Author: NowReadThis

Posted on

There’s a HAIR in My Dirt! – A Worm’s Story


By Gary Larson, coloured by Nick Bell of Wildstorm Productions (Little, Brown and Co/HarperCollins)
ISBNs: 978-0-31664-519-5 (HC)       978-0060932749 (PB)

We may not be rocket scientists but all cartoonists tend to lurk at the sharp end of the IQ bell curve – and then there’s Gary Larson. He could be a rocket scientist if he wanted to. Happily though, his inclinations tend towards natural history and the Life Sciences.

And making people laugh in a truthful, thinking kind of way…

Larson was born in 1950 and raised in WashingtonState. After school and college (also WashingtonStatewhere he got a degree in communications) he bummed around and got a job in a music store – which he hated. During a self-imposed sabbatical he evolved into a cartoonist by submitting to Pacific Search (now Pacific Northwest Magazine) in Seattle who promptly astonished him by accepting and paying for his six drawings. Bemused and emboldened Larson kept on doodling and in 1979 The Seattle Times began publishing his strip Nature’s Way. When The San Francisco Chronicle picked up the gag feature they renamed it The Far Side…

From 1980 on the Chronicle Syndicate peddled the strip with huge success. The Far Side became a global phenomenon and Larson’s bizarre, skewed and bitingly surreal strip starring nature Smug in Tooth and Claw almost took over the world. With 23 collections (over 45 million copies sold), two animated movies, calendars, greetings cards and assorted merchandise seemingly everywhere, the smartypants scribbler was at the top of his game when he retired the feature on January 1st 1995.

After fifteen years at the top, Larson wanted to quit while he was ahead. He still did the occasional promo piece or illustration but increasingly devoted his time to ecological causes and charities such as Conservation International. He still does.

Of course he couldn’t stop drawing or thinking or, indeed, teaching and in 1998 created the stunningly smart and cool children’s book for concerned and nervous adults under the microscope here.

There’s a HAIR in My Dirt! brilliantly, mordantly tells a parable within a fable and serves up a marvellously meaningful message for us to absorb and ingest whilst simultaneously making us laugh like loons and worry like warts.

One day underground a little worm having dinner with his folks finds something unnatural and icky in his meal and starts bemoaning the lowly status and general crappiness of his annelidic existence (look it up, I’m showing off and making a comedic point too…). To counter this outburst of whingeing Father Worm offers a salutary tale to put things into their proper perspective…

Thus begins the tragic tale of Harriet, a beautiful human maiden living – she believed – at one with world in the woods, enraptured with the bountiful Magic of Nature and of one particular frolicsome day encountering cute squirrels, lovely flowers, icky bugs, happy birds, playful deer, tortoises and every kind of creature… and completely missing the point about all of them…

Masquerading as an acerbic faux fairytale teller, Larson delivers an astoundingly astute and unforgettable ecology lesson equally effective in educating young and old alike about Nature’s true nature – and yet still miraculous wonders – all whilst maintaining a monolithic amount of outrageous comic hilarity.

This sublime illustrated yarn became a New York Times Best Seller on its release and still serves as a fabulous reminder of what really clever people can achieve even if they don’t do rocket science…

Seriously though: There’s a HAIR in My Dirt! is one of the smartest, funniest and most enticingly educational kid’s book ever created and should be on every school curriculum. Since it isn’t, perhaps it’s best if you picked one up for the house…?
© 1998 FarWorks, Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted on

X-Men: Phoenix – Endsong


By Greg Pak, Greg Land & Matt Ryan (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1924-8

In the X-Men’s corner of reality The Phoenix is a universal force of creation and destruction. It first possessed mutant telepath Jean Grey when the team flew through a spectacular solar storm and seemingly transformed the mortal Marvel Girl into a passionate and capricious being of practically godlike power.

When she was first possessed by the fiery force Jean became an unstoppable hero of infinite puissance and an overwhelming champion of Life, but eventually the power corrupted her and she devolved into Dark Phoenix: a wanton god of world-killing appetites.

After succumbing to the addictive lure of her abilities the fiery force consumed an entire populated planet and, after battling both X-Men and the Imperial Guard of the Shi’ar Empire to a standstill, momentarily lost control to its own human avatar. Stricken with remorse Jean contrived to end her own life in the ancient Kree outpost known as the Blue Area of the Moon.

After some years Jean was miraculously resurrected, married her true love Scott “Cyclops” Summers and continued as a much diminished mutant hero. Eventually, however, she regained – or was taken by – the Phoenix powers. With her marriage failing, Jean died in combat against a being who seemed to be long-term foe/friend Magneto and subsequently ascended to become an even more cosmic entity, The White Phoenix of the Crown.

In this collection, re-presenting the 2005 five issue miniseries Phoenix – Endsong (scripted by Greg Pak and illustrated by Greg Land & Matt Ryan), the fundamental force again appears, hungrily seeking a companion-host and, as ever, utterly uncaring about the repercussions of its selfish actions…

The drama begins far away across the universe as a Shi’ar ship attacks the flaming entity and, with unprecedented awareness, the host-less energy flees towards Sol and the home of its most beloved avatar. Soon, on Earth Wolverine is accosted by a vagrant, questing thought-form and realises something isn’t right…

The ghost of the Phoenix visits many of Jean’s old friends and familiar places before finding her one-and-only Scott in the arms of another telepath and at last realises that if it wants Jean back it will have to resurrect her.

No problem…

Jean’s desiccated corpse fights with all the will she possessed in life but thePhoenixis unstoppable. By the time Wolverine reaches her grave Jean Grey is a living, breathing woman again – and unwilling receptacle of the most savage and irresistible power in the universe…

Confused yet triumphant the Phoenixdecides to give Jean everything she had always wanted, including her ideal man. Scott of course, has moved on since her demise and now loves devastatingly capable hellion Emma Frost.

No problem…

As the childish, spiteful creature attempts to reconstruct Jean’s past and erase all her rivals, the pursuing Shi’ar warp in, determined to destroy the fire entity before it reaches its peak of power, whilst on the world below Wolverine alerts Scott and the X-Men to their imminent peril…

Cyclops is grimly determined in the face of the news. His Jean died to save the universe from the Phoenix and this thing that has returned isn’t her, so must be ruthlessly dealt with. As the mutant heroes mobilise, however, the Phoenix attacks, whilst deep in their underground labs, deceased fantastically dangerous Homo superior Supremacist Quentin Quire – the terrifying Kid Omega – has been recalled to life by the Force’s earlier probes and reconstitutes his destroyed body. Topping even that he attempts to resurrect his own lost love Sophie – part of a telepathic collective dubbed the Stepford Cuckoos who died stopping his last petulant rampage.

