Author: NowReadThis

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Sidney Sime: Master of the Mysterious


By Simon Heneage & Henry Ford (Thames and Hudson)
ISBN: 0-500-27154-2

A little while ago I mentioned with due reverence the wonderful illustrator Sidney Herbert Sime: late Victorian, Edwardian and latterly Georgian master of fantasy art whose stunning and imaginative pictorial forays into the realms of fable, myth and literary romanticism influenced two generations of readers and creators, but who is these days all but forgotten.

Not On My Watch…

Sime is archetypal of the rag-to-riches-to-obscurity fate which befell so many talented individuals of this period (for instance, do you know who Arthur Machen, William Hope Hodgson or even William Friese-Greene were?). After pulling himself up by his bootstraps, Sime became a celebrated and notable society figure thanks to his unique creations before changing modes and his own uncompromising nature isolated him from rapidly evolving times and tastes.

There aren’t too many tomes celebrating his work (this one is still available through a few internet dealers, though) but you can still see many of his original works if you visit the Sidney Sime Memorial Gallery in Worplesdon, near Guildford in Surrey.

After Acknowledgements and an Introduction, a short, erudite essay – packed with supporting artworks – describes the artist’s beginnings in ‘The Early Years’, disclosing that we don’t really know when he was born (sometime between 1865-1867 in Hulme, Greater Manchester) before going on to describe how the second son of six fathered by a warehouseman worked as a child in coal mines, as a linen draper, in a bakery, barbers and a shoemakers: voraciously self-educating, busking music and creating pictures to sell in his off-hours.

He graduated to sign-writing and found the funds to attend Liverpool School (later College) of Art, then joined the University of Liverpool before moving to London, winning artistic awards and securing commercial commissions in many newspapers and especially ‘The Magazines’ such as Pick-Me-Up, Pall Mall Gazette, Eureka, The Idler (which he eventually purchased thanks to a wealthy relative’s bequest) and others.

As well as the enigmatic fantasy works he loved creating, Sime sold straight illustrations, humorous cartoons, political gags, topical portraits, theatrical sketches and all the other assorted images a picture-hungry public demanded in an era when photography was still in its infancy.

Almost all of Sime’s best works were created in black and white – although he crafted them in a bewildering melange of media which frequently aroused the ire of the printers and plate-makers who had to reproduce his work in the newspapers, magazines and books of the era.

His native brilliance soon found him a place amongst the artistic and intellectual intelligentsia where he moved easily beside the likes of Caran d’Ache, Max Beerbohm, Phil May, Arnold Golsworthy and Raven-Hill as ‘Painter and Clubman’…

Sime is best remembered however for ‘The Illustrated Books’ – providing visual accompaniments for the burgeoning ranks of literary fantasists such as Golworthy (Death and the Woman), William Hope Hodgson (The Ghost Pirates), Machen (House of Souls) and more.

His most famous pieces resulted from a decades-long collaboration with Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany. The young Irish writer and dramatist – who published under the name Lord Dunsany – was a huge fan who sought out Sime in 1904 and together they revolutionised popular literature with such unforgettable fables as The Gods of Pegana, The Book of Wonder, and The King of Elfland’s Daughter.

Changing tastes following the Great War saw a decline in sublimely ethereal fantasy and Sime pursued newspaper work once more in periodicals such as The Illustrated London News, The Sketch, Tattler and The Strand. In his later years he also moved into ‘Theatre Design’ – including a triptych of operas based on the Mabinogion – and even held successful one-man shows as detailed in ‘The Exhibitions of 1924 and 1927’ before gradually fading from public view.

Concentrating on oil painting and illustrating the Gospel of St. John during ‘Later Years at Worplesdon’, he lived quietly in a cottage he purchased for himself and bride Mary Susan Pickett. He died on May 22nd 1941.

The ‘Conclusion’ and extensive ‘Bibliography’ suitably round things off here as an hors d’oeuvre to the visual main course here as The Plates: a Fantasy Portfolio offers a dozen fully annotated, full page Magazines Illustrations and 46 stunning masterpieces from the Dunsany books similarly presented…

Included in this last section are astounding and captivating prints from The Gods of Pegana, Time and the Gods, The Sword of Welleran, A Dreamer’s Tales, The Book of Wonder, Tales of Wonder, The King of Elfland’s Daughter and My Talks with Dean Spanley, covering the period 1905 to 1936, after which a scholarly Index neatly concludes the affair.

Sidney Sime is an astonishing one-of-a-kind creator whose influence is still being felt today, and one who has been overlooked for far too long. Here’s hoping the current trend for spooky wonders tempts some enterprising publisher to produce the kind of laudatory deluxe chronicle his genius truly deserves…

© 1980 Thames and Hudson Ltd, London. All Rights Reserved.
The master of mystery does have his own gallery so please check out The Sidney Sime Gallery and then go see the astounding arts and crafts masterpieces for yourself…

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Thor: Siege Aftermath


By Kieron Gillen, Richard Elson & Doug Braithwaite with Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Neal Adams & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4638-4

In the middle of 1962, Stan Lee & Jack Kirby launched their latest offbeat superhero creation in monsters-and-mysteries anthology Journey into Mystery #83. The tale   introduced crippled American doctor Donald Blake who took a vacation in Norway only to encounter the vanguard of an alien invasion. Fleeing in terror he was trapped in a cave wherein lay an old, gnarled walking stick. When, in helplessness and frustration, the puny human smashed the cane into a huge boulder obstructing his escape, his insignificant frame was transformed into the hulking and brawny Norse God of Thunder, Thor!

The series grew from formulaic beginnings battling aliens, commies and cheap thugs into a vast, breathtaking cosmic playground for Kirby’s burgeoning imagination with Journey into Mystery inevitably becoming the Mighty Thor where, after years of bombastic adventuring, the peculiarities and inconsistencies of the Don Blake/Thor relationship were re-examined and finally clarified to explain how the immortal godling could also be locked within frail Don Blake.

The epic saga took the immortal hero back to his long-distant youth and finally revealed that the mortal surgeon was no more than an Odinian construct designed to teach the Thunder God humility and compassion…

Time passed; Kirby left and the Thunderer’s fortunes waxed and waned. During the troubled mid-1990’s the title vanished, culled with the Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America and Fantastic Four and subcontracted out to Image Comics instigators Jim Lee and Rob Liefield during 1996-1997 in a desperate attempt to improve sales after Marvel’s apocalyptic Onslaught publishing event.

