dignity and liberty with everything he has left to him…

Bookshelf format limited series Deathlok #1-4 was first released July through October 1990, and its success prompted a cheaper newsprint reprint run – as Deathlok Special #1-4 – less than a year later. Tragic champion Michael Collins sprang from this epic tale of deception and malfeasance into his own monthly series: 34 issues and 2 Annuals spanning July 1991 to April 1994, plus guest shots (across Marvel’s US and UK branches) in the nineties.

It begins in an 8-page prequel story from Marvel Comics Presents #62 (cover dated November 1990 but on sale in late summer) wherein Dwayne McDuffie, Gregory Wright & Jackson “Butch” Guice took Deathlok on a ‘Test Run’. The vignette saw soldier Colonel John Kelly – or at least his brain and assorted organic leftovers attached to a biomechanical body of intriguingly unknown origins – ruthlessly despatch a dozen mercenaries who had no idea what they were really facing; until a computer glitch ends the exercise and almost project leader Harlan Ryker.

Kelly would later be eventually resurrected as cyborg antihero Siege but the failed test left the Cybertek Systems Inc. team (cybernetics division of Marvel’s corporate villain organization Roxxon) in need of a new brain donor…

The story of this Deathlok really begins with the first solo issue as Dwayne McDuffie, (co-writer and colourist) Gregory Wright, Jackson Guice, Scott Williams & hard-pressed, overworked letterer Richard Starkings introduce readers to ‘The Brains of the Outfit’. Cybertek is dirty. It uses subterfuge to achieve its ends. When programmer, engineer, pacifist and devoted family man Michael Collins discovers his innovations are going into advanced weapons systems and not medical equipment he rebels and quits, inadvertently making himself the next candidate for the organic wetware of Deathlok. The enigmatic war frame requires a human brain to operate, but it doesn’t have to be alive…

Mere days after a tragic “accident”, good friend Harlan Ryker tries to comfort widow Tracy Collins and Michael’s son Nick, even as a new Deathlok is unleashed in Amazon rainforest republic Estrella. Here, future Roxxon profits require a change of environment, a new dam and an end to eco-guerilla resistance. However, once again the onboard systems malfunction mid fire-fight and the presumed expired personality of Michael Collins takes control of the body whilst striking a détente with the murderously efficient semi-sentient programmed systems.

In charge and very angry, Collins wants Ryker, Cybertek and Roxxon to pay, but cannot abandoned his principles. His first action is to institute a “no-kill” command in the super-soldier body he shares with a computer he must negotiate every action with. This does not hamper his combat efficiency in the slightest…

It proves a perfectly workable arrangement as Deathlok when he returns to the New Jersey Cybertek facility and violently confronts the “friends” who betrayed him. Ryker and his team desperately launch their other project – a cybernetically-controlled all-terrain super-tank piloted by ruthless paraplegic co-worker and barely suppressed psychopath Ben Jacobs. After wrecking the project, Deathlok flees but finds no solace. Now the embodiment of everything he loathes, he doesn’t even know if he’s truly still alive.

An attempt to reach out to Tracy and Nick results in disaster and only anonymous contact with his boy via a computer game stays him from self-termination. Lost and alone, he decides to use his situation to help others…

Second issue ‘Jesus Saves’ sees Deathlok operating as vigilante in New York’s Coney Island, defending the dregs of society – generally from themselves. After stopping a mugging he is befriended by the elderly victim Jesus who offers “Mike” shelter. Elsewhere, the event at Cybertek has reached the attention of S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury (the white one), but Ryker is more concerned by pressure his Roxxon superiors are exerting on him. In response to a deadly deadline, he commissions a mercenary “fixer” called Wajler – AKA Mainframe – to eradicate Deathlok whilst Ryker unctuously probes Tracy and Nick for possible intel and warns them that a rogue robot might be stalking them. Nick is not fooled…

Wracked by human memories and doubts, Deathlok uses the ability to access computer files and enter a communal cyber-scape to look for ways to stop Ryker, but his reaching out endangers his few remaining friends. It also makes him a target and Mainframe’s mech-enhanced team zero in on Coney Island and explosively attack, uncaring of the innocent crowds enjoying themselves there. The resultant chaos makes headlines everywhere and as S.H.I.E.L.D. steps in Deathlok decides it’s time to go back to Estrella and fix what he inadvertently started as a slave of Cybertek…

Artists Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar joined McDuffie & Wright, in #3 as ‘Dam if He Don’t’ sees the cyborg hero subject to intense S.H.I.E.L.D. scrutiny even as Collins joins the remaining eco-guerillas in wrecking Roxxon’s scheme to build a super dam and make the entire region easier to mine. Even after convincing the resistors he’s on their side – this time – there’s still an army of soldiers and regiment of giant robot ants controlled by revenge hungry Ben Jacobs to deal with.

The unstoppable Deathlok’s crusade is greatly assisted by a late-in-the-day alliance with Nick Fury, setting up a final face-off with Ryker, but the malign master manipulator has one last card to play and offers to reinsert Collins’ brain in the body he removed it from and has been judiciously keeping alive “just in case”…

The clash of wills and Collins brief ethical “wobble” culminates in catastrophic combat that draws in naive Japanese ultra-nationalist/part-time X-Man Sunfire, his cunningly controlling sensei Yoritomo and a secret army of ninjas on ‘Ryker’s Island’ (McDuffie & Wright, Cowan, Kyle Baker, Mike DeCarlo & Friends). Despite at first being pacified by Harlan’s promises of restoring him alive to his family, Deathlok recovers his moral compass in time for S.H.I.E.L.D. to assist him in averting a nuclear armageddon Ryker thought he could profit from, but in the confusion everyone loses sight of Michal Collins’ bottled body…

The least Fury can do is lie to Tracy and Nick for him: telling them the pacifist is on a secret mission for S.H.I.E.L.D. as Deathlok hides, facing an uncertain future as a hero in waiting…

With covers by Joe Jusko, Bill Sienkiewicz, Kent Williams, Cowan & Tom Smith, plus frontispiece/inside cover art by Guice, an historical essay on ‘Deathlok’ by Peter Sanderson and covers for reprint series Deathlok Special #1-4 (Guice & Cowan), the origin of Marvel’s most conflicted champion is a challenging but rewarding romp for older readers.
© 2016 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Art of Ramona Fradon


By Ramona Fradon; interviewed by Howard Chaykin (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-140-3 (HB/Digital edition)

In a matter of mere weeks that have taken many accomplished, acclaimed and beloved comics luminaries (including Paul Neary, Enrique Badía Romero, José Delbo, Marti (Riera), John G. Miller and Keith Giffen) – we are particularly saddened to learn that pioneering cartoonist Ramona Fradon died on February 24th. At the age of 97 she had only just officially retired a month previously. Her incomparable works will keep her with us through characters and titles such as Super Friends, Aquaman and Metamorpho (slated to appear in the next Superman film). Until then, here’s another tome you should own…

Although present in comic books from the start, women – like so many other non-white/male “minorities” – have been largely written out of history. One of the very few to have weathered that inexplicable exclusion was Ramona Fradon. This excellent commemorative art collection celebrates not only her life and contribution, but thanks to its format – a free, unexpurgated extended interview with iconoclastic creator Howard Chaykin – shares the artist’s frank and forthright views on everything from work practise to the power of fans…

It begins with an Introduction from Walt Simonson who proclaims ‘Meet your Idol… and discover They’re even Cooler than you Thought!’, before early days are revealed in ‘Part One: Setting the Scene’ and ‘Part Two: In the Beginning’

Ramona Dom was born on October 2nd 1926 to an affluent Chicago family with many ties to commercial creative arts. Her father was a respected artisan, letterer and calligrapher who had designed the logos for Camel cigarettes, Elizabeth Arden and other major brands, and also formulated the fonts Dom Casual and Dom Bold. He had plans for his daughter, urging her to become a fashion designer…

The family moved to (outer) New York when Ramona was five. Ramona initially attended The Parsons School of Design, and discovered she had absolutely no interest in creating clothes. Although she’d never read comic books, she had voraciously read illustrated books like John Barton Gruelle’s Raggedy Anne and Andy series, and was a devoted fan of newspaper strips. Favourites included Dick Tracy, Bringing Up Father, The Phantom, Alley Oop, Flash Gordon, Terry and the Pirates and Li’l Abner (all herein represented by 1930s examples).