But for all his power the lovesick boy just can’t make the miracle work a second time…

The X-Men are unable to stopPhoenix. She easily overcomes them and the desperate Shi’ar before teleporting to the North Pole with Wolverine. The aliens are now far more concerned that Quire might be an even more suitable host for the flaming force and threaten to eradicate the planet with a custom-made singularity…

At the top of the world Wolverine unleashes his claws but the thing that isn’t Jean just won’t die and all he accomplishes is the weakening of the last vestiges of control her conscience had exerted on thePhoenix.

By the time Cyclops and the X-Men arrive the universal firebird is moments away from getting everything it ever wanted and the stage is set for another cosmic tragedy to unfold. However love has always been thePhoenix’s weakness and Scott, Wolverine and all the assembled X-Men who ever knew Jean will do whatever is necessary to preserve her memory and spirit…

Action-packed but often only barely avoiding a descent into the mercilessly maudlin, this is a lovely piece of comicbook eye-candy which suffers from the twin perils of a surfeit of unexplained continuity and too much heavy-handed sentimentality. If you’re a long-term or effusively passionate new fan there’s a lot to enjoy but other than the exceedingly pretty pictures (supplemented by a wealth of variant covers and 5 pages of pencils prior to the application of ink and colour), casual readers probably won’t find the ride a very comfortable one.

Which might be a problem…
© 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Hulk: Red and Green


By Jeph Loeb, Arthur Adams, Frank Cho, Herb Trimpe & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2884-7

Once upon a time, military scientist Bruce Banner was accidentally caught in a Gamma Bomb blast of his own devising. As a result, stress and sundry other triggers regularly caused him to transform into a gigantic green monster of impossible strength and fury. Alternately – often simultaneously – cast as both mindless monster and unlikely occasional hero, he rampaged across the fictional landscape for decades, becoming one of Marvel’s most successful comicbook features and multi-media megastars.

An incredibly popular character in global pop culture, the Hulk has periodically undergone radical changes in scope and format to keep his stories fresh and his exploits explosively compelling…

In recent years the number of Gamma-mutated monsters stomping around the Marvel universe proliferated to inconceivable proportions. The days of Banner getting angry and going Green at the drop of a hat are long gone, so anybody taking their cues from the TV or movie incarnations will be wise to assume a level of unavoidable confusion. With assorted Hulks, progeny proto-Hulks, She-Hulks, Abominations and all manner of ancillary atomic berserker roaming the planet, be prepared to experience a little confusion if you’re coming to this relatively cold. Nonetheless, these always epic stories are generally worth the effort, so persist if you can.

Even if you are familiar with Hulk history, ancient and modern, you might be forgiven for foundering on the odd point of narrative, so this book, collecting a more-or-less self-contained episode of gamma-generated chaos and calamity from 2008-2009, offers a cathartic dose of destructive diversion, with lashings of tension, suspense and even laughs with a minimum of head-hurting continuity conundrums.

What you need to know: a new, intelligent and ruthlessly efficient Red Hulk has been spotted throughout America – clearly not Bruce Banner but nevertheless quite able to hold his own against such powerhouses as The Abomination and even Thor. His origins and intentions unknown, the Rubicund Rogue guards his human identity with terrifying ferocity…

This will all eventually be revealed as part of an overlong, ongoing plot by the world’s wickedest brain-trust to conquer everything (latterly revealed in the epic Fall of the Hulks sequence) but here and now the action and mystery are all that matter…

When released as monthly comics, the issues in question (Hulk volume 2, #7-9 with portions of King Size Hulk #1) ran as “split-book’s” featuring short separate instalments of both the Magenta and Jade Juggernauts, and this titanic tome opens with a 3-parter by scripter Jeph Loeb and artists Arthur Adams & Walden Wong. In ‘Where Monsters Dwell’ an appalled Dr. Banner grimly comes to accept that there’s another unstoppable horror on the loose spawned by his long-gone dabbling with Gamma rays. Meanwhile inCanada the subject of his researches has a brief, brutal and decidedly final encounter with the cursed and cannibalistic once-human creature known as the Wendigo before heading south. Little does the Crimson Colossus realise that there is more than one…

The second chapter found Banner in hot pursuit and tracking his torrid target to Nevada in time to encounter a plague of Wendigos in the city’s casinos, prompting a fortunate flashback to the physicist’s Gamma-grey alter-ego Mr. Fixit and a catastrophically destructive “team-up” with Avengers Moon Knight, Sentry and Ms. Marvel that ends with him turning green, mean and moronic in ‘What Happens in Vegas’ …

The cataclysmically chaotic clash of unlikely protectors and proliferating people-eaters in ‘World’s Finest’ leads to a spectacular fighting finish and another off-kilter guest-shot for the exceedingly eccentric Brother Voodoo before the crisis is contained in the concluding ‘Jackpot’…

Meanwhile the subject of Banner’s search had been detained elsewhere. In ‘Wait until Dark’ (limned by Frank Cho) the Sensational She-Hulk was brutally beaten and brought to the brink of death by the sadistic Scarlet Savage, but resilient and undaunted called in a few friends for a rematch in ‘Hell Hath No Fury…’

Backed up by S.H.I.E.L.D., She-Hulk, Thundra and the Valkyrie trail the Red Devil to Mount Rushmore and seemingly overwhelm the bloody brute but, as seen in ‘…Like a Woman Scorned!’, the devious deviant is more cunning than any previous Hulk and turns ‘The Revenge of the Lady Liberators’ (augmented at the end by Invisible Woman, Storm, Black Widow, Spider-Woman, Tigra and Hellcat) into an opportunity to recruit a willing accomplice for his long-term goals…

Also included in this collection is a terse, gripping eulogy to a despised and departed villain as Loeb and Emerald legend Herb Trimpe detail ‘The Death and Life of the Abomination’ an assortment of covers and variants by Adams, Cho, Trimpe, Sal Buscema & Chris Sotomayor and Ed McGuiness, pages of unlinked pencils and layouts from Adams, and ‘Hulk Web’, ‘Hulk Airport’ and ‘Hulk Ice’- a selection of bonus comedy strips by Audrey Loeb & Chris Giarrusso.

If staggering, blockbusting Fights ‘n’ Tights turmoil is your fancy, a Hulk of any colour is always going to be at the top of every thrill-seeker’s hit list…
© 2008, 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Peach Slices


By Donna Barr (Aeon/Mu)
No ISBN:                    2006 edition: 978-1-89225-325-5

The Desert Peach is the supremely self-assured and eminently efficient gay brother of Erwin Rommel, the legendary German soldier universally hailed as “the Desert Fox”. Set – usually – in Africa during World War II, this priceless gem of a series effortlessly combines hilarity, absurdity, profound sensitivity and glittering spontaneity, with stories describing the dalliances and daily tribulations of Oberst Manfred Pfirsich Marie Rommel; dutiful albeit unwilling cog in the iniquitous German War Machine, yet one determined to remain a civilised gentleman under the most adverse and unkind conditions.