In 1998 Heroes Return and Heroes Reborn saw those properties rejoin the greater Marvel Universe, relaunched in brand new first issues with the Thunder God reappearing a few weeks later.

After many phenomenal adventures the second volume concluded with issues #84-85 (November-December 2004) which once-and-for-all depicted the Really, Truly, We Mean It End of the Gods and Day of Ragnarok as Thor himself instigated the final fall to end a ceaseless cycle of suffering and destruction, ultimately defeating the ruthless beings who had manipulated the inhabitants of Asgard since time began…

You can’t keep a profitable property down or a great comics character unresurrected, so he was reborn again as a mysterious voice summoned Thor back to life – and Earth (us fans call it Midgard) – in a crack of spectacular thunder. Revived for an unspecified purpose the solitary Lord of Asgard swiftly set about retrieving the souls of his fellow godlings, all scattered and hidden inside human hosts and set up Asgard on Earth a few paltry feet above the ground of Broxton, Oklahoma…

As this small, simple community with some intriguing neighbours increasingly became the focus of cosmic events, expatriate big city doctor Don Blake was corporeally merged with Thor and became the mortal host for the God of Thunder…

What you need to know: trickster god Loki is dead but his legacy of malign machinations continues to affect the earthbound Asgardians as they begin to rebuild their devastated city following an appalling assault by the massed forces of out-of-control American Security Czar Norman Osborn in Siege…

Balder the Brave is the latest leader of the displaced deities but the populace is far from united behind him, with factions forming advocating the accession of Thor or his brother Tyr, God of War. Neither blood-son of lost Odin wants the job or feels worthy of the throne…

When Asgard materialised on Earth, the afterlife realms of Hel and Valhalla were displaced and Hela, caretaker of the dead, allowed Loki to broker a deal which sublet a portion of Mephisto‘s Hell as a home for the wandering Norse dead. Hela feared her phantom charges would become prey to an ancient pre-Asgardian horror which consumed the spirits of fallen heroes, but she was unaware that the dire Disir were also pawns of the turbulent, troubled God of Evil who was her father…

Nor was she privy to the fact that, to seal the deal, Loki had given Mephisto mastery of the voracious, vile and utterly debased Dead-eaters…

Collecting issues #611-614 of Thor (from August to November 2010), this grim fury tale of Hells without a Heaven also includes a classic 3-part saga of Asgardians in the Underworld first seen in Thor #179-181 at the end of the 1960s.

‘The Fine Print’ consists of four chapters scripted by Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Richard Elson & Doug Braithwaite and begins with Thor, Balder and Tyr officiating at a mass pyre for the hundreds who fell in defence of Asgard and Broxton. Meanwhile in Mephisto’s blazing inferno, lesser demons ousted from their hellish lands prepare to oust Hela and her transplanted Hall of Heroes, but are completely eradicated by the Disir – despised proto-Valkyries who served primordial god Bor until they acquired a taste for the flesh and souls of fallen warriors and were condemned for all eternity.

Simply to speak their communal name summons them from eternity to kill and consume. As none has done so in an age, most Asgardians believe them to be myth…

Now, with upheaval in the Realms of the Gods, the horrors are free to sate their insatiable hungers, first upon the demon armies and after on the hallowed Asgardian dead. First, however, they must gain the sanction of their new master Mephisto.

The arch deceiver won’t say yes – but he doesn’t say no either…

When the “Ever-Hungry Ones” raid Valhalla, the only place Hela can turn is to the living world where hopefully flesh and blood still honours the sanctity of the fallen…

In Asgard, Balder is uneasy with his stewardship and seeks comfort in the wisdom of weather goddess Kelda Stormrider, who sacrificed so much – including her mortal beloved Bill and briefly her own life – to defend the kingdom. He is completely unaware what Loki’s magics have made of her now…

When Hela materialises amongst the ashes of the recent dead and begs for aid, she is naturally rebuffed until one foolhardy warrior utters the forbidden name of the damned and is instantly rent to shreds by the terrifying harpies…

Rather than kill them all, Brün of the Disir leaves with a warning: her kind prefers meals seasoned by life’s ending and would prefer to dine on souls that have expired. After all, they are patient and have all the time in the world…

With the weakened Hela only able to carry two warriors, Thor and Tyr ignore their suspicious misgivings and return with her to rescue their departed friends and family. The War God goes with Hela to defend the embattled shades of Valhalla whilst the Thunderer prepares to fight his way across all Hell in search of the sword Eir-Gram, forged by Loki through despicable rite and ritual and the only weapon capable of harming Disir…

The puissant blade is lodged in Mephisto’s Great Hall but Thor wisely chooses to force his way to it rather than accept a sly offer of assistance from the Tempter to simply collect it…

Ferocious, grandly scaled, truly epic and astoundingly clever, this is a superb tale of operatic tone and proportions, full of twists and turns and surprises that adds volumes to the modern mythology of the Thunder God and will delight fans of comics and the cosmic.

This dark and brutal tome continues with a masterful changing of the guard and sign of the times which originally appeared in Thor #179-181, August to October 1970.

In #179 ‘No More the Thunder God!’ saw Thor, Sif and Balder dispatched to Earth to arrest Loki. This story was Kirby’s (and inker Vince Colletta’s) last: the entire vast unfolding new mythology was left on an artistic cliffhanger as the Thunder God was ambushed by his wicked step-brother who used infernal magic to trade places with his shining-souled half-brother…

By switching bodies, the Lord of Evil gained safety and the power of the Storm whilst Thor was doomed to endure whatever punishment Odin decreed…

‘When Gods Go Mad!’ introduced the totally different style of Neal Adams to the mix, inked by the comfortably familiar Joe Sinnott, as the true Thunder God was sent to Hell and the tender mercies of Mephisto, whilst on Earth Loki used his brother’s body to terrorise the UN Assembly and declare himself Master of the World…

In #181 ‘One God Must Fall’ Sif led Warriors Three Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg on a rescue mission to the Infernal Realm, whilst Balder struggled to combat the combined power of Thor and malice of Loki, until Mephisto was finally thwarted and a cataclysmic battle of brothers on embattled Earth set the world at last to rights.