Ramona soon transferred to the New York Art Students League – a hotbed of cartooning – where she met and married Arthur Dana Fradon. He became a prolific illustrator, author and cartoonist and a regular contributor to The New Yorker between 1948-1992. They wed in 1948 and he actively encouraged her to seek work in the still young funnybook biz…

‘Part Three: Gingerly Breaking into Comics’ reveals how her first forays at Timely Comics led to DC/National Comics and a Shining Knight yarn published in Adventure Comics #165 (cover-dated June 1951), 10 months later taking over the veteran Aquaman feature in #167. Fradon was one of the first women to conspicuously and regularly illustrate comic books, drawing the strip throughout the 1950s and shepherding the Sea King from B-lister to solo star and Saturday morning TV pioneer.

In the first of a series of incisive, informative mini biographies, ‘Sidebar: Murray Boltinoff’ reveals the influence of that much-neglected and under-appreciated editor. ‘Part Four: Queen of the Seven Seas’ and ‘Part Five: Man of 1000 Elements’ show how occasional stints on The Brave and the Bold team-ups led to her co-creation of Sixties sensation Metamorpho, the Element Man. However in 1965 – at the pinnacle of success – she abruptly retired to raise a daughter, only returning to comics in 1972 for another stellar run of landmark work.

‘Sidebar: George Kashdan’ tells all about the multi-talented scripter before ‘Part Six: Ramona Returns to Comics… At Marvel???’ details how the House of Ideas lured the artist back to her board and highlights her difficulties working “Marvel-style” on assorted horror shorts, The Claws of the Cat and Fantastic Four, all presaging a return to DC…

‘Sidebar: Joseph Patterson’ looks into the astounding strip Svengali who green lit Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, Gasoline Alley and more before ‘Part Seven: Back Home at DC Comics’ where she was busier than ever. As well as horror and humour shorts, Fradon drew a new Metamorpho try-out, superhero spinoff Freedom Fighters and her twin magnum opuses: revived comedy superhero Plastic Man and TV sensation Super Friends. These revelations are bolstered by ‘Sidebar: E. Nelson Bridwell’, exploring the life of the man who knew everything about everything…

In 1980, Fradon took over Dale Messick’s long-running newspaper strip Brenda Starr, drawing it for 15 years. ‘Part Eight: Leaping From Books to Strips’ explores that painful and unpleasant chore in sharp detail, supplemented by ‘Sidebar: Brenda Starr’ outlining the feature’s history and reprinting those episodes when the ageless reporter met a certain cop, allowing Fradon to finally draw childhood idol Dick Tracy

The most fascinating stuff is left until last as ‘Part Nine: Ramona the Author’ discusses her career post-Brenda: drawing for Bart Simpson and Spongebob Squarepants comics, returning to higher education and writing a philosophical historical mystery novel – The Gnostic Faustus: The Secret Teachings Behind the Classic Text – as well as illustrated kids book The Dinosaur That Got Tired of Being Extinct.

Packed throughout with candid photos, and stunning pencil sketches, painted pictures and privately commissioned works – like Aquaman, assorted Super Friends, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Robin; Metal Men, Aqualad, Brenda Starr, Black Canary, Shazam/Captain Marvel, Shining Knight, The Atom, The Spirit, Metamorpho & cast, Marvel Girl, Miss America, Power Girl, Catwoman, Hawkman, numerous illustrations from The Story of Superman book plus convention sketches, this celebration concludes with even more fabulous sleek super art images in ‘Part Nine: Ramona Today’ and ‘Part Eleven: Bibliography’

This is an amazing confirmation of an incredible career and any fan’s dream package. Amongst gems unearthed here are complete Aquaman stories ‘The Kid from Atlantis!’ (Adventure Comics #269, 1960), ‘A World Without Water’ (Adventure#251, 1958) and ‘How Aquaman Got his Powers!’ (Adventure #260, 1959), plus tales from Star Spangled War Stories (#184, 1975) and ‘The Invisible Bank Robbers!’ (Gangbusters #30, 1952).

Also on show are unpublished sample strips by Dana & Ramona Fradon and a monumental cover gallery of unforgettable images from Super Friends #3, 5-8, 10, 11, 13, 17, 19, 21, 22, 24-27, 31, 33, 36-39 & 41; Plastic Man #16-20; The Brave and the Bold #55, 57, 58, Showcase #30 & 33, Metamorpho, the Element Man #1-5, Namora #1 (2010), Fantastic Four #133 and Freedom Fighters #3.

These are supported by selected interior pages in full colour or monochrome from Star Spangled War Stories #8; Adventure Comics #190; Metamorpho, the Element Man #1; 1st Issue Special #3; Fantastic Four #133; The Brave and the Bold #57; House of Secrets #116 & 136; Secrets of Haunted House #3 & 14; House of Mystery #232 & 273; Plop! #5; Freedom Fighters #3 & 5; Plastic Man #14; Super Friends #6-8, 10, 13, 16, 19, 21, 23 & 25 and the Super DC Calendar 1977.

A truly definitive appreciation of the Comic Book Hall of Fame inductee 2006, this oversized (229 x 305 mm) hardback reproduces hundreds of pages and covers, plus a wealth of out-industry artwork and commissioned wonders, as accompaniment to an astonishingly forthright testament and career retrospective of a phenomenal and groundbreaking talent.

The Art of Ramona Fradon will delight everyone by showing everybody how comics should be done….
Marvel Characters © and ™ 1941-2013 Marvel Characters, Inc. DC Comics Characters © and ™ DC Comics. Brenda Starr™ © 2013 Tribune Media Services. All Rights Reserved.

Steel: A Celebration of 30 Years


By Louise Simonson, Jon Bogdanove, Christopher Priest, Grant Morrison, Mark Schultz, Mateo Casali, Steve Lyons, Scholly Fisch, Matt Kindt, Chris Batista, Denys Cowan, Arnie Jorgensen, Doug Mahnke, Darryl Banks, Scott Cohn, Ed Benes, Rags Morales, Brad Walker, Patrick Zircher, June Brigman & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-2173-6 (HB/Digital edition)

All superhero sagas seek to forge fresh legends and mythologies for and around their protagonists and antagonists. A select few (like Thor, Wonder Woman, Hercules, Fables or Robin Hood) can shortcut the process by borrowing from already established communal story traditions. Steel always leaned into the latter: adapting and reiterating the folklore of actual historical personage John Henry: a 19th century African American Freedman known as the “steel-driving man” who worked building railroads and died proving human superiority and tenacity over technological innovation.

This epic compilation – part of a dedicated series reintroducing and exploiting the comics pedigree of DC icons – offers snapshots of a modern black Thomas Edison (or more accurately Tony Stark) who is equal parts impassioned justice seeker, dynamic defender and modern Hephaestus. Through groundbreaking appearances as part of the Superman Family, and standing on his own two jet-booted feet in the ever expanding DCU, it features material from Adventures of Superman #500, Superman: The Man of Steel #22, 100, 122, Steel (volume 1) #1, 34, JLA #17, Justice League Unlimited #35, Steel (volume 2) #1, Action Comics #4, Suicide Squad #24, and The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special #1, and like all these curated collections offers introductory essays preceding time-themed selections. We open with Part I: 1993-1998 – The Forging of a Hero by Steel co-creator Louise Simonson prior to her, Jon Bogdanove & Dennis Janke’s tantalising teaser ‘First Sighting’ as seen in Adventures of Superman #500. In the aftermath of catastrophe a new threat imperils the streets of Metropolis and a battered but mighty figure stirs from the rubble muttering “Doomsday”…

Steel’s story began with landmark publishing event The Death of Superman: a 3-pronged story-arc depicting the martyrdom, loss, replacement and resurrection of the World’s Greatest Superhero in a stellar saga which broke all records and proved that a jaded general public still cared about the venerable, veteran icon of Truth, Justice and the American Way. After a brutal rampage across Middle America, a mysterious marauding monster had only been stopped in the heart of Metropolis by an overwhelming and fatal effort on Superman’s part. Dying at the scene, the fallen hero’s body was subject of many legal battles before it was ostensibly laid to rest in a tomb in Metropolis’ Centennial Park. As Earth adjusted to a World Without a Superman, rumours began to circulate that, like Elvis, the Man of Tomorrow was not dead. The aforementioned ‘First Sightings’ revealed how across America four very different individuals appearing, saving lives and performing good deeds as only the departed defender could…

In Superman: The Man of Steel #22 (July 1993), Simonson, Bogdanove, Chris Batista & Rich Faber introduced construction worker Henry Johnson – who had been saved by Superman in the past – who felt compelled to carry on the hero’s mission. After witnessing first-hand street kids murdered by super weapons in the hands of “gangbangers” he built a high-tech suit of armour to facilitate his crusade as. Whilst outraged urban inventor attended disasters and began cleaning up the streets of Metropolis as ‘Steel’, he relentlessly searched for those who used deadly new “toastmasters”: a weapon Irons had designed in another life…

Tracking the munitions enabled him to save the life of a fortune-teller and brought him into savage conflict with White Rabbit – a new criminal major player in the city challenging the secret control of Lex Luthor – but his life only got more complicated the morning after, when Psychic Rosie went on TV claiming Steel was possessed by the unquiet soul of Superman…

To see how that  situation was resolved check out Reign of The Supermen collections but here – following the defeat of the Cyborg-Superman – our ironclad iconoclast underwent a partial refit in Steel (volume 1) #1, as writers Simonson & Bogdanove and artists Batista & Rich Fabee ‘Wrought Iron’ with Johnson resuming his previous identity as John Henry Irons and returning to his hometown and family in Washington D.C. ready to settle the problems he had originally fled from.