However, although in his own ways as formidable as his beloved elder sibling, the caring, gracious and genteel Peach is a man who loathes causing harm or giving offence. Thus he spends his service commanding the dregs of the military in the ghastly misshapes of the 469th Halftrack, Gravedigging & Support Unit of the Afrika Korps, daily endeavouring to remain stylish, elegant, civil and ever so patient with and to the assorted waifs, wastrels and warriors on both sides of the unfortunate global conflict.

It’s a thankless, endless task: the 469th houses the worst the Wehrmacht has ever conscripted, from malingerers and malcontents to useless wounded, shiftless conmen, screw-ups and outright maniacs.

Pfirsich unilaterally applies the same decorous courtesies to the sundry natives inhabiting the area and the rather tiresome British and Anzac forces – not all of whom are party to a clandestine non-aggression pact Pfirsich has agreed with his opposite numbers in the amassed Allied Forces. In fact the only people to truly annoy the peace-loving Peach are boors, bigots, bullies and card-carrying Blackshirts…

The romantic fool is also passionately in love with and engaged to Rosen Kavalier: handsome Aryan warrior and wildly manly Luftwaffe Ace, but arguably the real star of these fabulous frothy epics is the Peach’s long-suffering, unkempt, crafty, ill-mannered, bilious and lazily scrofulous orderly Udo Schmidt, a man of many secrets whose one redeeming virtue is his uncompromising loyalty and devotion to the only decent man and tolerable officer in the entire German army.

This eccentric aggregation of extras, excerpts and exotica was first released in 1993, gathering extraneous material from a variety of sources and covering the period 1987-1993: as much an affectionate art-book as delicious dose of non-or mis-canonical hi-jinx. The entire package was subsequently re-released in 2006 in a Directors Cut edition which added issue #25’s WWI Transylvanian Hammer-Horror pastiche ‘Beautiful’ to the mix and included reminiscences, background commentary and creator kibitzing regarding all the esoteric tales and titbits.

The gloriously visual treat begins with an Unused Pin Design and a splendid Badge Design from the San Diego Comic-Con 1989 after which a quartet of stunning and bizarre Beer Labels (for ales created by micro brewer Wendell Joost in 1988) precedes ‘Peach on Earth’ from A Very Mu Christmas 1992 – one of the very best Christmas stories ever produced in the notoriously twee and sentimental comics field.

Set in the harsh December of 1945, it follows the demobbed and repatriated Pfirsich as he wanders through his broken and occupied homeland, avoiding trouble and American troops but not the gnawing starvation and freezing snows which would kill so many returning, defeated German soldiers. On the verge of despair and death the Peach is brusquely adopted by a strange, brittle and utterly fearless little boy who has only known the Fatherland in the throes of decline, but still looks eagerly to a brighter tomorrow…

This is followed by a rather risqué Rosen Kavalier pinup from Paper Phantasies (1991) and an unused strip originally commissioned by Rip Off Press whilst ‘Whipping Boy’ is a full-on adult escapade of the unconventional lovers as is ‘I Am What I Am… (I Think)’ a “Desert Peach Pitt Stop” that also languished unpublished until this collection preserved it.

Bits ‘n’ Pieces was a short-lived self-published magazine the indefatigable author used to disseminate assorted works which never made it into the regular, normal-length Desert Peach title. ‘The Veteran’ comes from the first issue in 1991 and returned focus to the motley cast of the hapless 469th for adeliciously philosophical foray that starred a most peculiar and innocent warrior named Thommi, whilst, after a frolicsome Desert Peach pinup from the 1989 Amazing Heroes Swimsuit Special, ‘Hindsight’ (Bits ‘n’ Pieces #1 1991) dabbles into personal politics before ‘Reflections’ from #3 offered a few New Year’s observations on the cast and stars from Barr herself.

The 1991 San Diego Comic-Con booklet provided another beguiling pinup before ‘Udo and the Phoenix’ (from Xenophon #1, 1992) related another tale of the spirited Arab horse accidentally owned by Udo and cared for by the equally magnificent Pfirsich, whilst ‘Reluctant Affections’ (from Bits ‘n’ Pieces #1 1991, before being redrawn as ‘Pigeonholed’ for Gay Comics #16) explored a tender, fragile moment and adorable chink in the macho armour of uber-Mensch Rosen…

‘The More Things Change’ from benefit book Choices in 1992 debates the abortion issue with characteristic abrasive aplomb after which ‘Sweet Delusions’ (Wimmin’s Comix #16 1991) gets down to the eye-watering nitty-gritty of Rosen & Pfirsich’s love life and ‘Wet Dream’ (Bits ‘n’ Pieces #3 1991) follows up with more of the same in a hilariously wry maritime moment.

Barr’s creations are never far from always internally consistent flights of extreme fantasy as seen in glorious diversion ‘The Oasis’ (Centaurs Gatherum 1990) with Pfirsich and brother Erwin finding a militarily priceless waterhole with a fantastic secret and forced to spend a truly outrageous time trapped as hybrid half horses…

This captivating chronicle concludes with a selection of ‘Peach Pits’ miscellanea: illustrations, roughs and small press items culled from the Desert Peach Musical books, t-shirts and posters. There’s some fascinating rough layouts from the aforementioned ‘Peach on Earth’, an unused page from DP #17 (the superb ‘Culture Shock’ as seen in The Desert Peach: Marriage & Mayhem) and assorted stuff from Zine Zone #13, 1992, covers from Germanophilic Amateur Press Association magazine ‘Krauts’ and shirt designs before the whole outrageous affair ends well with an implausibly “true tail” starring half-horse Stinz Löwhard, Pfirsich and Erwin in a ‘Character Revolt’ from 1987’s Fan’toons 19.

Desert Peach adventures are always bawdy, raucous, satirical, authentically madcap and immensely engaging; bizarre (anti) war stories which rank amongst the very best comics of the 1990s. Even now they still pack a shattering comedic kick and – if you’re not quite ready – poignantly emotional charge.

The Desert Peach ran for 32 intermittent issues via a number of publishers and was subsequently collected as eight graphic novel collections (1988-2005). A prose novel, Bread and Swans, a musical, and an invitational collection by other artists entitled Ersatz Peach were also created during the strip’s heyday. A larger compendium, Seven Peaches, collected issues #1-7 and Pfirsich’s further exploits continue as part of the Modern Tales webcomics collective…

Illustrated in Barr’s fluidly seductive wood-cut and loose-line style, this book is another must-have item for lovers of wit, slapstick, high drama and belly-laughs and grown-up comics in general. All the collections are pretty hard to find these days but if you have a Kindle, Robot Comics released individual comicbook issues, and for anybody with internet access and refined tastes there’s always the webcomic to fall back on…

© 1987-1993 Donna Barr. All rights reserved. The Desert Peach is ™ Donna Barr.