Dark, brooding and ferocious, this is a breathtaking Costumed Drama that will enthral and delight fans of both comic and filmic Asgardian iterations which also includes covers and variants by Mico Suayan, Laura Martin, Adams, Sinnott, John Romita Sr., Marie Severin, John Buscema & Chris Stevens plus a beautiful selection of pencilled original art by Braithwaite.
© 1970, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Seven Soldiers of Victory Archives volume 1


By Mort Weisinger, Bill Finger, Jerry Siegel, Mort Meskin, George Papp, Jack Lehti, Hal Sherman, Creig Flessel, Ed Dobrotka & various (DC Comics)
ISBN 978-04012 1-84576-236-3

After the actual invention of the comicbook superhero – for which read the Action Comics debut of Superman in 1938 – the most significant event in the industry’s history was the combination of individual sales-points into a group. Thus what seems blindingly obvious to us with the benefit of four-colour hindsight was proven: a multitude of popular characters could multiply readership simply by appearing together.

Plus, of course, a mob of superheroes is just so much cooler than one (or one-and-a-half if there are sidekicks involved) …

You can’t say it too often: the creation of the Justice Society of America in 1941 utterly changed the shape of the budding industry. Soon after the team launched, even National/DC – All American Comics’ publishing partner in the landmark venture – wanted to get in on the act and created their own proprietary squad of solo stars, populated with a number of their characters who hadn’t made it onto the roster of that super-successful cooperative coalition of AA and DC stars.

Oddly they never settled on a name and the team of non-super powered mystery men who debuted in Leading Comics #1 in 1941 were retroactively and alternatively dubbed The Law’s Legionnaires or The Seven Soldiers of Victory.

They never even had their own title-logo but only appeared as solo stars grouped together on the 14 spectacular covers – the first four of which, by Mort Meskin and Fred Ray, preface each collaborative epic in this spectacular deluxe hardback.

The full contents of this bombastic barrage of comicbook bravado were originally presented in the quarterly Leading #1-4, spanning Winter 1941/1942 to Fall 1942 and, following a fascinating history lesson and potted biography of the component crusaders in cartoonist, biographer and historian R.C. Harvey’s Foreword, the Golden Age glamour and glory begins with the heroes’ first adventure.

The sagas all followed a basic but extremely effective formula, established by scripter Mort Weisinger in the first adventure when dying criminal genius The Hand drew up a ‘Blueprint for Crime’ (illustrated by George Papp) to leave a lasting legacy of villainy.

Unable to carry out his perfidious plans in person, he subcontracted a fistful of macabre felons but insisted they warn their particular heroic arch-enemies as part of the triumphal deal…

Following a trail of breadcrumbs, Green Arrow and Speedy, the Shining Knight, Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, Crimson Avenger and the Vigilante stumbled upon each other, shared their knowledge of the grand scheme and soon separated again to tackle their own particular antagonists…

Papp continued as illustrator whilst the Emerald Archers headed to ‘Death Valley’ to stop the ingenious Professor Merlin using a freeze machine to extort the location of a fabulous gold mine out of a sun-loving old prospector, before heading back to track down the Hand…

Regular creative team Jerry Siegel & Hal Sherman then took the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy south of the border in ‘Peril in Panama’, where ectomorphic assassin the Needle tried to steal a seismic ray gun and shatter the Canal Zone and American trade, whilst Jack Lehti revealed how Crimson Avenger (and oriental sidekick Wing) bagged blue-collar mobster Big Caesar when the thug created a ‘Blackout over Broadway’ to plunder in relative safety…

Arthurian paladin the Shining Knight slept in ice until defrosted in 1941, where his magic sword, armour and winged horse made Sir Justin a formidable foe of injustice. Here he battled ‘The Red Dragon’ (illustrated by Creig Flessel) to free a lost tribe of Indian braves from the sinister slaver whilst undisputed artistic star of the show Mort Meskin revealed in stunning style how Hollywood’s glitterati were saved from being transformed into ‘The Stone People’ by the diabolical Dummy…

With each subordinate subdued, the heroes simultaneously closed on The Hand to end the dying dastard’s depredations in Weisinger & Papp’s explosive finale ‘Blueprint for Crime’…

The valiant crusaders came together again in Leading Comics #2 as ‘The Black Star Shines’ (Weisinger & Flessel) found juvenile genius Sylvester Pemberton and his chauffer Pat Dugan witnesses to a simple bank heist perpetrated by five of the nation’s most infamous criminals and realising that Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy might need a little assistance…

The Pentagram of Perfidy were actually operating under explicit instructions to steal millions for themselves from a cautious and secretive hidden Machiavelli who only required five unobtrusive and mundane objects for himself, but the Law’s Legionnaires had no inkling of such when they split up to track the fiends down…

The cross-country campaign began with Sir Justin who hit New Orleans during Mardi Gras to confront the ‘Mystery of the Clowning Criminals’ (Weisinger & Flessel). The Shining Knight clashed with gang-leader Falseface and his battalion of buffoons, but although victorious was unable to prevent the sneaky Black Star from stealing an old rag doll…

Hal Sherman joined Weisinger to solve the ‘Mystery of the Santa Claus Pirate’ wherein the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy tackled a seaborne scoundrel Captain Bigg in Florida: a jolly jokester who gave away rather than stole loot. Of course the bandit had a bigger game plan in motion which the patriotic pair soon scuttled, but once again the surreptitious Black Star got away with the true prize – an old corncob pipe…

‘Mystery of the One-Man Museum’ (Weisinger & Papp) found Green Arrow and Speedy in glamorous Pleasure City hunting The Hopper, a mobster trying to appropriate valuable objets d’art from an eccentric millionaire. Once the human kangaroo was captured, however, his silent partner delightedly sloped off with a broken pocket watch…

The Crimson Avenger and Wing headed for the Great Lakes to duel with The Brain in ‘The Case of the Twisted Twins’ (Weisinger & Lehti), wherein the criminal genius assaulted attendees at an identical siblings convention whilst Black Star used the subsequent commotion to purloin an old silver dollar.

Bill Finger & Meskin handled the last two chapters and revealed the incredible truth as Vigilante battled venomous villain The Rattler at rich retired folk’s resort ‘The Sixty Kiddie Club’, but couldn’t stop the real menace grabbing an old key. Thus when ‘The Black Star Shines’ – using the gathered bric-a-brac to become an incredible super-menace – it needed the full might of the assembled Seven Soldiers to thwart the menace and end his astounding threat forever.

The scripter of ‘The Tyrants of Time’ in Leading #3 is sadly unknown but the first chapter (with art credited to Meskin) discloses how sinister scientist Dr. Doome built a time machine and recruited five historical tyrants to loot 1942, gathering funds and resources to build an even better device.