Welcomed back by niece Natasha, he and she are almost killed in another gang war and toastmaster crossfire, so John Henry begins a sustained and convoluted campaign against his former corporate employers Amertek, White Rabbit and the lying SOBs who allowed his junked superweapons program (AKA the BG60) to be sold to criminals. His first task is to upgrade and reforge his briefly retired armoured identity…

After an epic career as a reluctant superhero, John Henry and Natasha relocate to Jersey City as Christopher Priest, Denys Cowan & Tom Palmer reboot proceedings. In ‘Bang’ he reinvents himself as a maker of medical hardware and prosthetics working for a barely disguised supervillain. With all concerned leaning heavily into the perceived notion of Steel as a second-rate substitute, Priest consequently crafted one of the funniest and most thrilling superhero series of the decade and one long overdue to be featured in its own collection.

Steel was becoming increasingly popular and was rewarded with membership in the new sensation-series – the reconstituted Justice League. Here in his April 1998 induction from JLA #17, Grant Morrison, Arnie Jorgensen, David Meikis & Marl Pennington show ‘Prometheus Unbound’ as the ambitious neophyte supervillain attacks the entire League in their moon base Watchtower. As recent recruits Huntress, Plastic Man, fallen angel Zauriel and covert information resource Oracle join the regular team invite the world’s press to their lunar base, this unwise courtesy inadvertently allows the insidious seemingly unstoppable mastermind to infiltrate and almost destroy them.

The heroes – despite initially succumbing to Prometheus’ blitz-attack – strike back, aided by unlikely surprise guest-star Catwoman and the last-minute appearance of New Gods Orion and Big Barda proffering yet more hints of the greater threat to come. Although playing a significant part in the win, Steel is not really a star here but at least proves he can play well with the big dogs…

Priest then provides fascinating insight to his take on Dr. Irons and his tenure’s overt concentration of racism and comedy in an essay segueing neatly into Part II: 2000-2011 – Forging the Future prior to adventures in a new millennium.

In Superman: The Man of Steel #100 (May 2000), Mark Schultz, Doug Mahnke & Tom Nguyen offer a ‘Creation Story’ as John Henry and Natasha set up shop in Metropolis with their (she’s a SuperGenius too and ultimately also became an mecha-outfitted superhero) “Steelworks” facility, helping Superman reconstruct his Fortress of Solitude from recovered Kryptonian and Phantom Zone raw materials. The artificers are unaware that an old enemy is sending new menace Luna and her Cybermoths to plunder their achievements…

Despite their always being the best of friends, Superman: The Man of Steel #122 (March 2002) notionally succumbs to the inevitable in Superman v Steel’ by Schultz, Darryl Banks & Kevin Conrad as Irons battles crippling anxieties after accepting a potential trojan horse weapon – the Entropy Aegis – from Darkseid and using it as the basis of new armour. With monsters trying to reclaim it and Superman begging him not to use it, frayed tempers snap…

As well as an ill-received – and unjustly derided – cinema iteration (really! – check it out with more forgiving modern eyes), Steel made the jump to television numerous times. The best was his tenure in the Cartoon Network Justice League/Justice League Unlimited animated shows and the comic books they spawned. Next up here is Mateo Casali, Scott Cohn & Al Nickerson’s all-ages romp ‘The Cycle’ (Justice League Unlimited #35, September 2007), with John Henry and Natasha in the Watchtower before leading the team against reawakened elder gods The Millennium Giants

Having grown overlarge and unwieldy once more, DC took a draconian leap as its continuity was again pruned and repatterned. In October 2011, publishing event Flashpoint led to a “New 52”: radical yet mostly cosmetic changes that barely affected the properties reimagined. Just before that kicked off, John Henry got a stirring “hail and farewell” in Steel (volume 2, 2011) #1. ‘Reign of Doomsday, Part 1: Full Circle’ by Steve (Doctor Who) Lyons & Ed Benes opened a Superman Family mass-crossover as the marauding monster returned to crush all S-Sheild superstars, starting with John Henry before moving on to The Outsiders and others…

Concluding chapter Part III: 2012-Present – The First Black Superman opens with a treatise and career appraisal of “DC’s Iron Man” by Bogdanove, after which the techno-warrior is reimagined by Morrison, Rags Morales, Rick Bryant & Sean Parsons in Action Comics (volume 2) #4, January 2012. ‘Superman and the Men of Steel’ sees a young Man of Tomorrow starting out as a vigilante, pursued by Military Consultant Lex Luthor and losing to the latter’s Kryptonite fuelled cyborg Metallo until a technologist working on the Steel Soldier program dons the armour he’s building to save the embattled young hero…

From the same issue, ‘Hearts of Steel’ – by Scholly Fisch, Brad Walker & Jay David Ramos – concludes the 3-way war and provides insight into the valiant newcomer, before Suicide Squad #24 (volume 4, December 2013) taps into publishing event Forever Evil with ‘Excuse the Mess…’ by Matt Kindt, Patrick Zircher & Jason Keith. As Earth is infiltrated by invaders from an alternate reality, conscripts of Amanda Waller’s penal unit (Thinker, King Shark, Captain Boomerang, Deadshot and Harley Quinn) rebel when the world’s supervillain community unites to crush the heroes. Opposing the rebellion and fighting to keep a living WMD from them are an Unknown Soldier, vigilante Warrant, Power Girl and Steel

In 2015, as the New 52 experiment staggered to a conclusion, a series of company-wide events offered speculative glimpses at what might have been. Following 2014’s Futures End came Convergence in April 2015: a series of character-derived micro-series referencing key periods in the amalgamated history of DC heroes. Crafted by Simonson, June Brigman, Roy Richardson & John Rauch, Convergence: Superman: Man of Steel #1-2 depicted ‘Divided We Fall’ & ‘United We Stand’ as assorted cities from varied publishing epochs of continuity are imprisoned under domes by Telos, slave of Brainiac and ordered to fight each other until only one survives. Referencing their 1990s iteration, Irons, Natasha and nephew Jemahl armour up beside maniacal villain The Parasite to battle the abrasive superteens of Gen 13

We end by turning full circle as Louise Simonson, Jon Bogdanove & colourist Glenn Whitmore share undisclosed secrets from the first appearance of Steel, as finally revealed in The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special #1 (November 2022).‘Time’ expands on ‘First Sightings’, taking readers back to the moments Doomsday ripped through Metropolis and showing how “Henry Johnson” saved lives as he ran towards the life or death battle to aid Superman however he can…

With covers by Bogdanove & Janke, Dave Johnson, Howard Porter & John Dell, Doug Mahnke & Tom Nguyen, John Cassaday & Richard Horie, Zach Howard, Alex Garner, Morales & Brad Anderson, Steve Skroce & Jason Keith, Walter Simonson & Dave McCaig, these tales span cover-dates January 1993 to November 2022; a period where black heroes finally became acceptable comics currency – at least for most people – and this too brief collation of groundbreaking yarns only begs the question: why isn’t more of this wonderful stuff already available?
© 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2007, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2022, 2023 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Super Boxers – A Marvel Graphic Novel


By Ron Wilson, with John Byrne, Armando Gil & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-939766772 (album PB)

It’s been a long while since Marvel regularly published an all-original graphic novel as opposed to a reprint collections, but once upon a time long ago they were market leader in the field with an entire range of “big stories” told on larger than normal pages (285 x 220mm rather than the customary 258 x 168mm) featuring not only proprietary characters but also licensed assets like Conan and creator-owned properties. They also took chances on unusual and cross-genre tales such as this little oddity which falls squarely into the category of a guilty pleasure and lost treasure…

In the near future, Corporations have assumed control of Earth, with the result that the rich have gotten richer – and more bored whilst an underclass excluded from all rights and privileges scuttles to survive in the dirt beneath their lavish skyscrapers. Gosh, where do they get such outlandish ideas?