 

Christmas miracle moment: Just as we were preparing to post this, the multi-talented Mirth-Meister herself dropped us an update on availability and I’m not mean enough to keep the contents to myself in this season of sharing.

So to see Peach magic for yourself check out websites http://www.donnabarr.com or http://thedesertpeach.com and if you just have to own your own Peach product http://www.lulu.com/desertpeach, offers a huge double collection that also comes as economical loadable files and The Desert Peach (plus Stinz and Bosom Enemies) are all re-printed with colour extras at http://www.Indyplanet.com at marvellously economical rates.

Enjoy!

Posted on

The Mighty Thor: Everything Burns


By Matt Fraction, Kieron Gillen, Alan Davis, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Stephanie Hans, Barry Kitson, Mark Farmer & Jay Leisten (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-521-5

In the middle of 1962, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby launched their latest offbeat superhero creation in anthology monsters-and-fantasy title 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 creators 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 with brand new first issues. The Thunder God reappeared a few weeks later. After many phenomenal adventures that second volume concluded with issues #84-85 (November-December 2004) which once-and-for-honestly-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 exalted inhabitants of Asgard since time began…

You can’t keep a profitable property down or a great comics character un-resurrected, so he was reborn again when 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 and reigning Lord of Asgard swiftly set about retrieving the souls of his fellow godlings, all scattered and hidden inside human hosts before establishing Asgard on Earth, a few paltry feet above the ground of Broxton, Oklahoma…

This small and simple community had experienced a few intriguing neighbours before and eventually adapted to the newcomers despite the chaos, hell and Federal grief the Asgardians seemed to perpetually attract.

This spectacular game-changing epic was designed to celebrate the feature’s anniversary as part of the “50 Years of Thunder” event and collects The Mighty Thor #18-22 as it crossed over with issues #642-645 of sister-series Journey into Mystery through the latter half of 2012 and effectively clears the slate for a whole new approach in future…

What you need to know: after millennia of doctrinaire double-dealing and abusive micro-management All-Father Odin is gone, banished to another dimension, with his puissant kingdom Asgard ruled by his wife Freyja and a council of sister goddesses who act as a co-operative “All-Mother”.

Moreover the eternally capricious and malignant Loki has undergone a few shocking changes too. Resurrected from death and hell by his eternally optimistic half-brother Thor, the trickster has endured life as a woman and currently exists as a (presumably) innocent boy-child: his long-suffering and constantly betrayed family attempting one final gambit to reform the villain and raise a true and decent scion of Asgard.

It seems to be going quite well…

With Matt Fraction, Alan Davis & Mark Farmer taking the Thor segments and Kieron Gillen & Carmine Di Giandomenico on the JiM chapters the saga opens in the newly re-named Asgardia where Freyja dreams of the dark days in prehistory when Odin and his race of Aesir battled her father Freyr, ruler of rival bellicose pantheon the Vanir.

The resulting war was so brutal than when Odin finally claimed victory and forcibly merged the tribes through arranged marriage to Freyja, the new “Asgardians” excised all mention of the conflict from the annals of the kingdom.

However, although a peacefully united god-tribe for uncounted eons, no participant on either side truly forgot the hideous pact which the hard-pressed Vanir had made with demonic fire-lord Surtur in their direst hour of need nor the appalling toll taken during that climactic final climactic clash with their Aesir opponents…

On Earth today strange phenomena occur with disturbing frequency: dead birds fall from the skies in flames, spontaneous blazes and conflagrations erupt which not even weather god Thor can extinguish with storm or blizzard…

And in Hel, at the base of the Nine Realms, the roots of the world-ash Yggdrasil are engulfed in flame…

In Mephisto’s infernal domain the tempter believes he has discerned Loki’s grand scheme whilst in Vanaheim Freyja’s brooding unforgiving sister Gullveig receives an embassage and awesome gifts from an anonymous source. In Asgardia-above-Broxton a concerned council dispatches a party of warriors to investigate its Vanaheim province where the deeply symbolic Temple of Union is ablaze with flames that cannot be extinguished. However when Thor and his comrades Volstagg, Hogun and Fandral lead the mission to the distant conflagration they are attacked and routed by Gullveig and her Vanir troops using terrifying new weapons from another pantheon. The ancient feud is not only fully rekindled but spreading like wildfire…

Thor consults with his redeemed but still canny half-brother in Asgardia but, even as the juvenile sorcerer gropes to understand the machinations of trusted friends turned foe, Loki reveals his greatest mistake since resurrection, whilst in the metaphysical Otherworld which houses Britain’s communal subconscious, that nation’s newest deities “the Manchester Gods” reveal their unwitting and ill-conceived alliance with Reality’s greatest Enemy.

To empower their apotheosis, Wilson and his lords of steam and industry and commerce had employed the craftily offered gifts of the fire demon. The divine Engines of Albion’s Gods of the Cities were the products of Surtur’s hellish forge and now the Lord of Conflagration is exacting a deadly tithe; one increasingly turned against the embattled Aesir…

Following a stormy confrontation wherein Thor putsWilsonand his pantheon on warning, the Asgardian prepare for war against the Vanir. Their resolve is tested when evidence is found incriminating Freyja and the members of the All-Mother as traitors…

With Volstagg, Hogun and Fandral leading, a lynch mob moves to arrest both the Queen and the always-guilty-of-something Loki and Thor is forced to defend the last members of his family from his oldest friends…

Only the forceful presence of guardian god – and purebred Vanir-man – Heimdall contains the explosive situation and reunites the fractured Asgardians, subsequently dispatching them throughout the Nine Realms where Surtur’s demonic forces are laying waste to everything.

For the sake of unity the assembled All-Mother go into voluntary house arrest but panicked Loki flees, convinced he can only trust himself to solve the crisis…

He travels to the land of the dead but abjectly fails to convince dark goddess Hela and her consort Tyr to assist in the war against the Fire Demon, whilst in Muspelheim Surtur and his mysterious ally debate their ultimate plans for the harried, overconfident and increasingly powerless Loki and are waiting when the rejuvenated Prince of Asgard inevitably sneaks into the Demon’s Realm in a vain effort to be the conquering hero…

Soon, in Asgardia valiant Volstagg begins to regret accepting the role of war-king as the conflict against Surtur and the Vanir goes from bad to worse.

In Muspelheim Loki has seemingly turned the situation to his advantage after debating with Surtur and his hidden ally, but it’s hard to find a position of advantage when the Fire Lord’s unswerving, unshakable goal is to burn all life in the universe to cold dead ashes…

However, even as a child Thor’s half-brother is still undoubtedly the wiliest, most cunning creature in creation and Loki has a plan …but is he truly reformed and do his schemes benefit all the Asgardians or only, ultimately, himself…?