Their entire campaign was overheard by Speedy and the temporal thugs were then targeted by the Law’s Legionnaires, beginning with Stripesy and the Star-Spangled Kid who gave Napoleon a taste of ‘Defeat Before Waterloo’ (Sherman art), whilst the Amazing Archers prevented Alexander the Great from turning ‘The Radium Robots’ (Papp) into his most unbeatable army…

Flessel illustrated ‘The Man Who Told a Fish Story’ with the Shining Knight and an inveterate angler scuppering the naval ambitions of time-transplanted Genghis Khan, even as Vigilante teamed with a western legend to smash the schemes of Attila the Hun in ‘The Spirit of Wild Bill Dickson’ (by Meskin as “Mort Morton & Cliff”).

Lehti then delineated the bombastic battle between the Crimson Avenger and piratical Emperor Nero in ‘Fiddler’s Farewell’ before the Septet of Sentinels convened to follow Dr. Doome into the past and end the menace of ‘The Tyrants of Time’ in a stunning conclusion by Meskin, set at the fall of fabled Troy…

‘The Sense Master’ in Leading #4 was completely created by Bill Finger & Ed Dobrotka: a clever compendium of mystery and melodrama which commenced after paralysed mastermind The Sixth Sense used a robot to surgically augment the abilities of a band of brigands, as part of a plan to obtain five unique jewels for his undisclosed but nefarious purposes.

Interrupted by Sir Justin, the hyped-up hoods overcame the crusader before scattering, leaving the Shining Knight no recourse but to call in his crime-busting colleagues…

The Crimson Avenger then intercepted sound sensitive Mickey Gordon as ‘The Crime Concerto’ that the ex-musician conducted deprived a young girl of her precious diamond, but also started an irrevocable process of redemption in the penitent criminal…

In ‘Don Quixote Rides Again’ the Knight followed “Fingers” to the home of a dotty scholar who loved a certain book, but although he saved Don Coty‘s life, the paladin was unable to stop the theft of his golden Topaz, after which the Star-Spangled Kid (and Stripesy) failed to stop the Human Bloodhound from stealing Mrs. Pemberton‘s fabulous emerald in ‘The Man Who Followed His Nose’.

Vigilante and his geriatric sidekick Billy Gunn met a former movie idol who was ‘The Man who was Afraid to Eat’… It was all a cunning campaign by taste-sensitive poisoner “Palate” to purloin the faded star’s gem and, following his success, Green Arrow and Speedy were unable to prevent ‘The Man with the Miracle Eyes’ making off with a circus barker’s garnet.

However “Eagle Eye” didn’t escape, and once the heroes joined forces – assisted by Mickey Gordon – to track down ‘The Sense Master’ behind the whole incredible charade, they saw him briefly obtain ultimate power only to lose everything once the indomitable crusaders waded in…

These raw, wild and excessively engaging capers are actually some of the best but most neglected thrillers of the halcyon Golden Age. Still modern tastes too have moved on and these yarns are probably far more in tune with contemporary mores, making this a truly guilty pleasure for all fans of mystery, mayhem and stylish superteam tussles…
© 1941, 1942, 1949, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Zombillenium: Volume 1: Gretchen


By Arthur de Pins (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-734-8

I’m feeling a zeitgeist coming on: seditiously mature and subversively ironic takes on classical movie monster madness presented as horror-comedies in the manner of the Addams Family (or assorted Tim Burton features in the vein of Corpse Bride) to be enjoyed by older kids as well as imaginative grown-ups.

Latest candidate for the swift-swelling category is a superb and deliciously arch Franco-Belgian cross between films like Hotel Transylvania and Igor and such graphic narrative masterpieces as Boneyard, Rip M.D. and especially The Littlest Pirate King which combine pop-cultural archetypes with smart and sassy contemporary insouciance.

Arthur de Pins is a British-born French filmmaker, commercial artist and Bande Dessin̩es creator whose strips Рsuch as the adult comedy Peccadilloes (AKA Cute Sins) and On the Crab Рhave appeared in Fluide Glacial and Max.

Zombill̩nium began serialisation in Spirou #3698 (2009) and has filled three albums to date courtesy of Dupuis Рthe first of which has just been released in English thanks to Canadian publisher NBM.

Rendered in a beguiling animated cartoon style, the saga opens with a morose hitchhiker in a hoodie, having no luck at all getting a ride. Eventually Aton is picked up by a vampire and skeleton who offer to take the dejected 5000-year old mummy back to the unique theme park which employs – and in fact owns – them all…

Zombillenium is a magical entertainment experience celebrating all aspects of horror and the supernatural, where families can enjoy a happy day out rubbing shoulders with werewolves and witches and all manner of bogeymen. Of course, they wouldn’t laugh so much if they knew all those monsters were real…

Bloodsucking Francis  and bony Sirius are still heatedly trying to talk the deceased Egyptian -who walked because he was fed up working the cotton-candy concession for what seemed like eternity – out of thumbing all the way back to Cairo when a moment’s inattention leads to their car mowing down a distracted pedestrian.

The mortal is a goner, and without a moment’s hesitation Park Director Francis Von Bloodt takes a bite and finds his new confectionery seller…

The reasons Aurelian Zahner wasn’t paying attention were many. His wife was cheating on him, and took their child away. He had just tried to rob a bar in broad daylight. His gun had somehow turned into a banana. Worst of all, the odd young British woman with the enigmatic smile had told him to grow up before glowing blue and making everybody in the bar forget him…

Later he saw her at Zombillenium, after the giant werewolf bit him too, saying the place had enough vampires already. Things got a bit hazy after that, what with Francis disagreeing and biting him some more.

Her name was Gretchen and she was a witch and she had finally stopped the wolf and the bat biting him in some bizarre game of tit-for-tat…

With nobody quite sure what kind of monster he now was, Aurelian signed his contract, was given the induction tour by Aton – who considered himself a bit of a joker – and set to work selling the sticky stuff to the oblivious punters…

At least they were oblivious until a little old lady smuggled in her little doggie and triggered a bizarre and barely concealable transformation in the terrified Zahner that took even the most venerable and jaded monsters by surprise…

Despite the incredible power of the Zombie trade union, the only way out of a Zombillenium contract is the True Death, and Francis is actually in the process of terminating Aurelian when a call from the park’s enigmatic owner inexplicably gives the hapless fool another chance…

Slowly Zahner adapts to his new indentured (un)life, with Gretchen – who is “only” an intern at the park – finding time to show him the ropes and bring him up to speed in this most inhospitable working environment. Moreover the conditions are about to get much worse: Zombillenium is one of the least profitable theme-parks in the world and the Board are threatening to make some draconian changes…

For some reason the Zombie shop stewards blame Aurelian and are determined to drive him out. A slim ray of hope lights up the mixed-up monster newbie’s life however, when Gretchen tells him her life-story, reveals what he has become and explains what she is really doing at the Park.