As the poor daily trade freedoms and dignity for another meal, in the world of the mega-rich and their wholly-owned economically active contributing citizens, survival is just as harsh and all-pervasive. Businesses survive and grow by consuming each other and everything is produced to facilitate that overweening drive: product, entertainment, people.

Corporations are in a perpetual state of Cold War, ostensibly working together but always looking for an edge to ensure another hostile takeover. Delcos is one such business: CEO Marilyn Hart has never been one of the boys, and now her colleagues, sensing weakness, are closing in for the kill…

In the world below, Max Turner is a star. A scrapper to his core, he works as a prize-fighter: an old fashioned palooka using his fists (augmented by cybernetic gloves, boots and body armour) to get by in a brutal arena of social Darwinism: delivering dangerous entertainment for his daily bread. The Corporations also have Super Boxers: pampered, gussied up, genetic thoroughbreds with their entire lives geared to those explosive moments when they unleash their pedigreed savagery in high-tech arenas for the pleasure and profit of their owners. The greatest of these sporting warriors is the godlike Roman Alexis.

Of course, every society has its malcontents and gadflies: when a slumming talent scout for Marilyn Hart “discovers” Max, the dumb but honest gladiator becomes a pawn in a power play that threatens to tear the corporate world to tatters – but would that really be such a bad thing?

None of that matters to Max or Roman. For them it’s about personal honour. Tech doesn’t matter, rewards don’t matter, freedom doesn’t matter. It all about being the best…

Ron Wilson (Luke Cage, Marvel Two-in-One, The Thing, Arion the Immortal, Fantastic Four) is probably nobody’s favourite artist, but he is a skilled, workmanlike illustrator with a great line in brooding brutes and street cred, whilst Armando Gil’s fluid inks do much to sharpen the static, lumpen scenarios, as do the varied tones of colourists Bob Sharen, Steve Oliff, John Tartaglione, Joe D’Esposito and Mark Bright. The letters are provided by Mike Higgens.

Scripted by John Byrne from Wilson’s plot, this is a harsh, nasty, working-class fable reminiscent of boxing movies like Michael Curtiz’s epic 1937 classic Kid Galahad by way of the Rocky movies, with socio-political undertones on a par with European comics like Métal Hurlant or 2000AD.

Ugly, uncompromising, brutal, this is the kind of book to show anybody who thinks comics are for sissies and is long overdue for revival.
© 1983 Ronald Wilson. All Rights Reserved.

Showcase Presents the Legion of Super-Heroes volume 5


By Cary Bates, Jim Shooter, Paul Levitz, Dave Cockrum, Mike Grell, Bill Draut, Bob Wiacek, Ric Estrada & Joe Staton & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4297-8 9 (TPB)

Once upon a time, a thousand years from now, super-powered kids from many worlds took inspiration from the greatest legend of all time and formed a club of heroes. One day those Children of Tomorrow came back in time and invited their inspiration to join them…

Thus began the vast and epic saga of the Legion of Super-Heroes, as first envisioned by writer Otto Binder & artist Al Plastino when the many-handed mob of juvenile universe-savers debuted in Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958), just as the revived superhero genre was gathering an inexorable head of steam in America. Since that time the fortunes and popularity of the Legion have perpetually waxed and waned, with their future history tweaked and overwritten, retconned and rebooted over and over again to comply with editorial diktat and popular fashion.

This sturdy, cosmically-captivating fifth massive monochrome compendium gathers the chronological parade of futuristic delights from Superboy #193, 195, and Superboy Starring the Legion of Super-Heroes #197-220, covering February 1973 to October 1976, as well as the debut issue of opportunistic spin-off Karate Kid #1 (March 1976) at a time when the superhero genre had again waned but which was slowly recovering to gain its current, seemingly unassailable ascendancy. That plunge in costumed character popularity had seen the team lose their long-held lead spot in Adventure Comics, be relegated to a back-up in Action Comics and even vanish completely for a time. Legion fans, however, are the most passionate of an already fanatical breed…

No sooner had the LSH faded than agitation to revive them began. Following a few tentative forays as an alternating back-up feature in Superboy, the game-changing and sleekly futuristic artwork of newcomer Dave Cockrum inspired a fresh influx of fans and the back-up soon took over the book – exactly as they had done in the 1960s when the Tomorrow Teens took Adventure from The Boy of Steel and made it uniquely their own…

The resurgent dramas begin here with the back-up by Cary Bates & Cockrum from Superboy #193 wherein a select team consisting of Chameleon Boy, Duo Damsel, Chemical King and Karate Kid went undercover on a distant world to prevent atomic Armageddon in ‘War Between the Nights and the Days!’ That’s followed by #195’s ‘The One-Shot Hero!’ which told the story of ERG-1 – a human converted to sentient energy in an antimatter accident. The character had been mentioned in a 1960’s tale of the Adult Legion but here Bates & Cockrum at last fleshed out his only mission and heroic sacrifice with passion and overwhelming style.

The really big change came with the July issue as the long-lived title (which had premiered in 1949 just as the Golden Age was ending) morphed into Superboy Starring the Legion of Super-Heroes with #197.

The relaunch kicked off with a full-length extravaganza. ‘Timber Wolf: Dead Hero, Live Executioner!’ saw the Boy of Steel summoned to the future to be greeted by a hero he believed had died in the line of duty. Somehow Timber Wolf had survived and triumphantly greets his old comrade, but astute Legion leader Mon-El fears some kind of trick in play. He is proved right when the miraculous survivor goes berserk at an awards ceremony, attempting to assassinate the President of Earth.

Wolf is restrained before any harm can be done and a thorough deprogramming soon gives him a clean bill of mental health. Unfortunately that’s exactly what the team’s hidden enemy had planned and when a deeper layer of brainwashing kicks in the helpless mind-slave turns off the security systems allowing militaristic alien warlord Tyr to invade Legion HQ. Happily telepathic Saturn Girl is on hand to free the mental vassal and scupper the assault, but in the scuffle Tyr’s computerised gun hand escapes, swearing vengeance…

The organisation’s greatest foes resurface with a seemingly infallible plan in #198’s ‘The Fatal Five Who Twisted Time!’ – travelling back to 1950s Smallville to plant a device to edit the next thousand years and prevent the Legion ever forming. Second chapter ‘Prisoners of the Time Lock’ reveals how a squad comprising Brainiac 5, Element Lad, Chameleon Boy, Karate Kid, Princess Projectra and Mon-El has already slipped into the relative safety of the time stream, resolved to restore history or die with a resultant clash concluding in ‘Countdown to Catastrophe’

With an entire issue to play with but short stories still popular with readers, the format settled on alternating epics with a double-dose of vignettes. Thus issue #199 opened with ‘The Gun That Mastered Men!’ as Tyr’s computerised wonder weapon sought to liberate its creator, only to rebel at the last moment and try to take over Superboy instead. With that threat comprehensively crushed, Bouncing Boy took centre stage to relate his solo battle against Orion the Hunter in ‘The Impossible Target’ It was mere prelude to anniversary issue #200 wherein he lost his power to hyper-inflate and had to resign. However, it did allow the Bounding Bravo to propose to girlfriend Duo Damsel, unaware that she had been targeted to become ‘The Legionnaire Bride of Starfinger’. The marriage was an event tinged with grandeur and tragedy as the supervillain kidnapped her in ‘This Wife is Condemned’, attempting to emulate her powers and make an army of doppelgangers, but ‘The Secret of the Starfinger Split!’ was never revealed after Superboy enacted a cunning counter-ploy…