The story then explodes into a fearsome melee on all fronts of existence that will enthral fans of cosmic carnage and spectacular action with shining heroism and base betrayal revealing all that is great and self-destructive in Thor and his warrior clan, but even with the last-minute return of a long-lost supernal saviour, the defeat of Surtur’s excoriating scheme and a semblance of normality restored, there is still drama and revelation aplenty in this epic and enchantingly bombastic tale.

The suspenseful aftermath concludes with telling re-examinations of both Loki and Thor (this last illustrated by Barry Kitson) and the disclosure of shocking surprises that will utterly change everything in the world of the gods…

With covers and variants by Davis & Farmer, Stephanie Hans, Pasqual Ferry, Steve McNiven, and an eye-popping montage by most of the artists who’ve worked on the strip over the last five decades, this truly galvanic chronicle combines staggering conflict on a universal scale with fiercely probing characterisation and astounding revelations which add a subtle depth and intensity never before seen in these iconic comic heroes. Magnificently beguiling, this adventure extravaganza packs the proper punch to stun and subjugate comics-continuity veterans and film-fed fanboys alike and will delight Fights ‘n’ Tights followers for years to come

™ & © 2013 Marvel and subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A,Italy. All Rights Reserved. A British edition published by Panini UK, Ltd.

Posted on

Immortal Weapons


By many & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3848-8

Once upon a time little Danny Rand travelled with his parents and uncle to the chilly Himalayas, searching for the “lost city of K’un Lun” which only appears once every ten years. Within spitting distance of their goal, the boy’s father Wendell was murdered by the uncle and Danny’s mother sacrificed herself to save her child. Alone in the wilderness, the city found him and he spent the next decade mastering all forms of martial arts.

As soon he was able, Danny returned to the real world intent on vengeance, further armed with a mystic punch gained by killing the dragon Shou-Lao the Undying. When Iron Fist eventually achieved his goal the lad was at a loose end and – by default – a billionaire, as his murderous uncle had turned the family business into a multi-national megalith.

Iron Fist sprang out whole-heartedly out of the 1970s Kung Fu Craze, by way of a heartfelt tribute to Bill Everett’s golden Age super-hero Amazing Man (who appeared from 1939-1945 in Centaur Comics) from character originators Roy Thomas and Gil Kane.

The series ran hot and cold in Marvel Premier (#15-25; May 1974 – October 1975), before Chris Claremont & John Byrne steadied the ship and went on to produce a superb run of issues in his own title (Iron Fist #1-15, November 1975 – September 1977) which you can enjoy in the blockbusting, board-breaking Essential Iron Fist volume 1.

After cancellation the character drifted until paired with street-tough hero-for-hire Luke Cage. Power Man & Iron Fist ran from #51 until the book ended in 1986 (#125). The K’un Lun Kid has died, come back and cropped up all over the Marvel universe as guest star, co-star and even in a few of his own miniseries.

Recently revived and somewhat re-imagined as The Immortal Iron Fist, the new series revealed that there has been a steady progression of warriors bearing the title for centuries – if not millennia – and that K’un L’un was not the only magic city. In fact there were at least six others and each had its own supreme martial arts wonder warrior…

There are in fact seven mystical cities in this universe and every 88 years their celestial inter-dimensional orbits coincide to permit a grand martial arts tournament. In the course of the most recent contest we were introduced to a bunch of bizarre and baroque battlers who proved interesting enough to warrant their own shot at stardom…

This spin-off collection concentrates on those alternative champions whilst extemporising on differing aspects of Chinese kung fu culture in popular arts such as cinema, gathering the 5-issue miniseries Immortal Weapons from 2010. The all out action begins with the tempestuous and overbearing ‘Fat Cobra: the Book of the Cobra’ by Jason Aaron & artists Mico Suayan, Michael Lark, Stefano Gaudiano, Roberto de La Torre, Khari Evans, Victor Olazaba & Arturo Lozzi, and finds the burly braggart enjoying wine, women and song – especially women and extra-especially wine – when writer Carmichael appears. Although the very old and very drunk warrior has forgotten, in a more sober moment he commissioned the research to find out everything about the bombastic champion of Peng Lai. Not just because a mighty warrior needs his life recorded, but because after so many years of combat, copulation and booze, Fat Cobra has forgotten.

The petrifiedCarmichaelknows his sponsor won’t like what he has discovered…

‘Bride of Nine Spiders: The Spider’s Song’ (by Cullen Bunn & Dan Brereton, inked by Tom Palmer, Gaudiano & Mark Pennington) also examines the origins of the sinister siren, but links it to a terse tale of terror as one of the demi-divine warrior’s arcane arachnids is trapped on Earth in 1935 and becomes the most coveted eldritch artefact in the world.

When the spider passes to debauched billionaire Desmond Guille, a rival collector hires the infallible Jason Krieg and his team to steal it, but by the time the thieves invade Guille’s island fortress, the Queen of Spiders has at last returned to reclaim her lost love and the mercenaries are trapped in an uncanny nest of appallingly horror…

The oppressive bustling urban nightmare of Colonial Hong Kong is the setting for ‘Dog Brother: Urban Legend’ (by Rick Spears & Tim Green II) as starving foundlings struggle to stay alive in an underworld of ruthless savagery and horrifying depravity, buoyed up only by legends of the mythic champion of the Under-City who only fights for the most weak, lost, abandoned and forgotten.

But just how much must brutalised, emaciated Sihing and Sidai endure before they have fallen far enough for Dog Brother to notice them…?

The next offering examines the nature of an unconquerable Amazon tribe betrayed and enslaved by their own men.

Gulled by the heroic Tiger, a slave nation is only saved when his own cosseted, pampered child rejects the honeyed lies which have kept women in silken bondage. Listening to the clarion call of her own body, the indomitable child recovers not just her honour and power but the destiny of her defeated broken people in ‘Tiger’s Beautiful Daughter: All this Useless Beauty’ by Duane Swierczynski, Khari Evans, Victor Olazaba & Allen Martinez.

‘Prince of Orphans: The Loyal Ten Thousand Dead’ is a spectacular Chinese ghost story from David Lapham, & Arturo Lozzi, as Iron Fist is summoned by the spectral champion John Aman to counter the threat of a legion of vengeful warrior spirits cheated by a false Emperor two millennia past. If they can’t have him, the innocents living in one of the most populous cities on Earth will just have to do, so Danny and the Prince are in for one hell of a fight. At least there’s a dragon on their side – if it doesn’t eat or fry them first…

Each original issue also contained a brief episode starring the controversial Champion of K’un L’un. ‘The Immortal Iron Fist: Caretakers’ was written by Duane Swierczynski with the first two chapters illustrated by Travel Foreman & Gaudiano and the concluding three by Hatuey Diaz.