The big boob has no idea what and how much she still hasn’t told him…

Sly, smart, sexy and hilarious, Zombillenium achieves that spectacular trick of marrying slapstick with satire in a manner reminiscent of Asterix and Cerebus the Aardvark, whilst easily treading its own path. This is going to a big breakout comics series and you’ll curse yourself for missing out.

So don’t…
© Dupuis 2010.

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Angel: The Hollower


By Christopher Golden, Hector Gomez & Sandu Florea (Dark Horse/Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-163-7

These days a ingenuous girl loving an undead bloodsucker is so trite and overused it is a subject of parody and jest, but not so long ago the concept was relatively fresh and enticing…

For an entire generation, their first brush with the idea came courtesy of a landmark TV show. Buffy the Vampire Slayer began her charismatic career after a clueless cheerleaderValley Girl teen suddenly turned into an indomitable monster-killer: latest winner of an unpredictable mystic/genetic lottery which transformed unsuspecting mortal maids into human killing machines and martial arts masters…

The cult series and its assorted media spin-offs refocused the zeitgeist and, since Dark Horse Comics’ clever, witty graphic interpretation is what interests me most, here’s a look at one of their earliest sidebar projects.

Once the company secured the strip licensing rights, they began generating an engaging regular series, a welter of original graphic novels, spin-offs, specials and numerous miniseries.

Buffy Summers lived in the small California hamlet of Sunnydale on the edge of a paranormal portal to the Nether Realms dubbed The Hellmouth, where she and a small band of friends battled devils, demons and every sort of horror inexorably drawn to the area and whom/what/which all considered humanity an appetiser and planet Earth an irresistible eldritch “fixer-upper” opportunity.

With Rupert Giles, scholarly mentor, father-figure and Watcher of all things unnatural, Buffy and her “Scooby Gang” began making the after-dark streets of Sunnydale safe for the oblivious human morsels, aided by an enigmatic stud-muffin referring to himself as Angel…

Eventually he was revealed as a good vampire – one who possessed a soul – and he and the Summers girl fell in love. Sadly that broke the spell which made a tragic hero and instead unleashed the diabolical vampire he had been – the red-handed Angelus who had turned Europe into his personal charnel house for nearly two centuries.

Although Angel was eventually restored thanks to the intervention of Buffy and Co, he had briefly carved a savage swathe through town – ghastly even by Sunnydale’s standards – and was left burdened with a double dose of paralysing guilt and faced every night the vigilant, fearful suspicions of his human allies…

Angel eventually won his own TV franchise, but long before that he had graduated from romantic interest/arch enemy into his own 3-issue tryout miniseries. Angel: The Hollower was released from May to July 1999 and detailed how, even after reverting to exquisite evil before being redeemed again, his past would always be there to haunt him…

This British Titan Books edition commences with an Introduction by scripter Christopher Golden (and ends with a light-hearted interview with original series cover-artist Jeff Matsuda) before the action opens with ‘Cursed!’ by Golden, Hector Gomez & Sandu Florea (originally seen in anthology Dark Horse Presents #141, March 1999) wherein the Brooding Bad Boy regales Buffy with the horrific events that followed his rebirth as a bloodsucker in Ireland circa 1753.

That handy origin recap concluded, the main event – set during the TV show’s third season – kicks off in present-day San Francisco where a pair of vampires is attacked by a monstrous tentacled horror. Veteran vamp Catherine barely escapes with her unlife and, having seen the horror before, knows there’s only one being she can turn to…

In Sunnydale, Buffy and Angel have resumed their after-dark partnership, even though Giles and the rest of her in-the-know friends are still wary of the recently re-redeemed night-stalker. However once their monster-killing “date” ends Angel is jumped by a band of fangers and sees a girl he slaughtered and “turned” over a century past…

Although their sworn enemy, his undead captors treat Angel with kid gloves. Catherine only wants to talk and she wants to talk about The Hollower…

In a flashback, the scene turns to Vienna in 1892 where Angelus and his pack-mates Spike and Drusilla were amongst many vampires preying on the populace in complete security, oblivious and immune to all threat or challenge.

However, soon after turning Catherine, Angelus was confronted by starving, terrified vampires fleeing from some unimaginable horror that actually preyed on bloodsuckers…

Back in the now, Catherine reminds her sire of the cost the last time the creature manifested and warns him the thing has undoubtedly tracked her to Sunnydale…

At last convinced, Angel agrees to a truce and prepares to battle the thing again. Unfortunately this is something he cannot share with Buffy…

In end-of-the-century Austria the first fight against the Hollower unsatisfactorily stalled with only a few undead survivors, whilst now in Sunnydale Angel secretly consults eldritch expert Giles and learns the truth about the beast. He also discovers that, blithely unaware, Buffy is already hunting a huge, subterranean tentacled horror that prefers vamps to human meals…

Watcher archives reveal a chilling scenario. Vampires are actually human corpses with the departed soul replaced by a reanimating demon, using blood to fuel the composite creature. The Hollower however, sucks out those demonic riders and ingests them. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, except once it’s full – about 3,000 demons is its limit – the horror explosively regurgitates them and the partially digested devils will infect the nearest LIVING body.

If the Hollower succeeds in satiating itself in vampire-infested Sunnydale and subsequently pops, most of the town’s mortal souls will suddenly become rabid, blood-crazed killers…

Engaged in the hunt, Buffy however can’t shift a nagging and unworthy notion: if the Hollower sucks out the vampire part of Angel, will she be left with a normal human lover…?