SsLSH #201 featured the resurrection of ERG-1 as the energy-being reconstituted himself to save the team from treachery in ‘The Betrayer From Beyond’ whilst ‘The Silent Death’ saw precognitive Dream Girl infallibly predict a comrade’s imminent demise – even though no hero anywhere appeared to be endangered. The next issue was a 100-Page Giant but only two tales were new. They were also Cockrum’s final forays in the 30th century and saw the debut of his equally impressive successor Mike Grell as inker on ‘Lost a Million Miles from Home!’ Here Colossal Boy and Shrinking Violet face a perplexing mystery in deep space: an inexplicable loss of ship’s power which compels them to abandon ship in the worst possible place imaginable. ‘Wrath of the Devil-Fish’ by Bates & Cockrum was the artist’s swan song, featuring the debut of the re-designated ERG-1 as Wildfire as an eerie amphibian creature attacked a pollution-cleansing automated Sea-Station. Of course the monster was not what he seemed and the Legion hoped they might have found a unique new recruit…

Having utterly transformed the look, feel and fortunes of the Legion, Cockrum moved to Marvel where he would perform the same service for another defunct and almost forgotten series called the X-Men

With Grell now handling full art, the youthful Club of Champions were still on the meteoric rise, depicted as a dedicated, driven, combat force in constant, cosmos-threatening peril. However the super-science stalwarts still struggled against a real-world resurgence in spiritual soul-searching and supernatural dramas, with most of the comics industry churning out a myriad of monster and magic tales. The dominant genre even invaded the bastions of graphic futurism in #203’s ‘Massacre by Remote Control’ (Bates & Grell) when increasing indifference and neglect caused veteran legionnaire Invisible Kid to sacrifice his life to save his comrades. Sadness was tinged with arcane joy, however, as this was a twist on gothic ghost stories with the fallen hero united with a lover from the far side of the Veil of Tears…

It was back to sensibly rationalist ground for SsLSH #204 and ‘The Legionnaire Nobody Remembered’, wherein the heroes explored secrets of time traveller Anti-Lad. His accidental meddling altered history, demanding a hands-on response to fix everything, after which Bates & Grell exposed ‘Brainiac 5’s Secret Weakness!’ by reigniting his millennium-spanning romance with Supergirl. Issue #205 was another primarily-reprint 100-Page Giant which included one novel-length saga as 20th century Lana Lang saves the heroes from becoming ‘The Legion of Super-Executioners’, after the entire roster is overwhelmed by a psionic immortal patiently planning to abduct them all and breed a super-army of conquest…

‘The Legionnaires who Haunted Superboy’ led in #206 with Superboy visited by dead friends Invisible Kid and Ferro Lad. This time, the underlying theme was nascent cloning science not eldritch unrest and the outcome was mostly upbeat, after which ‘Welcome Home Daughter… Now Die!’ highlights Princess Projectra’s dilemma as both Royal champion with a commoner boyfriend and untouchable sacrosanct heir to a feudal kingdom after a dutiful family visit results in an attack by a marauding monster…

SsLSH #207 led with ‘The Rookie who Betrayed the Legion!’ as Science Police liaison Dvron seemingly colludes with mesmeric villain Universo, whilst ‘Lightning Lad’s Day of Dread!’ sees the founding hero join his wicked brother Mekt to share a moment of personal grief. It’s just a prelude to the next issue (another 100-Pager) where a 2-pronged scheme maroons Mon-El and Superboy in the 1950s whilst their comrades suffer the ‘Vengeance of the Super-Villains’ in the 30th Century. However, the cunning murder-plot of Lightning Lord’s Legion of Super-Villains is not enough to fool Brainiac 5 or wily LSH espionage chief Chameleon Boy…

In the 1960s the main architect of the Legion’s shift from quasi-comedic adventurers to gritty super-battalion was teen sensation Jim Shooter, whose scripts and layouts (generally finished and pencilled by the astoundingly talented Curt Swan) made the series irresistible to a generation of fans growing up with their heads in the Future and tension-drenched drama on their minds. Now, after time away getting a college education and working in advertising, Shooter returned in Superboy Starring the Legion of Super-Heroes #209 as ‘Who Can Save the Princess?’ tersely details how Projectra succumbs to the lethal “Pain Plague” leading her lover Karate Kid to make an ultimate sacrifice. Bates & Grell wrap up the issue with heartwarming mystery as young fan Flynt Brojj becomes a ‘Hero for a Day’; saving the Legion from an insidious assassination attempt…

SsLSH #210 was an all Shooter/Grell affair, opening with darker fare as ‘Soljer’s Private War’ reveals how a tragic victim of World War VI was transformed by horrific circumstances and resurrected to rampage unstoppably through 30th century Metropolis after which ‘The Lair of the Black Dragon’ at last unearths the incredible origin of Karate Kid. When a pack of martial artists ambush him, their defeat leads to a further attack on the aged Sensei who trained Val Armorr from infancy, and painful revelations that the Legionnaire’s birth-father was Japan’s greatest villain…

‘The Ultimate Revenge’ (scripted by Shooter in #211) sees Element Lad risk career and honour to exact vengeance on space pirate Roxxas who exterminated the hero’s entire race, whilst Bates detailed how the Legion of Substitute Heroes takes over ‘The Legion’s Lost Home’, incidentally solving one of the most infamous cold cases in the history of theft…

Shooter was now main writer and SsLSH #212 began with ‘Last Fight for a Legionnaire’ wherein a sextet of ambitious, disgruntled teens challenge Matter-Eater Lad, Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, Phantom Girl, Shrinking Violet and Chameleon Boy for their positions on the team – resulting in the replacement of one of veteran heroes – whilst ‘A Death Stroke at Dawn’ finds apparently ineffectual Substitute Legionnaire Night Girl regaining confidence by triumphantly saving boyfriend Cosmic Boy and herself from murderous ambushers…

In #213 Ultra Boy only realises he has a crippling psychological handicap when the hunt for infallible super-thief Benn Pares takes the team into ‘The Jaws of Fear’, after which Timber Wolf overcomes a far more physical threat with his rarely exercised wits when attacked by mega-thug Black Mace in ‘Trapped to Live – Free to Die!’ (art by Grell and inker Bill Draut).

The heroes find ‘No Price Too High’ (#214) to save a trillionaire’s obnoxious son from himself and a deranged, disaffected employee who had taken over one of his dad’s automated manufacturing worlds before Bates, Grell & Draut reveal deep-seated trauma cancelling out Shrinking Violet’s powers in ‘Stay Small – Or Die!’ Luckily for Brainiac 5, his drastic plan to shock her back to normal works in time for her to save him from the fallout of his callous actions…

Bates & Grell also observed ‘The Final Eclipse of Sun Boy’ in SsLSH #215, as an intangible assassin trails Phantom Girl to Earth and is in turn followed by an unlikely and unsuspected ally, before Shooter, Grell & Draut reveal Cosmic Boy as ‘The Hero Who Wouldn’t Fight’: honouring a sacred day of penance and superpower abstinence … even at the cost of his life.

Despite the comics world being in the grip of martial arts madness since 1973, DC were slow in making an obvious move and giving one of the oldest comic book Kung Fu fighters his own title. Karate Kid #1 (by Paul Levitz, Ric Estrada & Joe Staton) launched with a March-April 1976 cover-date, plunging valiant Val Armorr back a thousand years to contemporary New York City in ‘My World Begins in Yesterday’. The self-made warrior crashed the time barrier to recapture arch enemy Nemesis Kid, and, after rejecting friendly advice and stern orders to return to Tomorrow, tracked and trashed his enemy with the astounded assistance of schoolteacher Iris Jacobs.

Finding the primitive milieu far more amenable than his origin era, Karate Kid unexpectedly then elected to stick around in the 20th century. That same month SsLSH #216 saw Bates & Grell tackle a thorny issue in ‘The Hero who Hated the Legion’ as the team tries to recruit its first black member. Isolationist Tyroc and his entire long-sequestered race nursed a big (and perfectly understandable) grudge against modern Earth and it took determined diplomacy and a crisis threatening their entire island homeland of Marzal to confront and challenge the prejudice of centuries…

Back then, the simple fact that an African-American hero was considered sales-worthy was the biggest leap imaginable. Excluding jungle comics of the 1940s & 1950s, War comics first opened the door to black characters in the early 1960s, when Robert Kanigher & Joe Kubert created negro boxer Jackie Johnson for Sgt. Rock’s Easy Company (Our Army at War #113, cover-dated December 1961) and Marvel followed suit with a black soldier in Sgt. Fury’s Howling Commandos (Gabe Jones, debuting in #1, May 1963).