When Jada Frey got home one night, drug-pushers looking for her older brother murdered their dad and kidnapped her baby brother to force their target out of hiding. Luckily for Jada her kung fu sensei Danny Rand wouldn’t take “leave me alone” for an answer…

Comfortably mixing traditional costume-capers with the best of movie martial arts fantasy, horror movies and urban gangster thrillers, this terrific tome blends compellingly exotic action with supernatural thrills and trenchant, mordant laughs for an explosively visceral time that should appeal equally to superhero fans and martial arts mavens alike.
© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Joe Golem and the Drowning City – an Illustrated Novel


By Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden (St. Martin’s Press)
ISBN: 978-0-312-64473-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: merry hell and utterly engrossing… 8/10

As well as being involved with some of the very best superhero yarns of the late 20th century, Legendary fantasist and comics-creator Mike Mignola has carved himself a splendid and memorable niche in the industry’s history by revitalising the sub-genre of horror-heroes via his superb Hellboy, B.P.R.D. and Lobster Johnson tales, creating his own very special dark place where thrill-starved fans can wallow in all things dire and dreadful…

Clearly he has far more ideas than he can successfully manage in one lifetime as well as a deep and abiding love for the classical supernatural thriller medium, as evidenced by this superb pastiche of the writings of horror pioneers H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth tinctured with lashings of pulp adventure flavourings in the manner of Clark Ashton Smith, Walter B. Gibson and Robert E. Howard…

You won’t remember it, but in 1925 a horrific earthquake shifted the bedrock of Manhattan and half of New York City sank 30-odd feet beneath the greasy, salty waves. The rich glitterati relocated to shiny Uptown towers with the most incredible seafront vistas whilst the less fortunate had to adapt to a life of crushing, inundating poverty and ramshackle survival, scavenging in the appalling, un-policed canals and underwater alleys of the sordidVenice that was “Downtown”.

The decades passed in this tidal backwater and the lowly ones who had no place else to go adapted, as always, to radical changes. One such was Felix Orlov, a stage conjuror who discovered over the years that he had a rare and genuine talent as a medium. Felix could speak to and for the dead but, now in his twilight years, could never leave the drowned theatre he loved. Thus he eked out a tenuous existence among the bereaved and bereft with only 14 year old Molly McHugh as his housekeeper and companion.

Years ago Orlov had saved her from the ubiquitous degenerate prowling scum dubbed Water Rats, and as his faculties diminished she had come to think of him as her father. She was certainly most useful whenever clients came seeking his unique services…

Increasingly over the last fifty years Felix had been plagued by impossible dreams of uncanny rites, shapeless monstrosities and a ghastly sacrifice, but this morning was the worst ever. All the same the old trouper brushed aside Molly’s concerns and carried on with the morning’s scheduled séance. It was the last he would ever conduct…

During contact with the Other Side something appalling and unknown gripped him, just as in the material world impossibly sturdy and terrifyingly vigorous gas-masked thugs burst into his home and kidnapped the possessed Orlov’s withered corporeal frame.

They wanted Molly too but her survival-honed instincts enabled her to escape and lead them a deadly dance through the submerged underworld of Downtown.

She had no plan except escape and was down to her last erg of energy when the mysterious hulking brute named Joe intervened, battling the pursuers and discovering that the hunters were anything but human…

Joe’s rescue of Molly was no accident: he had been dispatched by his boss to save both magician and assistant but had arrived too late. With only half his mission accomplished, the bluff, friendly giant was in no mood to deal with Molly’s very sensible suspicions. When she tried to bolt again, Joe chloroformed her…

The frantic girl awoke within a fantastic sanctum and was introduced to the world’s most famous consulting detective, a ghost-haunted genius who had worked with Scotland Yard since Victoria’s time, now keeping his feeble frame alive long after his human meat had failed by installing self-built organs powered by steam and run by clockwork.

…And magic; bleak, black magic…

The man named Simon Church had an incredible tale to tell: of a prolonged duel with a mad thaumaturgical scientist named Doctor Cocteau, an astounding threat from the outer depths of human imagination, elder gods and the harsh unpalatable truth about Molly’s missing employer and father figure…

What he didn’t tell her was the even more incredible truth about Joe, even as he sent them both off to recover the fabled mystic artefact Lector’s Pentajulum and quite possibly save all of humanity from a madman’s lethal hubris.

However Cocteau wasn’t the only driven savant with an audacious hunger for forbidden knowledge which might result in a malign, supernal invasion from things utterly beyond mortal comprehension…

Fast-paced, moody and completely captivating, this rollercoaster of tension and thrills by Mignola and long-term co-writer Christopher Golden blends the ghastly brooding chills of Cthulu with the derring-do of Indiana Jones in a boldly alternate time and place to maximum effect.

This excellent late night love-affair with a grotesque golden age rattles and roars along buoyed up with ebullient, heroic-culture distillations both refreshingly familiar yet engagingly novel, with ghosts and monsters rubbing misshaped shoulders in sunken lairs and seedy dives (sorry, couldn’t resist) as a tough-as-nails big softie and a hard-bitten slip of a girl unite to save a world not quite our own…

Described as a steam-punk adventure, the scintillating saga contained within this reassuringly square-cut, hardbound and satisfyingly rustic tome is adorned with 69 grittily monochrome full, half, third and quarter-page illustrations by the artist to comprise a joyous homage to the necromantic good old days.

Miss it at your peril, fright fans…
© 2012 Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Sandman Mystery Theatre: The Tarantula


By Matt Wagner & Guy Davis (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-195-6

Created by Gardner Fox and first illustrated by Bert Christman, the Sandman premiered in either Adventure Comics #40 July 1939 (two months after Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27) or two weeks earlier in New York World’s Fair Comics 1939, depending on whether some rather spotty distribution records can be believed.

Face and head utterly obscured by a gasmask and slouch hat; caped, business-suited millionaire adventurer Wesley Dodds was cut from the pulp masked mystery-man mould that had made The Lone Ranger, Green Hornet, The Shadow, Phantom Detective, Black Bat, The Spider and so many more such household names and astonishing commercial successes in the early days of mass periodical publication.

Wielding a sleeping-gas gun and haunting the night to battle a string of killers, crooks and spies, he was accompanied in the earliest comicbooks by his plucky paramour Dian Belmont, before gradually losing the readers’ interest and slipping from cover-spot to last feature in Adventure Comics, just as the cloaked pulp-hero avengers he emulated slipped from popularity in favour of more flamboyant fictional fare.