Fast and furious, this tale of two cities and times is a solid supernatural thriller big on action and intriguingly presented. Definitely prescribed for anybody suffering a surfeit of lovestruck face-suckers and kissypoo predators – which last really should know better at their age…
Angel ™ & © 2000 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

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Helter Skelter Fashion Unfriendly


By Kyoko Okazaki (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-93565-483-4

Following her debut in 1983, producing erotic material for the men’s markets, Kyoko Okazaki established a reputation for challenging, controversial, contemporary manga tales before gradually shifting her focus to produce stories specifically for and about women (such as Pink, Happy House and River’s Edge), focusing with unflinching intensity on their social issues and the overwhelming pressures of popular culture in modern Japan. You can find out more about this pioneering creator here.

From 1994-1995, and following her immensely successful strip Tōkyō Girls Bravo in mainstream fashion magazine CUTIE, Okazaki created a biting expose of the industry – and its casualties – in Shodensha’s Feel Young anthology.

Heruta Sukeruta took the author’s concerns, inclinations and observations into realms tinged with dark speculation, but the episodes never seemed too far-fetched or distant from what we all believed models and managers and clients actually experienced…

Liliko is the undisputed top model in Japan. The Lily’s face and body are everywhere, selling products and lifestyle to men, women and especially young girls. She is an unchanging paragon of look and style and has been so for absolutely ages.

In fact, nobody seems to know quite how long – except ruthless model agency president Mama Tada – and only Liliko’s long-suffering gofer/manager Hada and make-up artist Kin Sawanabe have any inkling of the real person under the gloss and glitz and glamour…

Despite her star status Lily is incredibly unhappy: bored, paranoid, burned out and increasingly obsessed with her inevitable usurpation by some fresh young “Next Year’s Model”…

Knowing her days are numbered, the fragile yet hard-as-nails supermodel is frantically chasing singing and acting gigs, capitalising on her celebrity. Sadly, lacking any discernible talent, she’s only getting ahead by sleeping with all the money-men involved…

When not drugged up, stressed out or screaming, she finds some measure of contentment in the arms of Takao, handsome, spoiled heir to the Nanbu department store fortune (and the man she plans to marry) or in degrading and debauching the obsessively devoted Hada.

Liliko’s biggest problem is an incredible secret that could shake the nation. All her beauty and success come from a series of cosmetic procedures, carried out by a renegade plastic surgeon at an exclusive clinic that caters to the most powerful and influential people in the world.

Long ago a desperate girl with a sordid past met Mama and agreed to a complete, full-body series of operations. Now only her bones and some meat is her – all that glittering skin and surface is a fabrication, maintained by constant use of addictive drugs supplied by the dowdy doctor in charge to fight implacable tissue rejection.

Sadly, after years of use even these experimental remedies aren’t as efficient as before and Liliko’s look is breaking down and fragmenting…

She is by no means the only client of the clinic, and following a spate of suspicious deaths and the trail of illegal aborted foetal organ traffickers, police prosecutor Asada has begun to put the pieces together. However even he is not completely immune to the Lily’s allure…

In the face of increasing breakdown, Mama brings Kin up to date and makes him part of the conspiracy, whilst arranging with “The Doctor” to perform still more operations on her fragile star…

Liliko’s damaged psyche endures even greater shocks when her fat and dumpy little sister turns up. Having impossibly tracked down her sublime sibling, little Chikako is sent away with stars in her eyes, a dream in her heart and newfound determination to be beautiful too, whatever the cost…

Chemically deranged, paranoid and alternatively wildly uncontrollable and practically catatonic, Lily goes off the deep end when Takao admits that he’s marrying an heiress for dynastic reasons but will still, of course, have sex with her in secret…

Having already seduced Hada and her boyfriend in a moment of malicious boredom, Liliko induces them to take revenge for her bruised pride and events quickly spiral into an inescapable crescendo of catastrophe that extends far beyond the intangible world of image and illusion into the very bedrock of Japanese society…

Harsh, raw, brutal and relentlessly revelatory, the author’s forensic examination of the power of sex, temptations of fame and commoditisation of beauty is a multi-layered, shockingly effective – if occasionally surreal – tale that should alarm every parent who reads it. It is also a superb adult melodrama, tense political thriller and effective crime mystery to delight all broad-minded fans of comics entertainment looking to expand their horizons beyond capes, and ghost and ray-guns…

Vertical are dedicated to bringing the best of Japan’s adult comics to English-speaking audiences and Helter Skelter is part of a line books targeting women readers with challenging material that breaks out of the genre ghettos usually attributed to manga. Helter Skelter Fashion Unfriendly certainly qualifies. The cautionary tale was collected into a Japanese tankōbon edition in 2003, winning a number of awards including the 2004 Osamu Tezuka Culture Prize, and was subsequently adapted into a film shown in Cannes.

Grim, existential and explicit, this is not a book for kids or the squeamish, but it is a dark marvel of graphic narrative and one well deserving of your attention.

© 2003 Kyoko Okazaki. All rights reserved.
This book is printed in ‘read-from-back-to-front’ manga format.

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Ghosts and Ruins


By Ben Catmull (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-678-2

If you know the works of Sidney Sime and Edward Gorey and the horror comics of Bernie Wrightson and Michael Kaluta or love to peer through your locked fingers at the films of Tim Burton or the creepy backgrounds in Charles Addams cartoons, you’re clearly an aficionado of silly, spooky business and know mordant fantasy plays best when played for laughs.

With that in mind, you might be interested in a new black-&-white coffee-table art book from cartoonist Ben Catmull (Monster Parade, Paper Theater) which celebrates the stuff of nauseating, stomach-churning terror and sinister, creeping suspense in a series of eerie illustrated plates crafted in scratchboard on masonite for extra darkness!

All that arcane art is wedded to epigrammatic prose snippets to comprise tantalising skeletons of stories best left untold and consequences unimaginable…

This engrossing landscape hardback (268 x 222mm) combines gloomy gothic imagery with wry and witty updates on uncanny situations in a procession of locations best left well enough alone, beginning with six views of the dank domicile of diabolical ‘Drowned Shelley’ and a single glimpse of ‘The Buried House’.

A queasy quartet then divulges the doings of the ‘The Disgusting Garden’ after which one peek at ‘The Secluded House’ leads inexorably to a triptych revealing ‘The Woman Outside the Window’ and four frames of ‘Wandering Smoke’. ‘The Order of the Shadowy Finger’ – five in full – gives way to three glimpses of ‘The Lighthouse’, a visit to a domicile all ‘Hair and Earwigs’ and thence to numerous views of the masterpieces hewn by horrific revenant ‘The Sculptor’…

A demonic carpenter once concocted a ‘Labyrinth of Junk’, but that was as nothing compared to the sheer terror of ‘The Crawling House’ and the ghastly practises of a ‘Lonely Old Spinster’…

Mordantly blending bleak, spectral dread and anxious anticipation with classical scary scenarios, this terrifying tease is a sheer delight no lover of Dark Art could conceivably resist…

© 2013 Ben Catmull. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics. All rights reserved.
Ghosts and Ruins will be released on September 12th 2013.