After Dell’s western gunfighter Lobo (#1-2, December 1965 & September 1966) the House of Ideas pulled far ahead in the diversity stakes by introducing America’s first negro superheroes. The Black Panther premiered in Fantastic Four #52, (July 1966) and The Falcon first fought in Captain America #117 (September 1969). Luke Cage didn’t become became the Hero for Hire until the spring of 1972, (#1, June cover-date), by which time DC had introduced August Durant/Mockingbird in Secret Six #1 (1968) and Mal Duncan in Teen Titans #26 (1970). Jack Kirby introduced Flipper-Dipper in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #133 (October 1970), New God Vykin the Black in Forever People #1 (March 1971) and many more super-characters of colour for his Fourth World Saga. He later created enterprising “ghetto kid” Shilo Norman as a hero’s apprentice and eventual successor in Mister Miracle ##15 (August, 1973): the same year Bates & Don Heck launched Nubia in Wonder Woman #206.

With more ethnic lead characters appearing, DC finally launched a black-skinned hero – John Stewart (Green Lantern #87, December 1971/January 1972) – although his designation as a “replacement” GL could be construed as more conciliatory and insulting than revolutionary. Black Lightning – DC’s first superhero in his own solo title – didn’t debut until 1977, but before that and all but forgotten now, the Legion had entered the Race race in their future chronicles…

Bates & Grell then took a peek into ‘The Private Lives of Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel’, revealing how even retired Legionnaires still have to fight on occasion. Shooter & Grell monopolised issue #217, beginning with ‘The Charge of the Doomed Legionnaires’ wherein rapacious Khund warlord Field Marshal Lorca pits his strategic genius against Brainiac 5 but underestimates the sheer guts of his foes, whilst ‘Future Shock for Superboy’ sees the Teen of Steel beguiled by 30th century girl Laurel Kent, blithely unaware he is expressing possibly amorous interest in his own distant descendant…

Courtesy of Bates & Grell, Superboy starring the Legion of Super-Heroes #218 reveals how Tyroc’s induction into the team is shanghaied by ‘The Secret Villain the World Never Knew’ although the neophyte soon turns the tables on the interloper Zoraz, after which Shooter (with story inspiration from Ken Klaczac) discloses ‘The Plunder Ploy of the Fatal Five’ in #219 as the terrifying Fatal Five go on an implausible but ruthless spree of cosmic crimes. The Galaxy’s Most Wanted are seemingly gathering items which can only be used for the creation of an all-conquering army, but when the Legion capably counterattack, they realise they have jumped to a woefully wrong conclusion…

The comprehensive cavalcade of chronal capers concludes with #220 as inker Bob Wiacek joins Shooter & Grell for one final brace of bombastic blockbusters beginning with ‘The Super Soldiers of the Slave-Maker’. As the Legion attempts to liberate conquered planet Murgador, resistance comes from the terrified inhabitants, and the astounded saviours learn that a huge bomb at the world’s core makes them all helpless hostages to their alien overlord. The only answer is an application of subterfuge and misdirection to rectify the impossible situation before everything wraps up with ‘Dream Girl’s Living Nightmare’ as Chameleon Boy tries to cheat fate and save a cosmic benefactor from death despite infallible predictions from his precognitive comrade…

The Legion of Super-Heroes is one of the most beloved but bewildering creations in funnybook history: primarily responsible for the rapid growth of a groundswell movement that became American Comics Fandom. Moreover, these scintillating, seductively addictive stories – as much as Julie Schwartz’s Justice League or Marvel’s Fantastic Four – fuelled the interest and imaginations of generations and created the industry we know today. If you love comics and haven’t read this stuff yet, you are the poorer for it and need to feed your future dreams as soon as possible.
© 1973-1976, 2014 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Luke Cage Omnibus (Hero For Hire)


By Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Tony Isabella, Len Wein, Gerry Conway, Billy Graham, Bill Mantlo, George Pérez, Marv Wolfman, Ed Hannigan, Roger Slifer, Chris Claremont, George Tuska, Ron Wilson, Lee Elias, Rich Buckler, Arvell Jones, Sal Buscema, Frank Robbins, Marie Severin, Bob Brown & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4496-4 (HB/Digital edition)

In 1968 the consciousness-raising sporting demonstration of “Black Power” at the Olympic Games galvanised and politicised a generation of youngsters. By this time most comics companies had already made tentative efforts to address what were national socio-political iniquities, but issues of race and ethnicity took a long time to filter through to impressionable young minds avidly absorbing knowledge and attitudes via four-colour pages that couldn’t even approximate the skin tones of African Americans.

As with television, breakthroughs were small, incremental and too often reduced to a cold-war of daringly liberal “firsts”. Excluding a few characters in jungle comic books of the 1940s and 1950, Marvel clearly led the field with a black soldier in Sgt. Fury’s Howling Commandos team – the historically impossible Gabe Jones who debuted in #1, May 1963, and by my reckoning the first recurring African American in comic books. So unlikely a character was ol’ Gabe that he was as a matter of course re-coloured Caucasian at the printers who clearly didn’t realise his ethnicity, but knew he couldn’t be un-white. Jones was followed by actual negro superheroes Black Panther in Fantastic Four#52 (July 1966), and The Falcon in Captain America #117 (September 1969).

America’s first black hero to helm his own title had come (and gone largely unnoticed) in a little remembered or regarded title from Dell Comics. Created by artist Tony Tallarico and scripter D.J. Arneson and debuting in December 1965, Lobo was a gunslinger in the old wild west, battling injustice just like any cowboy hero would. Arguably a greater breakthrough was Marvel’s  Joe Robertson, City Editor of The Daily Bugle; an erudite, brave and proudly ordinary mortal distinguished by his sterling character, not costume or skin tone. He first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man # 51 (August 1967), proving in every panel that the world wouldn’t end if black folk and white folk occupied the same spaces…

This big change had grown slowly out of raised social awareness during a terrible time in American history but things today don’t seem all that different, except the bile and growing taste for violence is turned towards European accents, or health workers and shop staff as well as brown skins…

As the 1960s turned, more positive and inclusive incidences of ethnic characters appeared in the US, with DC finally getting an African America hero in John Stewart (Green Lantern #87, December 1971/January 1972) – although his designation as a replacement Emerald Peacekeeper might be construed as more conciliatory and insulting than revolutionary. DC’s first hero with his own title was Black Lightning, who didn’t debut until April 1977, although Jack Kirby had introduced Vykin in Forever People #1 and The Black Racer in New Gods #3 (March and July 1971) and Shilo Norman as Scott Free’s apprentice (and eventual successor) in Mister Miracle #15 (August 1973).

As usual, it took a bold man and changing economics to really promote change. With declining comics sales intersecting a time of rising Black Consciousness, cash – if not cashing in – was probably the trigger for “the Next Step”. Contemporary “Blaxsploitation” cinema and novels had invigorated commercial interests throughout America, and in that atmosphere of outlandish dialogue, daft outfits and barely concealed – but certainly justified – outrage, an angry black man with a shady past and apparently dubious morals must have felt like a sure-fire hit to Marvel’s bosses. Luke Cage, Hero for Hire launched in the summer of 1972. A year later, The Black Panther finally got his own series in Jungle Action #5 and Blade: Vampire Hunter debuted in Tomb of Dracula #10.

This stunning compendium collects Hero for Hire #1-16, Luke Cage Power Man #17-48 and Annual #1: a landmark breakthrough series cumulatively spanning June 1972 to October 1977 and begins with Lucas, a hard-case inmate at brutal Seagate Prison. Like all convicts, he says he was framed and his uncompromising attitude makes mortal enemies of savage, racist guards Rackham and Quirt, and doesn’t endear him to the rest of the prison population such as genuinely bad guys Shades and Comanche either…

‘Out of Hell… A Hero!’ was written by Archie Goodwin and illustrated by George Tuska & Billy Graham (with initial input from Roy Thomas and John Romita) and sees a new warden arrive promising to change the hell-hole into a properly administered correctional facility. Having heard the desperate con’s tale of woe, prison doctor Noah Burstein convinces Lucas to participate in a radical experiment in exchange for a parole hearing…

Lucas had grown up in Harlem, a tough kid who managed to stay honest even when his best friend Willis Stryker had not. They remained close even though walking different paths – until a woman came between them. To be rid of his romantic rival, Stryker planted drugs and had Lucas shipped off to jail. While he was there his girl Reva – who had never given up on him – was killed when she got in way of bullets meant for up-and-coming gangster Stryker…

With nothing to lose, Lucas undergoes Burstein’s process – experimental cell-regeneration – but Rackham sabotages the process, hoping to kill the con before he can expose their illegal treatment of convicts. The equipment goes haywire and something incredible occurs. Lucas – panicked and now somehow super-strong – punches his way out of the lab and through prison walls, only to face a hail of gunfire. His body plunges over a cliff and is never found.