Possessing a certain indefinable style and charm but definitely no more pizzazz, the feature was on the verge of being dropped when the Sandman abruptly switched to a skin-tight yellow-and-purple costume – complete with billowing cape – and gained a boy-sidekick, Sandy the Golden Boy (in Adventure Comics #69, December 1941, courtesy of Mort Weisinger & Paul Norris), presumably to emulate the overwhelmingly successful Batman and Captain America models currently reaping such big dividends.

It didn’t help much but when Joe Simon & Jack Kirby came aboard with #72 that all spectacularly changed. A semi-supernatural element and fascination with the world of dreams (revisited by S&K a decade later in their short-lived experimental suspense series The Strange World of Your Dreams) added a moody conceptual punch to equal the kinetic fury of their art, as Sandman and Sandy became literally the stuff of nightmares to the bizarre bandits and murderous mugs they stalked…

For what happened next you can check out the superb Sandman hardback collection…

Time passed and in the late 1980s Neil Gaiman, Sam Keith & Mike Dringenberg took the property in a revolutionary new direction, eventually linking all the previous decades’ elements into an overarching connective continuity under DC’s new sophisticated suspense imprint Vertigo.

Within a few years the astounding success of the new Sandman prompted the editorial powers-that-be to revisit the stylishly retro original character and look at him through more mature eyes. Iconoclastic creator Matt Wagner (Mage, Grendel, Batman) teamed with artistic maverick Guy Davis (Baker Street, B.P.R.D.) and colourist David Hornung to create a grittier, grimier, far more viscerally authentic 1930s where the mystery man pursued his lonely crusade with chilling verisimilitude.

The tone was darkly modernistic, with the crime-busting playing out in the dissolute dog-days of the Jazz Age and controversial themes such as abuse, sexual depravity, corruption and racism were confronted as well as the rising tide of fascism that swept the world then. This is a warning: Sandman Mystery Theatre is not a kid’s comic…

This first collection reprints the redefining first story-arc from issues #1-4 (April-July 1993) and commences after an absorbing introduction from veteran journalist and music critic Dave Marsh, accompanied by a gallery of the series’ original, groundbreaking photo-covers.

The Tarantula takes us to New York in 1938 where District Attorney Larry Belmont is having the Devil’s own time keeping his wild-child daughter out of trouble and out of the newspapers. She’s out all night, every night with her spoiled friends; drinking, partying and associating with all the wrong sorts of people, but the prominent public official has far bigger problems too. One is the mysterious gas-masked figure he finds rifling his safe soon after Dian departs…

The intruder easily overpowers the DA with some kind of sleeping gas – that also makes you want to blurt out the truth – and disappears, leavingBelmontto awake with a headache and wonder if it was all a dream…

Dian, after her rowdy night of carousing with scandalous BFF Catherine Van Der Meer and her gangster lover, awakes with a similar hangover but still agrees to attend one of her father’s dreary public functions that evening. He is particularly keen that she meet a studious young man named Wesley Dodds, recently returned from years in the Orient to take over his deceased dad’s many business interests.

Dodds is genteel and effete but Dian finds that there’s something oddly compelling about him. Moreover he too seems to feel a connection…

The Gala breaks up early when the DA is informed of a sensational crime. Catherine Van Der Meer has been kidnapped by someone identifying himself as The Tarantula…

Across town, mob boss Albert Goldman is having a meeting with fellow gangsters from the West Coast and as usual his useless son Roger and drunken wife Miriam embarrass him. Daughter Celia is the only one he can depend on these days but even her unwavering devotion seems increasingly divided. After another stormy scene the conference ends early, and the visiting crime-lords are appalled to find all their usually diligent bodyguards asleep in their limousines…

Even with Catherine kidnapped Dian is determined to go out that night, but when Wesley arrives unexpectedly she changes her mind, much to her father’s relief. That feeling doesn’t last long however after the police inform him that the Tarantula has taken another woman…

When a woman’s hideously mutilated body is found Dian inveigles herself into accompanying her father to Headquarters but is soon excluded from the grisly “Man’s Business”. Left on her own she begins snooping in the offices and encounters a bizarre gas-masked figure poring through files. Before she can react he dashes past her and escapes, leaving her to explain to the assorted useless lawmen cluttering up the place.

Furious and humiliated, Dian then insists that she officially identifies Catherine and nobody can dissuade her.

Shockingly the savagely ruined body is not her best friend but yet another victim…

Somewhere dark and hidden Van Der Meer is being tortured but the perpetrator has far more than macabre gratification in mind…

In the Goldman house Celia is daily extending her control over dear old daddy. They still share a very special secret, but these days she’s the one dictating where and when they indulge themselves…

With all the trauma in her life Dian increasingly finds Wesley a comforting rock, but perhaps that view would change if she knew how he spends his nights. Dodds is plagued by bad dreams. Not his own nightmares, but rather the somnolent screams of victims and their cruel oppressors haunt his troubled sleep. What else could a decent man do then, but act to end such suffering?

In a seedy dive, uncompromising Police Lieutenant Burke comes off worst when he discovers the gas-masked lunatic grilling a suspect in “his” kidnapping case and again when this “Sandman” is found at a factory where the vehicle used to transport victims is hidden. Even so, the net is inexorably tightening on both Tarantula and the insane vigilante interfering in the investigation and Burke doesn’t know who he most wants in a nice, dark interrogation room…

As the labyrinthine web of mystery and monstrosity slowly unravels, tension mounts and the death toll climbs but can The Sandman stop the torrent of terror before the determined Dian finds herself swept up in all the blood and death?

Moody, dark and superbly engrossing, these revisionist “anti-superhero” tales offer an impressively human and realistic spin on the genre; one that should delight all those grown-ups who think masks and tights are silly.
© 1993, 1995, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Sumo


By Thien Pham (First Second)
ISBN: 978-1-59643-581-0

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: just because it’s great… 10/10

This book is about looking.

The magically multi-cultural nature of pictures mixed with words continually generates a wealth of absolutely fantastic and improbable gems for readers with eyes and minds wide open. This deliciously absorbing visual poem only arrived in the review books delivery a few days ago and it’s honestly become one of this year’s favourites – one of the most elegiac and gently enthralling visual experiences I’ve encountered in many a year…

It’s all about pasts and futures…

The tale begins in a Japanese Dojo as another rikishi in training greets the dawn. He does his assigned chores and works out with the other jonokuchi in the heya training stable. Despite his superior strength, size and speed, he is again knocked out. The supervising oyakata is in despair and doubts the spirit and determination of his latest find…

Scott thought he was a big man in every sense of the term, but High School Football glory days never turned into the glittering, lucrative Pro career he dreamed of. So he somehow ended up in his small town ofCampbell with his best buddies, drinking beer and wasting his days.