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Blue is the Warmest Color


By Julie Maroh, translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger (Arsenal Pulp Press)
ISBN: 978-1-55152-514-3

There is already a large amount of chatter about the film Blue is the Warmest Color. Since winning the Palme d’Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival there will be much more. Sadly the buzz around the big screen interpretation – it is not an adaptation – will almost certainly concentrate on the excessive and prolonged lesbian sex scenes (decried and disowned by graphic novel author Julie Maroh) rather than the story.

We do comics here and, despite the undisputed boost a media-sensational movie provides, it’s the words and pictures on paper that matter to me and hopefully to you too…

And what a wonderful marriage they make in Maroh’s moodily pensive exploration of prejudice and acceptance in a straightforward but devastating coming-of-age love story.

Le bleu est une couleur chaude was first published in France by Glénat in 2010, five years after Maroh originally began the tale as a 19-year old student studying Visual Arts and Lithography/Engraving at the Institut Saint-Luc and Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts (Brussels).

The collected album won the fan-determined Fnac-SNCF Essential prize (Audience Award) at the 2011 Angoulême International Comics Festival, subsequently garnering many more international accolades.

The story opens as Emma returns to a house she was unceremoniously banished from decades ago. Beloved Clementine is dead, but her last wish was that her one true love have her journals; books which described the thoughts and fears, ambitions and dreams of a confused 15-year old girl who struggled to accept her nature in a toxic school and home environment where loving someone of your own sex was considered an abomination…

Emma stays overnight in a home scarred by tragedy and steeped in tension, repentance and still-undispelled animosity, reading of how, in 1994, fraught and frantic high schooler Clementine saw a girl with blue hair and just couldn’t forget her…

This is a beautiful, simple and evocative story about how two very young people fell in love and what eventually happened to them. It’s not polemical or declamatory and doesn’t have points to score. That the Romeo and Juliet are both female is sublimely irrelevant except in the ways and manners it shaped the problems the lovers had to overcome…

Depicted alternately in a beguiling wash of misty full colour and stark dichromatic tones, the images are subdued and enthralling, not dynamic or overblown, and although there are some explicit love scenes, they are vital to the tale’s context and utterly subsumed by the overwhelming tide of elegiac sadness, political and social turmoil and doom-laden mystery which permeates the proceedings.

This is a masterful and compellingly human story that will astound lovers, loving grown-ups and all lovers of comics narrative.

Yes, there is a movie, but for pity’s sake read this first…

English Language edition © 2013 Arsenal Pulp Press. First published in French as Le bleu est une couleur chaude by Julie Maroh © 2010 Glénat Editions. All rights reserved.
Blue is the Warmest Color will be released on September 12th 2013.

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TEOTFW


By Charles Forsman (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-667-6

What follows is perhaps the best graphic novel I’ve read this year. However it utilises the kind of uncompromising language almost every young person is familiar with and uses daily but which can still offend many others.

Although I believe you’ll be missing out on a supremely rewarding and exciting comics experience, if four letter Anglo-Saxon terms upset you, please stop reading here.

Each generation has its icons of rebellion with unique touchstones of self-expression. The stunning minicomics and creations of Charles Forsman (check out his wares at oilyboutique.bigcartel.com/artist/charles-forsman‎ or type Oily Comics into your preferred search turbine) are inarguably at the forefront of the 21st Centurians’ societally-challenging artistic outbursts…

In The End of the Fucking World Forsman has depicted a situation as old as the species but as fresh as this year’s daisies – tragically tinged with the savage nihilism and hopelessness that afflicts America’s – and the World’s – youngsters…

Forsman is a multi-award-winning gradate of Vermont’s celebrated Center for Cartoon Studies (founded at White River Junction by James Sturm and Michelle Ollie in 2004), and this darkly beguiling monochrome pocket paperback (166 x 128mm) collects a tale first serialised in the author’s self-published 8-page mini-comic Snake Oil between September 2011 and February 2013.

Delivered in a devastatingly subdued and underplayed cartoon primitivist manner, the tale for our times opens in ‘Hard to be Around’ with James relating when and why he realised how different he was as child: his behaviour, the things that interested him, the shocking way he self-harmed…

At sixteen he met Alyssa and established a relationship. It didn’t seem much like love but she wanted to be with him and tried hard. Then he violently left home with her in his dad’s car…

Alyssa’s internal monologue in ‘Fire on the Outside’ describes her burgeoning emotions after they crash the car and keep going on foot. They’re both searching for something intangible, but settle for another stolen vehicle…

James then takes back the narrative, matter-of-factly describing how they break into a professor’s house and set up ‘Home’. He recounts with equal detachment the horrific things he finds there…

Alyssa thinks they’re ‘Safe and Sound’ and begins to dream of finding her long-gone dad. She disastrously introduces James to booze and dances for him, but he still can’t connect with her physically…

Switching point of view with every chapter, the tale proceeds. When the owner at last arrives home Alyssa has no idea how much danger she’s in until James casually kills him in ‘Fast Friends’. She doesn’t react much when the boy performs a strange ritual in ‘Worse Probably’ and only when a policewoman shows up does James come truly alive.

For the love-sick girl, as she desperately flees with her man, realisation slowly dawns …

The hitchhiking fugitives are picked up by a creepy old man who soon learns how dangerous kids can be in ‘Mother’ after which Alyssa makes them change their appearance in ‘Tulsa Goodbye’.

James then takes on the wrong opponent in ‘Protector’ and learns a strange truth about his connection to Alyssa…

‘Forever’ finds the kids separated and Alyssa caught shoplifting before they implausibly reunite, after which ‘Drowned Deeper’ reveals the fate of James’ mother so long ago, but it doesn’t stop them searching for the isolated young girl’s ‘Dad, Father’…

That quest successfully accomplished, the three strangers cautiously settle in together, unaware that the policewoman is hard on their meandering trail. She had her own unique connection to James’ first kill and the manhunt is obscenely personal to her…

Despite every misgiving James is oddly satisfied ‘Living with Dad’ and Alyssa’s damaged old man tentatively accepts the boy, but then it all goes wrong in ‘Father Fucker’ and James is compelled to make an impossible gesture before fleeing the cops and the fanatical policewoman.