Months later, a vagrant prowls the streets of New York City and stumbles into a robbery. Almost casually he downs the felon, accepts a reward from the grateful victim and has a bright idea. Strong, bullet-proof, street-wise and honest, Lucas will hide in plain sight while planning his revenge on Stryker. Since his only skill is fighting, he becomes a private paladin – a Hero for Hire

Making allowances for the colourful, often ludicrous dialogue necessitated by the Comics Code’s sanitising of “street-talking Jive”, this is probably the grittiest origin tale of the classic Marvel years, with the tense action continuing in ‘Vengeance is Mine!’ as the man calling himself Luke Cage stalks his target. Stryker has risen quickly, now controlling a vast portion of the drug trade as the deadly Diamondback, and Cage has a big surprise in store when beautiful physician Claire Temple comes to his aid after a calamitous struggle. Thinking him fatally shot, her surprise is dwarfed by his own when Cage meets her boss. Seeking to expiate his sins, Noah Burstein runs a rehab clinic on the sordid streets of Times Square, but his efforts have drawn the attention of Diamondback, who doesn’t like someone trying to fix his paying customers…

Burstein apparently does not recognise Cage, so even though faced with eventual exposure and return to prison, the Hero for Hire offers to help the hard-pressed medics. Setting up an office above a movie house on 42nd Street, Cage meets a young man who will be his greatest friend – D.W. Griffith: nerd, film freak and plucky white sidekick. However, before Cage can settle in, Diamondback strikes and the age-old game of blood and honour plays out the way it always does…

HFH #3 introduces Cage’s first returning villain in ‘Mark of the Mace!’ as Burstein – for his own undisclosed reasons – keeps Cage’s secret, whilst disgraced soldier Gideon Mace launches a terror attack on Manhattan. With his dying breath, one of the mad Colonel’s troops hires Cage to stop the attack, which he does in explosive fashion. Inker Billy Graham graduated to full art chores for ‘Cry Fear… Cry Phantom!’ in #4, wherein a deranged, deformed maniac carries out random assaults in Times Square. Or is there perhaps another motive behind the vicious attacks?

Steve Englehart took over as scripter and Tuska returned to pencil ‘Don’t Mess with Black Mariah!’ in the next issue: a tale of organised scavengers which also introduced unscrupulous reporter Phil Fox: an unsavoury sneak with greedy pockets and a nose for scandal. In ‘Knights and White Satin’ (Englehart, Gerry Conway, Graham & Paul Reinman) the swanky, ultra-rich Forsythe sisters hire Cage to bodyguard their dying father from a would-be murderer too impatient to wait the week it will take for the old man to die from a terminal illness.

This more-or less straight mystery yarn (if you discount a madman and killer robots) is followed by ‘Jingle Bombs’ – a strikingly different Christmas tale from Englehart, Tuska & Graham, before Cage properly enters the Marvel Universe in ‘Crescendo!’ Here he is hired by Doctor Doom to retrieve rogue androids that have absconded from Latveria. They are hiding as black men among the shifting masses of Harlem and the Iron Dictator needs someone who knows that unfamiliar environment. Naturally, Cage accomplishes his mission, only to have Doom stiff him for the fee. Big mistake…

‘Where Angels Fear to Tread!’ (#9) finds the enraged Hero for Hire borrowing a vehicle from the Fantastic Four to play Repo Man in Doom’s own castle, just in time to get caught in the middle of a grudge match between the tyrant and alien invader the Faceless One. It’s then back to street-level basics in ‘The Lucky… and the Dead!’ as Cage takes on a gambling syndicate led by schizophrenic Señor Suerte, who doubles his fortunes as murderous Señor Muerte (that’s Mr. Luck and Mr. Death to you): a 2-part thriller with rigged games and deathtraps climaxing in ‘Where There’s Life…!’ as Phil Fox finally uncovers Cage’s secret…

HFH #12 featured the first of many clashes with alchemical villain ‘Chemistro!’, after which Graham handled full art duties with ‘The Claws of Lionfang’ – a killer using big cats to destroy his enemies prior to Cage tackling hyperthyroid lawyer Big Ben Donovan in ‘Retribution!’ as the tangled threads of the fugitive’s murky past slowly become a noose around his neck. ‘Retribution: Part II!’ sees Graham and Tony Isabella sharing the writer’s role as many disparate elements converge to expose Cage. The crisis builds as Quirt kidnaps Luke’s girlfriend, and Seagate escapees Comanche and Shades stalking him whilst New York cops hunt him. The last thing the Hero for Hire needs is a new super-foe, but that’s just what he gets in #16’s ‘Shake Hands with Stiletto!’ (Isabella, Graham & Frank McLaughlin): a dramatic finale that literally brings the house down and clears up most of the old business.

Luke Cage, Hero For Hire was probably Marvel’s edgiest series, but after a few years tense action and peripheral interactions with the greater Marvel Universe led to a minor rethink and the title was altered, if not the basic premise. The private detective motif proved a brilliant stratagem in generating stories for a character perceived as a reluctant champion at best and outright antihero by nature. His job allowed Cage to maintain an outsider’s edginess but also meant adventure literally walked through his shabby door every issue. However, following the calamitous clash with his oldest enemies, most old business was settled and a partial re-branding of America’s premier black crusader began in issue #17. The mercenary aspect was downplayed (at least on covers) as Len Wein, Tuska & Graham gave Luke Cage, Power Man a fresh start during tumultuous team-up ‘Rich Man: Iron Man… Power Man: Thief!’

Here the still “For Hire” hero is commissioned to test Tony Stark’s security… by stealing his latest invention. Sadly, neither Stark nor his alter ego Iron Man know anything about it and the result is another classic hero-on-hero duel. Vince Colletta signed on as inker with #18’s ‘Havoc on the High Iron!’, and Cage battles high-tech killer Steeplejack whilst the next two issues offered the wanted man a tantalising chance to clear his name. ‘Call Him… Cottonmouth!’ debuted a crime lord with inside information of the frame-up perpetrated by Willis Stryker. Tragically, hope of a new clean life is snatched away despite Cage’s explosive efforts in the Isabella scripted conclusion ‘How Like a Serpent’s Tooth…’

Isabella, Wein, Ron Wilson & Colletta crafted ‘The Killer With My Name!’ as Cage is ambushed by Avengers villain Power Man, who understandably wants his nom de guerre back. He changes his mind upon waking up from the resultant bombastic battle that ensues, after which psychotic archfoe Stiletto returns beside his equally high-tech balmy brother Discus in ‘The Broadway Mayhem of 1974’ (Isabella, Wilson & Colletta), subsequently revealing a startling connection to Cage’s origins.

All this constant carnage and non-stop tension sent sometime-romantic interest Claire Temple scurrying for points distant, and in LCPM #23, Cage and D.W. go looking for her, promptly fetching up in a fascistic planned community run by old foe deranged military terrorist Mace in ‘Welcome to Security City’ (inked by Dave Hunt). This fed directly into a 2-part premier for another African American superhero as Cage and D.W. track Claire to the Ringmaster’s Circus of Crime in #24’s ‘Among Us Walks… a Black Goliath! (Isabella, Tuska & Hunt)…

Bill Foster was a highly educated black supporting character: a biochemist who worked with Henry Pym (scientist-superhero known as Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath and Yellowjacket over decades of costumed capers). Foster first appeared in Avengers #32 (September 1966), before fading from view when Pym eventually regained his size-changing abilities. Carrying on his own size-shifting research, Foster was now trapped as a giant, unable to attain normal size, and Cage discovered he was also Claire’s former husband. When he became stuck at 15 feet tall, she had rushed back to Bill’s colossal side to help find a cure.