Then when his adored girlfriend Gwen dumped him, even that shallow, pointless life needed to end. They had been together since grade school…

However, years ago a visiting Japanese Sumo trainer had seen the boy play and never forgotten the warrior spirit he saw displayed in that sports arena. When the venerable gentleman offered a chance for fame and glory, Scott thought long and hard…

With nothing to lose, Scott accepts a bizarre offer: move to Japan and try out as a junior wrestler in the decidedly un-All American enterprise known as Sumo…

This is a hard look at expectations and second chances…

The transition hasn’t been what he expected or hoped for. They dyed his hair and changed his name since all Sumo have professional shikona stage-names and looks. Only now “Hakugei” is failing again and if it wasn’t for the trainer’s daughter Asami and the idyllic occasional break spent fishing, his new life would be as intolerable as his old one…

This story is about striving…

With time fast running out, Hakugei has to decide what he really wants and he has to do it before the last match of the mae-zumo tournament. He has to win at least one bout or be sent home in disgrace …and he’s just lost the fourth one in a row…

It’s all about the buildup towards tension’s inevitable release…

This surprisingly contemplative and lyrical exploration of love, hope, honour and gigantic nearly-naked men bitch-slapping each other in truly explosive manner effortlessly blends and intercuts flashbacks and real time to craft a sublimely skilful and colourfully emotive experience. Cartoonist and teacher Thien Pham (Level Up) hypnotically and enthrallingly marries two wildly disparate worlds to produce an enchanting and thoughtful story that will delight and astound. This is a graphic novel you must read over and over again.
© 2012 Thien Pham. All rights reserved.

Posted on

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes volume 1


By Christopher Yost, Scott Wegener Patrick Scherberger & Sandu Florea (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5619-2

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: proper old-fashioned action-adventure for every age of Fights ‘n’ Tights fan… 9/10

Since its earliest days Marvel has always courted the youngest comicbook audiences. Whether through animated movie or TV tie-ins such as Terrytoons Comics, Mighty Mouse, Super Rabbit Comics, Duckula, assorted Hanna-Barbera and Disney licenses and a myriad of others, or original creations such as Tessie the Typist, Millie the Model, Homer the Happy Ghost, Li’l Kids or even Calvin, the House of Ideas has always understood the necessity of cultivating the next generation of readers.

These days, however, accessible child-friendly titles are on the wane and with Marvel the publisher’s proprietary characters all over screens large and small, the company usually prefers to create adulterated versions of its own pantheon, making that eventual longed-for transition to more mature comics as painless as possible.

In 2003 the powers that be created a Marvel Age line which updated and retold classic original tales by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and combined it with the remnants of its failed manga-based Tsunami imprint, which was also intended for a junior demographic. The experiment was tweaked in 2005, becoming Marvel Adventures with core titles transformed into Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man with all-original yarns replacing the reconstituted classics. More titles followed, including Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes, Hulk and The Avengers and these all ran until 2010 when they were cancelled and supplanted by new volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man which carried on the newly-established continuities.

Never the success the company hoped, Marvel Adventures was superseded in 2012 by specific comics tied to Disney XD television shows, thereafter designated “Marvel Universe cartoons”, using the television shows to reinterpret key moments of the heroes’ stellar history whilst creating a new generation of readers to be hopefully funnelled into the increasingly archaic-seeming world of paper entertainments.

All the same, these tales are an intriguing and perhaps more culturally accessible means of introducing character and concepts to kids born sometimes two, three even four generations removed from those far-distant 1960s-originating events, and this initial volume of the barnstorming adventure ensemble Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes collects the contents of the first four issues from 2010, scripted by the parent cartoon’s chief writer Christopher Yost.

In short, terse, self-contained and immensely enjoyable romps aimed at kids of 10 and up (parents should note that some of the themes and certainly the level of violence contained in here might not be what everybody considers “All-Ages” action), the greatest champions of the Marvel Universe regularly assemble to save the world from every imaginable menace – and sometimes each other…

The wonderment begins with ‘Adaptation’, illustrated by Scott Wegener which sees freshly thawed WWII hero Captain America coming to terms with life in the 21st century by thrashing international mercenaries Batroc’s Brigade before he and Thor are summoned to aid the team against a bizarre android capable of mimicking their powers, abilities and skills. This is followed by a lower key yarn as Hawkeye and the Black Panther swallow their differences and learn to ‘Trust’ one another in battle against deadly demoness Whiplash in a short, sharp shocker limned by Patrick Scherberger.

The second issue opened with ‘Obsession’ (Wegener art) as Tony Stark‘s ongoing duel with Russian rival Ivan Vanko led to another cataclysmic clash between Iron Man and the deadly Crimson Dynamo. When the collateral damage drew in the rest of the Avengers the battle seemed all but over – until Russian super-team the Winter Guard stepped in claiming prior jurisdiction.

However, even as the dispute with Titanium Man, Ursa Major, Darkstar and Vanguard escalated into all-out war with the Westerners, Baron Zemo and the Masters of Evil were waiting in the wings to recruit Vanko to their vile ranks…

The back-up tale ‘Mutual Respect’ (Scherberger with Sandu Florea inks) featured an unlikely team-up between Ant-Man and the Hulk as the malevolent Mad Thinker apparently attempted to co-opt the Jade Juggernaut’s power, but as usual had actually schemes within schemes going on…

Bored Elders of the Universe the Grandmaster and the Collector visited Earth in ‘Savage’ (Wegener) planning to orchestrate a prize fight between Thor and the Hulk, and that titanic tussle of equals was offset by the brutal back-up ‘Courage’ (Scherberger) where flighty socialite the Wasp was forced to fight alone in arctic conditions to save a severely mauled Captain America from the lethal carnivorous Wendigo…

In ‘Team’ (Wegener with full page splash shots by Scherberger) the entire roster was on hand for a deadly full-length duel with the Masters of Evil and marauding giant robot Ultimo but even their incredible final victory was less trouble than satisfying the Wasp’s persistent demands for a suitable team photo…

This tasty treat also includes a wealth of covers, pin-ups, fact-packed character profiles of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Wasp, Ant-Man/Giant Man, Hawkeye, Black Panther, close associates and super-spies Nick Fury and the Black Widow and vile villains Baron Zemo, time Conqueror Kang, Baron Strucker, Asgardian god of evil Loki, Ultron, and Masters of Evil Enchantress, Crimson Dynamo and Abomination.

Even then there’s more such as technical gen on ‘Hawkeye’s Bag of Tricks’, the Thunder God’s mystic mallet ‘the Mighty Mjolnir’, Iron Man’s internal systems in ‘Breaking Down the Hud!’ and a quiz daring readers to deduce which villains’ terrible tools belong ‘In Evil Hands!’

Fast-paced and impressive, bright and breezy with lots of light-hearted action and loads of sly laughs, this book truly captures the zest and drive of both traditional comicbook and modern TV superhero shenanigans and will surely delight every unashamed fan of Costumed Dramas whatever their age or inclinations…
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.