It ends as it always had to in ‘Forced Feelings’ but a kind of resolution is achieved in the untitled epilogue that closes the tale in unsettling anticipation of the future…

This is a magnificently dark, degraded and hopeless exploration of young love and the searching struggle of youngsters for their place in The Now, so often painfully gleaned through illicit glimpses of the experiences and actions of their progenitors.

Isn’t every kid hungry to understand the parents who made them, yet so often disappointed and even betrayed by them?

Not every kid does it like Alyssa and James…

Brooding, compelling and appallingly plausible, this is a book you and every 13-year old should read – even if it is the most adult graphic novel released this year and preachers, teachers, nuns and politicians tell you not to…
The End of the Fucking World © 2013 Charles Forsman. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics. All rights reserved.

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X-Men: Alterniverse Visions


By Anne Nocenti, Simon Furman, Mariano Nicieza, Kurt Busiek & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-0194-9

Although now commonplace in regular fiction media, once upon a time parallel worlds and alternate Earths were almost unilaterally the province of comicbooks, offering tantalising glimpses of intriguingly different yet profoundly familiar characters.

DC pretty much owned the shtick in the early 1960s but kept it separate from their other exploratory narrative strand “Imaginary Stories”, but over at up-and-coming Marvel Comics, Roy Thomas in particular had a notion to marry the twain…

To be clear: Alternate Earths are part of the overarching shared continuity and Imaginary Stories are just that – fanciful riffs and chimeras using established characters and scenarios, but never part of the nuts-&-bolts universe.

Thus, despite such surrogate Earthers as Thundra, Arkon, Mahkizmo, Gaard and the Squadron Supreme cropping up in regular Fantastic Four and Avengers issues, the House of Ideas followed their competitor’s lead until the launch of What If?

This was an anthological series wherein cosmic voyeur The Watcher offered peeks into a myriad of other universes where key “real” continuity stories were replayed with vastly different outcomes – the same basic idea as Imaginary Stories but with a back-handed acknowledgement that somewhere these epics were “real”…

The first volume (48 issues from February 1977 to June 1988) posed such intriguing questions as ‘What If… Loki had Found the Hammer of Thor?’, ‘the Fantastic Four had not gained Their Powers?’ or ‘Spider-Man’s Clone had Lived?’ and when the title relaunched in 1989 for another 115 issues including ‘What If Wolverine was Lord of the Vampires?’ and ‘What if Captain Marvel had not Died?’, the tales were all back-written into an over-arching continuity and began to be catalogued as variant but equally viable Earths/universes and alternate timelines.

There have been seven more volumes since and a series of “Alterniverse” tales…

In case you’re wondering, those gritty Ultimate Marvel sagas all occur on Earth-1610, the Age of Apocalypse happened on Earth-295, everybody got eaten in the Zombieverse of Earth-2149, the Squadron Supreme originally hailed from Earth-712 and mainstream Marvel tales take place on Earth-616, whilst we readers all dwell on the dull, dreary Earth-1218…

Keep calm then, but never forget that Reality is just a plethora of differing dimensions, and if things go awry in one it can have a cumulative and ultimately catastrophic effect on all of them…

Soon after designating this publishing idiom an Alterniverse, a selection of relatively recent What If? (all from volume 2) yarns starring a selection of X-Men were collected into a trade paperback which, despite then being closely dependent on familiarity with Marvel mainstream, might now – in the wake of all those various movies – be a little more accessible to a general readership…

The extra-dimensional dramas kick off with ‘What If… Wolverine Led Alpha Flight?’ (originally published in #59, March 1994, as ‘What If Wolverine Had Remained a Captive of Alpha Flight?’) by Simon Furman, Bryan Hitch & Joe Rubenstein, wherein the Feral Mutant was imprisoned by the Canadian Government after events in X-Men #119-120.

Once the X-Men are killed trying to get him back and depressed former berserker is left to lead a Canadian team against the Hellfire Club and their Dark Phoenix…

Next up is ‘What If… Storm Had Remained a Thief?’, courtesy of #40, August 1992 and first seen as ‘What if Storm of the X-Men Had Remained a Thief?’

This is a lovely and rare happily-ending tale by Anne Nocenti and Kirkwood Studios – AKA Steve Carr, Deryl Skelton & Rubenstein – which describes how instead of becoming a pickpocket in Cairo and weather goddess in equatorial Africa, the orphan Ororo Munroe is taken under the wing of benign grifter Herman Hassel. Years later when she meets the X-Men it is not as a friend…

‘What If… Rogue Possessed the Power of Thor?’ (#66, August 1994, by Furman, John Royle & Bambos Georgiou) takes a sharp left from a critical point in Avengers Annual #10 wherein the power-leeching mutant battled the team and Spider-Woman.

This time/space, however, Rogue doesn’t let go until the Thunder God is dead and drained and soon finds herself cursed with his might but still a pawn in a cosmic war between eternal Asgard and Loki‘s forces of Ragnarok…

From #69 (January 1995, by Mariano Nicieza, J.R. Justiniano & Roy Richardson) ‘What If… Stryfe Killed the X-Men?’ does what it promises and shows the catastrophic outcome after Professor X dies and his hapless students are left to face the homicidal future-clone of Cable as well as the mutant leveller Apocalypse, after which these walks on the wild side end with a visceral, dark thriller from Kurt Busiek, Ron Randall & Art Nichols who ask ‘What If… Wolverine Battled Weapon-X?’

From #62, June 1994, the grim chronicle details how the rogue Canadian science team that inflicted an Adamantium skeleton and experimental behaviour modification on secret agent Logan missed their mark in this universe and had to settle for a second-best human lab rat.

When their Weapon-X escaped to carve a swathe of slaughter through the country and wiped out neophyte superteam Alpha Flight, the grizzled veteran knew what he had to do, and to whom…

Action-packed, cathartic and just plain fun, these different strokes offer old-fashioned fun in vast amounts, and now that a wider world is filmically conversant with a (if not “the ”) Marvel Universe, perhaps it’s time to raid the vaults again and release similar collections starring Spider-Man, Thor, The Hulk, Fantastic Four, Iron Man and/or the Avengers…

© 1995Marvel Entertainment Group. All rights reserved.
A British edition by published by Boxtree is also available.