When Luke turned up, passions boiled over, resulting in another classic heroes-clash moment until the mesmeric Ringmaster hypnotised all combatants, intent on using their strength to feather his own three-ring nest. ‘Crime and Circuses’ (Isabella, Bill Mantlo, Wilson & Fred Kida) saw the good guys helpless until Claire came to the rescue, before making her choice and returning to New York with Luke. Foster soon thereafter won his own short-run series, becoming Marvel’s fourth African American costumed hero under the heavy-handed and rather obvious sobriquet Black Goliath

Timely spoofing of a popular ‘70’s TV show inspired ‘The Night Shocker! (Englehart, Tuska & Colletta) as Cage stalks an apparent vampire attacking 42nd Street patrons, after which a touching human drama finds Cage forced to subdue a tragically simple-minded but super-powered wrestler in ‘Just a Guy Named “X”!’ (by Mantlo, George Pérez & Al McWilliams, and paying tribute to Steve Ditko’s classic yarn from Amazing Spider-Man #38).

A new level of sophistication, social commentary and bizarre villainy began in issue 28 as Don McGregor started his run of macabre crime sagas, opening when Cage meets ‘The Man Who Killed Jiminy Cricket!’ (illustrated by Tuska & Colletta).

Hired by a chemical company to stop industrial espionage, Luke fails to prevent the murder of his prime suspect and is somehow defeated by deadly weirdo Cockroach Hamilton (and his beloved shotgun “Josh”). Left for dead in one of the most outré cliffhanger situations ever seen, Cage took two issues to escape as the next issue featured a “deadline-doom” fill-in tale. Courtesy of Mantlo, Tuska & Colletta, Luke Cage, Power Man #29 revealed that ‘No One Laughs at Mr. Fish!’ (although the temptation is overwhelming) as Cage fights a fin-faced mutated mobster robbing shipping trucks for organised crime analogue The Maggia, after which the story already in progress resumes in #30 with ‘Look What They’ve Done to Our Lives, Ma!’ (by McGregor, Rich Buckler, Arvell Jones & Keith Pollard).

Escaping from a deadly deathtrap, Cage hunts down Hamilton, and confronts his erudite, sardonic, steel-fanged boss Piranha Jones just after they succeed in stealing a leaking canister of deadly nerve gas. The dread drama concludes in ‘Over the Years They Murdered the Stars!’ (Sal Buscema & the legion of deadline-busting Crusty Bunkers) as Cage saves his city at the risk of his life before serving just deserts to the eerie evildoers…

Having successfully rebranded himself, the urban privateer made ends meet whilst seeking a way to stay under police radar and clear his name. The new level of sophisticated, social commentary and bizarre villainy when McGregor took over writing led to Cage saving the entire city in true superhero style as #32 opens with the (unlicensed) PI in the leafy suburbs, hired to protect a black family from literally incendiary racist super-villain Wildfire in ‘The Fire This Time!’ (illustrated by Frank Robbins & Colletta). This self-appointed champion of moral outrage is determined to keep his affluent, decent neighbourhood white, and even Power Man is ultimately unable to prevent a ghastly atrocity from being perpetrated…

Back in the comfort zone of Times Square again, Cage is in the way when a costumed manic comes looking for Noah Burnstein, and painfully learns ‘Sticks and Stone Will Break Your Bones, But Spears Can Kill You!’ As shady reporters, sleazy lawyers and police detective Quentin Chase all circle, looking to uncover the Hero for Hire’s secret past in ‘Death, Taxes and Springtime Vendettas!’ (Frank Springer inks), Cage’s attention is distracted from Burstein’s stalker by deranged wrestler dubbed The Mangler, which leads to a savage showdown and near-fatal outcome in ‘Of Memories, Both Vicious and Haunting!’ (plotted by Marv Wolfman, dialogued by McGregor and illustrated by Marie Severin, Joe Giella & Frank Giacoia). Here at last, the reasons for the campaign of terror against the doctor are finally, shockingly exposed…

Power Man Annual #1 (1976) follows with ‘Earthshock!’ – by Chris Claremont, Lee Elias & Hunt – taking Cage to Japan as bodyguard to wealthy Samantha Sheridan. She’s being targeted by munitions magnate and tectonics-warping maniac Moses Magnum, intent on tapping Earth’s magma core, even though the very planet is at risk of destruction. Thankfully, not even his army of mercenaries is enough to stop Cage in full rage…

Next comes the cover for Power Man #36 (cover-dated October 1976) and another casualty of the “Dreaded Deadline Doom”, reprinting #12: the debut of the villain who follows in #37’s all-new ‘Chemistro is Back! Deadlier Than Ever!’ by Wolfman, Wilson & A Bradford. Here the apparently grudge-bearing recreant attacks Cage at the behest of a new mystery mastermind who clarifies his position in follow-up ‘…Big Brother Wants You… Dead!’ (Wolfman, Mantlo, Bob Brown & Jim Mooney). His minions Cheshire Cat and Checkpoint Charlie shadow the increasingly frustrated investigator, before repeated inconclusive and inexplicable clashes with Chemistro lead to a bombastic ‘Battle with the Baron!’ (inked by Klaus Janson) – a rival mastermind hoping to corner the market on crime in NYC. The convoluted clash concludes in ‘Rush Hour to Limbo!’ (Wolfman, Elias & Giacoia) as one final deathtrap for Cage turns into an explosive last hurrah for Big Brother and his crew…

Inked by Tom Palmer, #41 debuts a new vigilante in ‘Thunderbolt and Goldbug!’ as a super-swift masked hero makes a name for himself cleaning up low-level scum. Simultaneously, Cage is hired by a courier company to protect a bullion shipment, but when the truck is bombed and the guards die, dazed and furious Cage can’t tell villain from vigilante and takes on the wrong guy…

Answers if not conclusions are forthcoming in ‘Gold! Gold! Who’s Got the Gold?’ (with Alex Niño on inks) as Luke learns who his real friends and foes are, only to be suckered into a lethal trap barely escaped in #43’s ‘The Death of Luke Cage!’ In the aftermath, with legal authorities closing in on his fake life, Cage flees town and sheds his Power Man persona. However, even in the teeming masses of Chicago he can’t escape his past as an old enemy mistakenly assumes he’s been tracked down by the hero he hates most in all the world. Wolfman plots and Ed Hannigan scripts for Elias & Palmer as ‘Murder is the Man Called Mace!’ sees Luke dragged into the dishonoured soldier’s scheme to seize control of America and – despite his best and most violent efforts – beaten and strapped to a cobalt bomb on ‘The Day Chicago Died!’ (Wolfman & Elias). Sadly, after breaking free of the device, it’s lost in the sewers, prompting a frantic ‘Chicago Trackdown!’ before another savage showdown with Mace and his military madmen culminate in a chilling ‘Countdown to Catastrophe!’ (scripted by Roger Slifer) as a fame-hungry sniper starts shooting citizens whilst the authorities are preoccupied searching for the missing nuke…

With atomic armageddon averted at the last moment, this collection – and Cage’s old life – end on a well-conceived final charge. With issue #48, Cage’s comics title would be shared with mystic martial artist Danny Rand in the superbly enticing odd couple feature Power Man and Iron Fist, but before that there’s still a ‘Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight!’ courtesy of Claremont, Tuska & Bob Smith as Chicago is attacked by brain-sucking electrical parasite Zzzax! Thankfully, our steel-skinned stalwart is more than a match for the mind-stealing megawatt monstrosity…

With all covers – by Romita, Graham, Gil Kane, Wilson, Rich Buckler, Dave Cockrum, Marie Severin, Ernie Chan, Jim Starlin, Mike Esposito, Frank Giacoia, Klaus Janson, Dan Adkins, Tom Palmer, Joe Sinnott & Pablo Marcos – ; retrieved Introductions ‘An Optimistic Time’ by Englehart, ‘Always Forward’ by Isabella and ‘Luke Cage and the Big Bad City’ by McGregor and – from #3 onwards – letters pages ‘Comments to Cage’, the street level drama is augmented by a treasure trove of extra features. Adding value are the cover of reprint one-shot Giant-Size Power Man from 1975; Marvel Bulletins page promo from May 1972; House ads; original art pages and covers by Romita, Graham, Kane, Brown, pre-corrected production photostats, and Cockrum & Romita’s Cage entry from the 1975 Mighty Marvel Calendar (March, in case you were wondering) as well as the same by Sal Buscema from the Mighty Marvel Bicentennial Calendar (1976) and Wilson & Sinnott’s June 1977 Marvel Comics Memory Album Calendar before ending with the cover art for this collection by Phil Noto.

Arguably a little dated now (us in the know prefer the term “retro”), these tales were crucial in breaking down many social barriers across the complacent, intolerant, WASP-flavoured US comics landscape, and their power – if not their initial impact – remains undiminished to this day. These are tales well worth your time and attention.
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